we were also discouraged against striking with that area. I'm trying in my head to think of a way in which that move would be more economical than say, a fak sau.
That is exactly what we use in leopard, crane and snake in hung gar. Leopard use it with the thumb on the side of the hand rather than tucked in...
this is where we would strike someotherguy I thought in the second/1st set of wing chun there is a down ward block that uses the wrist
To me, that just doesn't look like a good idea. Look at this image of the bone structure of the wrist You can see that in that the wrist is made up of a collection of inter-conencted bones that allow for a wide range of motions of the hand and the fingers. But like the shoulder, this flexibility of movement also makes the joint susceptible to breakage or dislocation. Also note how only the radius is aligned with the bones of the hand with the ulna (on the right) being in a position that allows flexibility of the wrist but is going to also make it open to damage of badly used. Now look at these images, of the wrist in the position that you describe During the strike you are hitting using the joint itself, which is exposed and extended. To me, there is a high risk of dislocation, breaking those small bones, and f**king your wrist up in the process If you use the palm side of the hand in the strike then it looks like things are different. In the picture above you can see how the curve of the radius is not symmetrical. When you open the palm up, the bones of the hand nestle into this dish shape, become more compact, and are much closer to the ulna...they are also cushioned by the musculature of the palm. All this should allow a direct transfer of energy along the forearm and the point of impact is no longer the joint of the wrist itself. I could be wrong, but someone would have to explain to me why these seemingly effective biomechanical positions should be shunned in favour of positions that could cause you serious injury. Get yourself one of those plastic anatomical skeletons and you can mess around with the alignment of bones etc and see what makes sense to you
We do strike with that area. However... the area we use to strike is right around the tip of the ulna and radius. We are expressly taught to avoid striking with the wrist due to risk of injury. And the wrist joint... well, if that breaks, your arm is about as useful as limp spaghetti...
This is a fully bent wrist: There is no way that you can strike forwards with the tip of the ulna and radius, even if you wanted to (which would be a bad idea given the shape of this end of the bone) Looking at the knee http://img464.imageshack.us/img464/6370/knee6lp.jpg I think that if you had to use a knee, then you'd want to strike where the arrow is and with the knee bent to put the joint into its most compact biomechanical shape. Anywhere else and you risk facturing the kneecap, dislocation, or tearing ligaments and tendons. Impact at this point also transmits the force through the strongest bone (the femur) through its thickest point around the knee, and into the tibia and fibula. I don't think there are going to be any secrets or many exceptions. It's all going to come down to bone thickness and alignment to deal with forces.
Chow Gar uses the base-knuckle of the thumb a fair bit as in this cool picture. Say you palm strike and overshoot the guy's face, you use this tech to come back and catch him behind the ear or whatever. We specifically train an attack to the elbow's funny bone using it, too. It's quite versatile. Chow Gar also uses this one and the applications sound the same as Hapkido. Lots of uses. I don't understand the original question, though. Which part of the wrist? Rgds, David
Yes, actually there are several ways strike in such a way. It's all about learning how to strike with it and where to strike with it. It's all about the mantis hand strikes...
I think this was the question. I think it comes down to where you are going to strike but I have always been taught if you are going to use it then you should expect the pain of your strike. I guess thats why we used to do the wrist press up thing. I found it very usefull in close. But then you can take this to another level why strike with the phoenix eye as this is just a finger on its own. It comes down to it horse for courses. Why put your hand through a break or board or tiles. Ok it shows technique of power but is you hand designed to chop through a brick. The anwser is No but we still do it.
Hey cool, I provided an xray of the bent wrist to show you why your description was not possible, but if you have a different wrist morphology to other humans then good luck with those techniques. Maybe you could use your little-finger and testicles as offensive weapons too.
We were taught to break boards with our wrists. The hand is bent at about 90 degrees and you strike with the end of the forearm, they called it a "chicken wrist" strike.
Ahh, yes, the dismissal. Go learn some Mantis techniques and come back in a couple of years. Then we can talk. Maybe we can even make a referral or two to a good Mantis instructor who can explain the way in which this part of the body can be used to strike areas such as the throat. But hey, the x-ray says it all, right? I think NOT. Do you even study a style which utilizes wrist area strikes? Sounds to me like you don't. In which case I'll send you a buck so you can buy a clue.
I thought the x-rays were cool . I used to do bouncing pushups on the backs of my hands and the ends of the arm bones. That was after watching Jackie Chan do it in a film... Fun! Ragingbuddha, then you really meant the thumb, not the wrist? Rgds, David
The X-Ray may have been "cool", but it hardly supports the position that "striking with a mantis strike is going to break your wrist" is an *absolute*.
