Knife Hand Strike
A knife hand strike is Wing Chun Kung Fu is an excellent tool if used correctly. The knife hand is a strike with the outer edge of your palm (little finger side).
There are a few basic principles involved in performing the knife hand effectively:
1. Ensure that your fingers are held together firmly and the thumb is tucked in at the point of contact. Failure to do so will quickly develop into bruising inside all your fingers as they clatter against one another...........not a nice feeling!
2. Tense and promounce the palm during the strike to ensure that you deliver a solid strike to the target as well as protecting the hand. This can be achieved by slightly cupping the hand and tensing the palm, you can feel the muscle tense as you do this (it is a good habit to cup your hand slightly for all open hand strikes as this helps to protect the fingers from bending backwards on a miss timed hit or during a finger strike) and then angle inwards your hand slighty to pronounce the side of the palm and retreat your fingers which ensures that you are more likely to connect with the correct striking surface.
3. Strike only to soft areas such as the eyes, throat, sides of the neck, below the ears, the bridge of the nose and underneath the nose.
4. Be accurate! The knife hand relies on accuracy to be effective and is not a power tool.
5. Keep the arm bent upon impact where possible. The reason I suggest this is that you have more mobility in that arm after the strike for example if it is blocked you can reach out into a finger strike to the eyes with a slight shift of the body to move you around the blocking hand or you can reach out to grab the opponents head to pull down onto a knee, you can grab the blocking hand out of the way for a rear hand strike to the now open target, etc, etc............endless possibilities so try not to limit them by locking out your arm.
You can work the knife hand into various combinations and it is a valuable tool to have in your armory. Try it when you have thrown a leading punch which has been blocked with a rear hand Pak Sao and instead of retreating your hand you can use that re-routed energy to initiate the knife hand strike from inside your opponents guard. Don't over use the knife hand but don't forget about it either.
by Glenn Hodgkinson
There are a few basic principles involved in performing the knife hand effectively:
1. Ensure that your fingers are held together firmly and the thumb is tucked in at the point of contact. Failure to do so will quickly develop into bruising inside all your fingers as they clatter against one another...........not a nice feeling!
2. Tense and promounce the palm during the strike to ensure that you deliver a solid strike to the target as well as protecting the hand. This can be achieved by slightly cupping the hand and tensing the palm, you can feel the muscle tense as you do this (it is a good habit to cup your hand slightly for all open hand strikes as this helps to protect the fingers from bending backwards on a miss timed hit or during a finger strike) and then angle inwards your hand slighty to pronounce the side of the palm and retreat your fingers which ensures that you are more likely to connect with the correct striking surface.
3. Strike only to soft areas such as the eyes, throat, sides of the neck, below the ears, the bridge of the nose and underneath the nose.
4. Be accurate! The knife hand relies on accuracy to be effective and is not a power tool.
5. Keep the arm bent upon impact where possible. The reason I suggest this is that you have more mobility in that arm after the strike for example if it is blocked you can reach out into a finger strike to the eyes with a slight shift of the body to move you around the blocking hand or you can reach out to grab the opponents head to pull down onto a knee, you can grab the blocking hand out of the way for a rear hand strike to the now open target, etc, etc............endless possibilities so try not to limit them by locking out your arm.
You can work the knife hand into various combinations and it is a valuable tool to have in your armory. Try it when you have thrown a leading punch which has been blocked with a rear hand Pak Sao and instead of retreating your hand you can use that re-routed energy to initiate the knife hand strike from inside your opponents guard. Don't over use the knife hand but don't forget about it either.
by Glenn Hodgkinson
posted by Mujibur Rahman at 5:47 AM
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