Heavy Slaps and Open Palm Strikes

[Chris McKinley]

It's not really that hard to knock somebody out with palm strikes. Given their relative safety as an additional positive factor, they just make sense, especially for the non-sport guy. I'm curious if anybody might want to chime in on the six reasons I gave for palm strikes previously....whether you agree or disagree, and why. Anyone care to respond?

[taoistfist]

1) A palm strike can hit with enough power to do the job.

hell yeah.

2) A palm strike is many times more versatile in the kinds of targets it can safely strike.

yes almost true. i know i can can hit with a fist to anywhere i want to hit without hurting my hand. the difference is where you want to hit. teeth, elbow head on no. but these aren't targets i would like to strike anyways.

3) A palm strike does not generally provide significant risk of injury to the striking hand, regardless of target, whereas the unprotected fist is especially subject to such risk, especially if the head is the target.

as said above. i think for myself the only risk are the teeth.. anywhere else on the head is fair game for me.

4) If I need "shotgun" stopping power, I've still got elbows and knees, which hit much harder than any fist and without nearly the risk of injury.

meh. it all depends on how you use any "weapon" and in these case it can really depend on distance as opposed to how much harder you can hit with your elbow/knees. you may also decide to hit somewhere that your elbow can't reach easily.

5) Empty hand skills are just for buying time until you can present your own weapon. If you injure your hand by punching, you may not be able to present/use your own weapon to save your life or your loved ones. You may not be able to use environmental weapons of opportunity or climb fences/trees as necessary for escape.

not true. who says you will always want to use a weapon. if i have a drunk idiot who is punchin on me or someone else maybe i just want to knock him out or beak something to show him not to be so stupid. also once you bring weapons into the equation it can easily become alot more trouble for you legally. not a good idea. it becomes harder to feed or protect your family from jail too.
i have personally stopped someone slashing at me(and this guy knew how to fight) without using a weapon of my own. just my empty hands.

6) If you injure your hand punching, you may not be able to access car keys/cell phone from your pocket, you may not be able to operate a vehicle safely to escape, you may not be able to correctly punch in the numbers on a phone, you may not be able to access/apply first-aid for yourself, your loves ones or your assailant as necessary, which may result in an otherwise unnecessary death.

so 3-6 all have the hurting your hand thing in them, have you hurt yourself using a fist before? at any rate of course there is the possiblity of hurting your hand with a fist but maybe for some people there is more of a possibility of them getting hurt by the other guy by using the palm.
i don't have a problem either way as i said earlier. i love using the palm. but i can also use my fist on the head/skull and not have any problems. myself and some others used to regularly knock this one idiot out in class all the time with open hand stuff.

[bailewen]

On the thing about hurting your hand....

I don't remember where I heard this first but it made sense to me: Generally speaking, after a fight, the guy with the busted up fist came away looking waaaay better than the guy he busted his fist on.

So I'm not really worried about that part.

[Bao]

On the thing about hurting your hand....
I don't remember where I heard this first but it made sense to me: Generally speaking, after a fight, the guy with the busted up fist came away looking waaaay better than the guy he busted his fist on.
So I'm not really worried about that part.

Well, I guess that's a good attitude. If you are afraid of hurting your hand, you might restrain yourself from giving your best shot.

[Walk the Torque]

Irregardless of conditioning, palms can leave fingers vulnerable and fists can leave knuckles vulnerable.

One of my greatest reservations about using palm strikes is that the fingers are more vulnerable to damage if caught at an awkward angle. However, the risk to reward ratio has the pros far outweighing the cons. This results in me using palms for about 85% of hand techniques.
Having said that though, I have grown into using a lot of fists in similar ways to my palms; with hammer fists on vertical, horizontal, and diagonal planes. I guess its not what you use but how you use it that counts.

The thing I really like and utilize is the ability to quickly change from pulls, hooks, or use of forearms in general stand up grappling techniques to palm strikes and back again. Also, palms just seem to lend themselves well to circular/elliptical attacks, especially from short distances.

So in answer to Ian's question; Yeah, I use palms much more than "punches", but this preference is based on usability when close in; i.e. to-ing and fro-ing from grappling/wrapping to striking.

Why not so much in MMA? duno

[Andy_S]

Alright Chris, I'll bite.

1) A palm strike can hit with enough power to do the job.

What job? A small child against a heavyweight boxer? I don't buy into these "this'll be enough to drop anyone" arguments, which come across more like sales pitches to me.

2) A palm strike is many times more versatile in the kinds of targets it can safely strike.

Do you mean palm, or edge of hand, or back of hand, or what?

I would say that the verstaility of a palm is that you can strike than immediately shear or grab without withdrawing. Not quite the same as palm strike, but definitely a better tactic than closed fist.