Then here's another one: Boxer's Fracture. Note swelling over dorsal aspect of right hand, most pronounced below the small finger. It is the result of a fracture to the fifth metacarpal (bone below small finger), usually associated with striking an object with a closed fist. X-ray demonstrates fracture of distal right metacarpal. This is a fairly common injury seen in A&E departments across the world. Clearly demonstrating that punching with a closed fist is a bad idea. I actually disagree with that conclusion, and I suspect so do many others on the forum. Just because something is wrapped up in scientific terminology and based on facts, doesn't neccessarily make the interpretation correct. As there are and have been thousands of people across the world studying CMAs that involve striking with the wrist, I think that somebody would have noticed a pattern in injuries to the wrist by now and modified the technique.
Let's look at what I actually said: At no point did I said it was an absolute that these techniques would break your wrist, merely that it was a possibility and that other positionings of the wrist reduce this possibility. I could punch with a bent wrist if I wanted to...it wouldn't mean that my wrist would definitely break when I hit someone, but it would be a distinct possibility that I could avoid if I simply trained to punch with the wrist in a better position. You can train your wrist to make strikes with the position you've described, you can train yourself to kick with the shin as the point of impact etc - but that doesn't mean that the human anatomy changes and that weak orientations of bones become strong ones. I tried to explain why, mechanically, there are better ways of hitting someone, but you just dismissed it saying "it's all about the mantis hand strikes". To me, it doesn't actually matter what style is teaching this if i can't see how it makes sense given the human anatomy. I don't mean to insult you or the style/system that you practice...someone asked about wrist strikes and I felt that the question intrinsically demanded a biomechanical approach. If someone here has expertise in this area then I'd love to hear their comments. The xrays also showed that, contrary to your statement, it is not possible for a human being to hit forwards with the tip of the ulna and radius. You could hit with these parts if the wrist was going sideways, or if you decided to make a diagonal impact directly onto the joint itself...and I've already explained why I think these kinds of strikes are a bad idea for your body. Striking with the palm or the side of the hand is not the same as striking with the wrist joint. those demos that involve chopping through boards/bricks with the hand do not use the wrist joint (look at the xray and you can see how vulnerable the ulna would be if they did), they use the side of the hand. All you showed is that if you punch with a closed fist, and the wrist is poorly aligned, then you are going to break your metacarpals...something that is hardly a new discovery. You can see in the xray that he took all the force on one knuckle and at an angle. Jack Dempsey argued: Clearly, as should have been obvious, there is more to punching than just throwing any old fist at a target. Some orientations will increase the chance of you breaking metacarpals, your thumb, your wrist, or your ulna. In the same way, I tried to look at how different orientations and impact points on the wrist, or through the wrist joint, would have different possible results for injuries. You think? I guess you're right, noone ever criticises certain style for having impractical techniques that risk injury, and every style willingly accepts criticism and adapts accordingly. Noone ever simply follows a style live a slave because it is "traditional" and "deadly". It seems that there is no point in any of us using our own common sense...we should just be spoon fed the answers.
I was told that some wing chun schools use the fook sao as a wrist strike. I always thought it seemed pointless to practise something with such limited application when basic tools such as palm, fist, elbow etc are higher percentage. I dare say that in older times people had more time to develop such strikes, and it may have been worth it. Someotherguy, I find it funny that you are so dismissive of the wrist strike (despite many people saying they use it, including for board breaking) based on the fact that it has small bones! My fist has quite small bones but I've never broken one that I know of yet! A punch doesn't break your hand because of the structure you hold your hand in, and on top of that if you look at slo-mo pics or footage of someone breaking a board or whatever you will see astonishing split-second deformation of the hand on impact. Although I don't use wrist strikes as I said, I don't see why they are so different from the fist, and fair play to anybody who wants to waste enough time to train them! Plus, many martial artists do have many many hairline fractures and tiny compound fractures from repetitive impact. Your beloved X-rays of many MAists' hands and wrists have shown that often these fuse back together in different (stronger) ways, develop deformed cushions of extra cartilege, or don't fix up at all... so there would seem to be ways of conditioning wrists whether recommendable or not. And in addition, repetitive impact stress causes any bones to get denser, so there's another way the wrist could condition. And, while we're at it, do you use finger strikes? Personally I don't because again I don't really see the point and I don't have time to train them up to the arthritic level of hardness required to make a half-way dangerous strike, but I appreciate it has been done by many people. Didn't you know biu jee is the lethal form? And didn't you know that if you don't train your biu in buckets of stones and sand your finger strikes will be about as effective as slapping someone with a damp cloth!?
