Small surface strikes

[Dirty Dog]

Someone taking a swing at you is not a your life or theirs situation. My reaction to violence will be measured by the violence used against me. Taking a swing will get you knocked out, pulling a knife will put me in a position to where I must finish you before you can me. If that requires me to kill the attacker then I am prepared for that. May sound like Macho crap, but I don't care. I train for combat. I train to survive violence through violence

I'm going to expand on my earlier comments a bit.

I have always made it a point to tell students that it is much easier to hurt someone a lot, than to hurt them a little. And harder still to subdue them without injury.
Perhaps you've not reached a point in your training where anything other than the most brutal response is an option. If that is the case, I withdraw my comments about macho ********. If that is the case, then it's just a matter of training.

 

[MatsumuraKarate]

I'm going to expand on my earlier comments a bit.

I have always made it a point to tell students that it is much easier to hurt someone a lot, than to hurt them a little. And harder still to subdue them without injury.
Perhaps you've not reached a point in your training where anything other than the most brutal response is an option. If that is the case, I withdraw my comments about macho ********. If that is the case, then it's just a matter of training.

As I have stated several times, my level of violence will depend upon the violence I am faced with. While I respect all people's opinion I will disagree with yours

 

[Tez3]

As I have stated several times, my level of violence will depend upon the violence I am faced with. While I respect all people's opinion I will disagree with yours

I asked you a question to which you gave an answer that had nothing to do with it. How often are you involved in violence, how often are you attacked by people intent on harming you? Are you deliberately looking for violent encounters or do you live in a place where these are every day occurrences?

 

[Dirty Dog]

As I have stated several times, my level of violence will depend upon the violence I am faced with. While I respect all people's opinion I will disagree with yours

You didn't answer the question, but since it was implied rather than directly stated, that may be my fault. So I'll ask directly.

Exactly what is your training and experience?

And I will echo the questions asked by Tez3:
How often are you involved in violence, how often are you attacked by people intent on harming you? Are you deliberately looking for violent encounters or do you live in a place where these are every day occurrences?

 

[MatsumuraKarate]

I asked you a question to which you gave an answer that had nothing to do with it. How often are you involved in violence, how often are you attacked by people intent on harming you? Are you deliberately looking for violent encounters or do you live in a place where these are every day occurrences?

Fair enough. I stay away from areas where violence is prevalent whenever possible. In the world we live in today violence is everywhere. I have a wife and children and must protect them.
As far as my training I have trained for 11 years in traditional Okinawan Karate. We train as realistically as possible to be ready when the time arises. Hope that answers your questions

You didn't answer the question, but since it was implied rather than directly stated, that may be my fault. So I'll ask directly.

Exactly what is your training and experience?

And I will echo the questions asked by Tez3:
How often are you involved in violence, how often are you attacked by people intent on harming you? Are you deliberately looking for violent encounters or do you live in a place where these are every day occurrences?

 

[Tez3]

Fair enough. I stay away from areas where violence is prevalent whenever possible. In the world we live in today violence is everywhere. I have a wife and children and must protect them.
As far as my training I have trained for 11 years in traditional Okinawan Karate. We train as realistically as possible to be ready when the time arises. Hope that answers your questions

To be honest no it doesn't. Violence isn't everywhere, I can call to mind thousands of places where there is an extremely small chance of violence. Where I live there is a murder about every twenty to thirty years if that and that's always a domestic situation.
The danger of seeing violence everywhere is that far from being aware of your surroundings you see danger from everyone and everywhere but you miss an actual danger. Training to fight is all very well but there's far more to self defence than just fighting.

 

[MatsumuraKarate]

I'm more than aware what is involved. By having the mentality that where you are is are because its seems that way is a mistake. I believe we will have to agree to disagree on this one

 

[EddieCyrax]

I'm more than aware what is involved. By having the mentality that where you are is are because its seems that way is a mistake. I believe we will have to agree to disagree on this one

I am going to have to disagree with you here......I too live in a very safe environment. This does not mean I do not train very hard or include real world scenario based self defense drills. I feel very confident/comfortable in my skills in what I can/cant do effectively. This said, I do not kid myself that I know what true violence is like as most of my real world engagement was a billion years ago when i was a kid in school. In addition, I have done extensive research into the legalities of conflict/self-defense. Based on this study, I have changed some of my training techniques.

Unless you are faced with the realities of violence, there is no way to truly understand. All the fantasy visualization will not fully prepare you.

I train in the hopes that if one day if i need to use it, I will not be as unprepared as I would have been without the training. Hopefully this day will never come, and if it does my training/education will be enough to keep me safe and out of jail.

 

[Tez3]

I'm more than aware what is involved. By having the mentality that where you are is are because its seems that way is a mistake. I believe we will have to agree to disagree on this one

I'm afraid you are going to have to translate that as I have no idea what it means.

for the rest, I agree with EddieCyrax.

