How To Block in Kempo Karate

Video Transcript

"We learned how to stand, now lets do some blocks. In my style, we teach blocks first before we teach you how to punch. This is because karate is a defensive art. Let's go back into our training stance, Kiba-dachi. If you remember, that is your horse stance. You have your knees bent. You have you hands in chamber ready position and your feet should be pointing straight ahead. They are not going outward, like this, because then you're really off-balance. You want to have your feet pointing straight ahead so that your center of gravity is going straight down into the earth. After about a minute, you are going to feel it in your legs. The first block, that we teach, is an upward block or Age-uke, a rising block. Starting with your right hand, you want to bring it across your center line. Your center line is an imaginary line that cuts you in half separating your left from your right side of your body. From here, you just want your arm to rise straight up. You want it to stop slightly above your eye. You should still be able to see your arm in your field of vision when looking straight ahead. It should be slightly angled. This way if someone is coming down with a downward chop and you block it then it will slide off. If you have your arm too straight up and down, the force of the strike is going to come down right over your bone and possibly break it, unless you have really big arms. Why risk doing that, when you can use angular momentum to deflect it. The big question is why I am holding my hand way back here. I've got myself completely open. The traditional meaning behind this is that no one would fight with one hand out and one hand back knowing that they are completely open. If your opponent is punching and he throws a punch, you deflect it. As you grab it, you pull them in. With the upward block, like if you come down, not only just blocking here but another meaning behind this is that if you just do a punch, any kind of punch; you come like this and you break it. The movements are the same. If I kept going, with my hand in the back, my opponents arm would be broken in half along the bone. Just twist and ______ and you feel that too. You know, there is a lot of grappling that is contained in these basic blocks. So that was the upward block."