50 human monk on Saryrn.

I am dual-wielding two 1hb weapons while I build up my 1hb skill. While
doing that, I've been clicking the Dragon Punch button to try to get
from 197 to 200. For what seemed like a very long time, I got no
skill-ups and I was wondering if, perhaps, I could only improve my
Dragon Punch skill if I was doing hand-to-hand fighting.

As an experiment, I stored the 1hb weapons and within minutes I saw an
improvement to 198. But wait - I stayed in hand-to-hand mode for quite a
while and saw no further changes. This led me to wonder if the lack of
skill-ups while using 1hb weapons was because I was already at 197.

I could continue with this experiment and prove to myself whether
hand-to-hand and Dragon Punch are related in that way, but I thought
someone here would already know the answer.