 

[drop bear]

I'm afraid you are going to have to translate that as I have no idea what it means.

for the rest, I agree with EddieCyrax.

My guess.

I'm more than aware what is involved. By having the mentality that where you are is safe because its seems that way is a mistake. I believe we will have to agree to disagree on thisone



And that the spell checker got him.

 

[Tez3]

I think you need to take a middle line neither seeing everything as a threat and nothing as a threat. Learning awareness is probably the best way to cope with modern living, being prepared is also good but seeing everyone as a threat is going to give you high blood pressure and a very stressful life, it may even start a fight that could have been avoided.

 

[DaveB]

Worse, it might make him vote UKIP

 

[Tez3]

Worse, it might make him vote UKIP

 

[Danny T]

Who practices small surface strikes? By this I am referring to toe kicks, nukite(fingertips) boshiken(thumb knuckle strikes), hiraken(half fist or tiger paw) and shoken(one knuckle strike). What emphasis do you place on their importance in combat?

I personally place a great deal of emphasis on them. To me they are very well suited to stopping a violent attack.

Most of these are more of a pain reactionary tactic and are not fight or attack enders against one who is determined to hurt you. They are excellent in many cases as a tactic to cause a reaction allowing you to follow up with something else but seldom will 'stop' the attack.

 

[Chris Parker]

Delivering a strike to a small area, typically a nerve or other fragile area of the body, to me is Kore effective than a punch or kick. If your targets of interest are soft than it shouldn't take the crazy amount of conditioning one would think. We do focus on knees AMD elbows as well, but I personally like small surface strikes to nerves and such

Yeah… you do realise that adrenaline is going to nullify much of the effect, yeah? Assuming you even manage to hit the target in the first place…

Anytime you are threatened by an attacker, it becomes a no rules situation. When it comes down to me making it home to my family or them to theirs, I will do whatever necessary to make sure I walk away. If your training differs I suggest you find a hobby other than a combat art. Karate is not about trophies or medals, its about the science of unarmed combat.

Yeah… you do realise that there's no such thing as a "no rules situation"? I mean… wars have rules. I will also say that this whole line of "you're not doing it right, so you can't do it at all (karate)" is a bit, well, completely wrong… there are many reasons to train in karate that don't match your (frankly) extreme and misapplied understanding of the situation.

That's a great theory, makes great memes, and sounds all macho.

It's also ********.

I get threatened all the time. It's been less than 24 hours since a tweaker took a swing at me.
But you know, there were still rules. Had I killed them in retaliation, I'd likely be sitting in jail, instead of at home, looking forward to the release of the latest season of The Big Bang Theory on DVD.

Honestly, it's not so much macho BS… it's something else…

Someone taking a swing at you is not a your life or theirs situation. My reaction to violence will be measured by the violence used against me. Taking a swing will get you knocked out, pulling a knife will put me in a position to where I must finish you before you can me. If that requires me to kill the attacker then I am prepared for that. May sound like Macho crap, but I don't care. I train for combat. I train to survive violence through violence

So you're contradicting yourself, yeah?

Fair enough. I stay away from areas where violence is prevalent whenever possible. In the world we live in today violence is everywhere. I have a wife and children and must protect them.
As far as my training I have trained for 11 years in traditional Okinawan Karate. We train as realistically as possible to be ready when the time arises. Hope that answers your questions

It certainly answers some… but not what is being asked, nor what you think you're saying…

Look, to be blunt, there's some pretty big issues coming through here… I'm not sure I should really bring them up publicly, but suffice to say that very little of what you wrote here is correct or realistic… although I do get that you are completely sincere as you say it.

 

[Buka]

To the original OP, or at least as I interpreted it.

Are we talking about the front two knuckles of a common punch? If so - it might be the most under emphasized, and at the same time, most important aspect of striking that is, or is not, taught today.

 

[Koshiki]

It does seem that there is a very common tendency to completely forget that in nearly all styles with which I at least am familiar, the standard punch is a pretty small surface strike. If you're taking a lot of the impact with the larger surface of your fingers, it doesn't feel good.

I blame much of this on gloved training. Some people have been slammed hard with gloved fists for years, but have never taken a solid hit from a bare fist. That inch or so of firm pillow makes a biiiiig difference.

I draw the analogy between getting hit with one of those padded "boffers" some people use, and taking a similar whack with a length of unpadded PVC piping. One is a toy we trust children to smack each other in the head with, one is a potentially lethal weapon.

EDIT: More on topic, I stay away from finger tip type strikes and urge caution to others, (exceptions being raking motions), but I do like one-knuckle punches, assuming they are of the swatting rather than thrusting motion, as well as thumb-knuckle strikes.

I tend to opt for those, as has been mentioned, when motion is limited, the rest of the time preferring the more solid closed fist, palms, knife edge, elbow, shoulder type arm strikes.