How To Do a Spear Hand in Kempo Karate

Video Transcript

"When you're coming with the other one, same thing, you're always guarding your upper body. You can even go low - not to the middle - because the body is too solid of a target for a snapping strike to penetrate. You want to snap the smaller targets or to the groin, because it's very, very tender. Wherever there are a lot of nerves, you can hit with strikes. You may be able to do it with the solar plexus, but a more effective hand technique to go to the solar plexus, speed wise, is the Nuke Tear Spearhand. Now with this one you want to strengthen your fingers, and the way you strengthen your fingers is just by doing fingertip pushups and you just practice. You want to keep them tightly together. You don't want them so much like this, even though you are striking with the longest finger. By curling them slightly inwards and having them kind of stack each other it reinforces it. It's kind of like when you're building a tower and you have reinforced beams holding it up. This also helps penetrate anybody's guard and you can get right in there to the solar plexus. Whenever you punch or you strike, you want to be very relaxed, and tense up at the end. That's how you get your speed, because if you're tense the whole time, it's very robotic and you don't generate as much power. You can also go low. You can go low like this or you can go to the throat like so. Why not like this? Well, if somebody's got their chin down, you can't get through it, but you can easily get through if you flatten it out. From here you also have, remember, the sword hand block. The strike - it's the same movement - the exact same movement. You can also do it from a back stance, facing your opponent, coming out. Now if I can show you a practical application to this sword hand strike. Very slowly, the opponent punches you. You block here, you want to grab, and you rotate. You're hitting some pressure points. You can feel those pressure points right there. And then you come in and you step in like so - bam! Now notice I'm not really dropping too low. He's really tall. If I drop too low I'm off balance and all he has to move his foot and I might go. You want to stay, and it's quicker this way. Thank you. So, this actually means something. Even though it's open hand, there's about three or four pressure points around the elbow that you can hold onto. And that way, if they're going to try to fight, if stunning them there doesn't do any good, at least you've got them under control right there."