Knife Hand Strike in Shorin-Ryu Karate

Series Summary

The martial arts enjoy a long history as a way of fighting and self-defense, a philosophy, and a spiritual tradition of understanding the world around us. They are therefore abundant with forms, strikes, blocks, kicks, movements, and positions, all of which imply some idea about the nature of the body, the condition of society, and the essence of humanity. One of the many branches of martial arts, karate is widely held to have originated in Okinawa, just like the “Karate Kid” told you. It is the form of the “empty hand,” with no weapons but mind, body, and spirit. Over the years, karate has drawn on many influences, both technical and cultural, that make it what it is today.

In this free martial arts training video clip series, learn advanced Shorin-Ryu style karate techniques, including kicks and punches, karate stances, sweeps, defenses, and other karate moves. Take an online martial arts class from our karate teacher, and learn advanced karate kata at home.

Video Transcript

" How are you doing? My name is Sensei Qaeem and on behalf of Expert Village, I’ll be demonstrating Shorin-Ryu karate. In this segment, we’re going to be demonstrating the knife hand strike, which in Japanese is shuto uchi. Shuto uchi is simply is spear hand. When you are demonstrating the spear hand, you want to be in the back stance. Make sure you are in a comfortable stance. What you are going to do, you are going to just strike. Your hand is going to be just like a spearhead and you are going to strike. When you strike, you want to strike towards something that is soft on the person’s body. For instance, their neck, or their nose or their eyes. I’m going to bring my partner here Mohammed. I’m going to demonstrate on Mohammed where you want to strike when doing this knife hand strike. Mohammed is going to get into his fighting stance. I’m going to get into my fighting stance, and just like I said before, when you are going to strike, you are going to strike at the neck. You are going to strike at his Adams Apple; you can strike at his eyes. You strike right here between his nose is a bone. Now make sure you tuck your fingers in because you have to make your hands real tight. That’s the only way this move is going to be effective. Strike. Notice that when I’m stepping forward and I’m striking, I’m stepping sideways. You want to get out of his aim of attack. On behalf of expervillage.com, I want to say thank you."