The Secret of the Karate Spear Hand Technique!
Did you know…
the spear hand is not a spear hand.
When I was at the Kang Duk Won
there were all sorts of people studying.
Glass blowers,
grave diggers,
college students,
and lots of outlaw motorcyclists.
1 per centers.
Mostly Hells Angels.
One day I went to class
and there were about twenty Harleys parked outside.
The Hells Angels were doing a documentary on themselves,
and one segment had to do with martial arts.
So Ted,
a big second black who had joined the HA,
places three boards on a couple of cinder blocks.
He psyches up,
thrusts a right spear hand down,
and the boards don’t break.
Well, they broke,
but not all the way.
Ted lifts up the first board.
Clean break.
He lifts up the second board.
Clean break.
He lifts up the third board…
it’s got a knothole in it.
It was broken, but the knothole
had stopped it from separating.
So Ted replaces the third board,
puts the first two boards on the stack,
and breaks it with a spear hand with his left hand.
Bang.
Clean break,
Cut,
Print,
call it a wrap.
I don’t recall whether he broke his hand,
but he might have.
Or at least a couple of fingers.
Now people used to be able to break boards
pretty easily with their fingers.
Not any more.
I don’t see buckets of sand for conditioning in the dojos,
I don’t see people doing fingertip push ups.
So,
for the time being,
except for a few hardy souls
who believe in ancient training methods,
breaking with fingers is a lost art.
The original finger tip break was probably
for breaking through armor on samurai.
I’m just guessing,
but it sounds logical.
Or,
perhaps it was for inserting the fingers
into the neck,
through the armpit joint of the armor,
or whatever.
Not having seen old Japanese armor
I don’t really know.
BUT…
I do know that while I used to train in the old methods,
and I was able to do a few tricks,
like break a one inch board with fingertips,
I am no longer going to spear anybody.
Just too old.
Which led me to an interesting discovery.
What if the spear hand was not a thrust
to break a body?
What if it was intended to be a grab?
If you look at every spear thrust
in the Pinan (Heian) forms,
and change it to a grab,
It not only makes sense,
and protects the hands…
it leads to some interesting locks and throws.
I detail a few of these in the
How to Fix Karate books.
But you can figure a lot of these out yourself.
Instead of striking,
move the hand deeper and grab.
Look for a way to manipulate the opponent.
What if the move on the way up the center,
in Pinan three,
was not a spear hand to the sternum,
as usually taught?
What if it goes past the neck
and you simply stand up and grab his neck in a headlock?
Think about it.
Try it and see if it works.
See if you need to alter the movement
to make it work.
And,
by the way,
if you want to see the things I came up with,
check out the
How to Fix Karate Books
(two volumes, you have to order them separately)
on Amazon.
They’ve got about five hours of video links.
Okay,
last thing.
It’s almost time for…
(drum roll)
HanaKwanMass!
That’s right!
A combination of Hanukkah, Kwanza and Christmas!
HanaKwanMass!
That way you can offend everybody at once!
Have a great work out,
and HanaKwanMass to all!
Al
Don’t forget to check out the interview
https://anchor.fm/dale-gillilan/episodes/S1E10—Al-Case-e12e3np
‘The Last Martial Arts Book’ has 12 ratings for 5 stars.
(There is a video version of this book with no stars yet)
My two yoga books have 9 ratings between them for 5 stars.
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That’s a lot of good ratings
so hopefully you’ll find the book that works for you.
How to Fix Karate:
A Karate Training and Workout Book
(Two Volumes)
