In the kata it's a grab followed by a low side kick. Usually interpreted as grabbing an attacker's hand then stomping on their knee joint.
because it's a wide swinging circular movement. using the hand as a target helps control it. we do the same with roundhouse elbows. for application it isn't necessarily at the same height. heel kick to the leg and the other hand used for unbalancing high (for example grabbing the head) is one application. the crescent kick can also be used as an upwards roundhouse (the usual one being nearer to horizontal than vertical). and the nakayama bunkai is atrocious sometimes...
I was wondering why they slap their own hand in blade's class when doing this kata... seems like if this is the bunkai, your hand and foot are nowhere near each other? My suspicion was that they do it just to make a cool sounding noise...
WTF?? :hat: How?? haha yeah! As an aside when looking at the kata online the first few vids contained zero slapping of the hand. Seems like it aint really needed at all?
i think moosey was referring to the bit at 0:34 (ie before you edited). in any case one shouldn't read too much into the bunkai of the really old shoto films. it's pretty much common (folk) knowledge that they didn't bother too much with it in funakoshi's dojo back in the day, and that it kinda stuck. that was also the era of the beginning of shotokan competition kumite, aka screw the kata, let's punch the snot out of each other
It's one of those things that seems to be done for effect , kicking the hand makes a nice noise , as does an elbow , stamping is quite popular in some circles as well. I just see it as a device to ensure i don't kick/strike short.
by putting your hand in the why so you don't spin around with the follow through (interestingly some kung fu styles train the basic crescent kick with the hand as target but do in fact follow through and spin a bit). it just so happens that with the elbow at least it makes for a nifty "pull head into elbow" app. weird. almost all mikazuki geri in karate are trained with the hand as focus point. there are akso however leg swings here and there that are usually done with a crescent kick like motion. bassai dai has two or three, if memory serves, heian sandan has three, and godan has one.
Yeah OK, but I'm refering (in that post) to the bit at 0:46/7 which is the actual bit in the kata where they (some) kick the hand... I'm not convinced that putting your hand in the way of the kick in the kata is part of any bunkai application... yet. Do you really buy into the idea that it's to control the kick? Because that seems a bit off to me edit = fair enough on the last point after reading your last post (if your cresent kick follows that type of arch)
The accepted wisdom for bunkai is that you're pulling your opponent into the attack or that you're holding them in place and hitting them.
Can't see any way that bunkai relates to the slapping of the hand in the kata. I can just about suspend my disbelief for fish's explanation (although the arch of the cresent kick as I learn't it wouldn't necessitate that measure).. what do you reckon?
it's quite simple. if you try to stop the kick through muscular action, you unbalance yourself and lose your forwards momentum (and you deserve to get your supporting leg broken by a roundhouse kick while you stand there like a tool with your leg in the air trying not to fall down). stopping it with your hand, like it's done in karate, enables you to drop the leg straight down while still projecting your weight forwards. in bassai dai, you parry, then kick, then land with an elbow strike. it's pretty straighforwards (excluding the subsequent movements which have had the crap abstracted out of them and now make no sense to anyone). project your hand to parry or unbalance. kick the front leg (heel kick, stomp, roundhouse, whatever floats your boat), try to elbow the guy when you put your foot down. now if only i had a minion with whom to make another video...
Honestly ? I think when you perform the kata kicking/strikng the hand is part of the performance (i've always been specifically told that the foot/elbow strikes the hand not the other way round). For bunkai i go with the grab and hit version.
Well I just experimented with kicking my out stretched hand in the air with a cresent kick (glad no one saw that). Seems like the only way it (the hand slap) would make sense is if I was holding someones shoulder and then cresent kicking them in the face (the downswing of the kick catching my hand incidentally as there is no actual body there to hold)... which is a ridiculous tactic IMO :hammer: Soooo... Is it just the case that the bunkai is semi-retarded?
Sorry I missed this post before. I've been writing while others have been posting instead of being patient I'd go with everthing you said here.