3) A palm strike does not generally provide significant risk of injury to the striking hand, regardless of target, whereas the unprotected fist is especially subject to such risk, especially if the head is the target.

Right on, fully 100% agree. (But I would: I have a missing knuckle on my fight hand after a horizontal-fist hook against a hard target....)

I can't agree with Omar: There was even a famous incident where Tyson broke an metacarpal thumping some chap outside a night club in his glory days. For Iron Mike, this was not a life threatening situtaion, but if you break a bone early in the fight and the naughty boys are still coming at you, you have just take one of your own key weapons out of the fight. (ie a hand). Perhaps in non-lethal situations (ie 90 percent of them) this holds true, but in a very nasty situation, it is not a good idea.

4) If I need "shotgun" stopping power, I've still got elbows and knees, which hit much harder than any fist and without nearly the risk of injury.

100% agree. IHMO, the weaknesss of most sparring regimens is that they work at arm's length and neglect these weapons which (with the head, and to a lesser extent, the hip) are the real stoppers" - much more so than fists or feet.

About a decade ago, a very large weight lifter who had been watching me sparring (kickboxing, essentially) said afterwards, "Nice - but do you think anything you did would really have stopped a big, determined attack?" THAT made me think: It was a very sound comment which has stayed with me ever since, and which I could pose to 90 percent of MA sparring situations.

The problem with the lethality of knees, elbows and heads is how to spar or drill them without damage to training partners. Even in MT, they rarely spar all out (there is a lot of knee-specific sparring though), and, in fact, rarely use the elbow even in competition due to its inherent danger.

But absolutely: These are the big guns.

Elbows, I find, work better with open hand than closed fist. You can grab and pull with open hand, and your arm is more relaxed, and you can mix slaps and elbows very nicely in combos.

5) Empty hand skills are just for buying time until you can present your own weapon. If you injure your hand by punching, you may not be able to present/use your own weapon to save your life or your loved ones. You may not be able to use environmental weapons of opportunity or climb fences/trees as necessary for escape.

I don't habitually carry a weapon so I beg to differ. MA skills are for self-defense, yes: I don't own a firearm, don't live in a country that permits it, and so can't really comment on this. But I would say most times I have rucked it has been pretty low level: I would not have been justified in upgrading the tension of the situation by drawing any kind of weapon. The only time my life was in danger (confronted by a group of armed soldiers pointing automatic weapons at me), had I escalated the situation I would almost certainly have been shot dead.

OTOH, if I lived in a truly dangerous area, or was in a truly dangerous situation, then, yes, this makes perfect sense.

6) If you injure your hand punching, you may not be able to access car keys/cell phone from your pocket, you may not be able to operate a vehicle safely to escape, you may not be able to correctly punch in the numbers on a phone, you may not be able to access/apply first-aid for yourself, your loves ones or your assailant as necessary, which may result in an otherwise unnecessary death.

Sure. But this is essentially the same point as (3) above.

[Darth Rock&Roll]

When I'm hitting the bag I alternate between palm strikes and fists.

me too

[Ian]

I'm told that Tiny used to always say that he'd rather be punched than slapped by someone who knew what they were doing. After being iron palm slapped enough times by my Sifu, I'm inclined to agree.

If you're gonna get slugged, you wanna get slugged in a stupendous fistfight, maybe crashing through the saloon doors or somersaulting onto a conveniently-placed table, with nothing to show for it but a becoming bruise on your bronzed cheek as you embrace your frontier bride.

You don't want to get slapped like a bitch. Also being slapped hurts more.

[Chris McKinley]

Excellent...thanks, Andy.

I'm realizing that it's important maybe to preface what I'm putting out there by stating that I'm coming at it from a professional mindset, not one typical of the average sport fighter or pub brawler. That does change things, as I'll explain.

RE: "What job? A small child against a heavyweight boxer?". Fair enough question. How about an adult male against an armed adult male. I've used it that way as a KO. Granted, I'm not talking about pattycake slaps, to be sure.

RE: "Do you mean palm, or edge of hand, or back of hand, or what?". I mean the palm. The edge of the hand, or more accurately, the bottom outer corner of the palm can be used similarly, but I would never hit anyone with the back of my hand....way too easy to snap the carpals like twigs.

RE: "Elbows, I find, work better with open hand than closed fist. You can grab and pull with open hand, and your arm is more relaxed, and you can mix slaps and elbows very nicely in combos.". Agreed. Brilliantly easy, in fact. I demoed this advantage to some of our Muay Thai training brothers at the MMA gym where I used to teach. I had explained to them that, as a Bagua teacher, I really liked Muay Thai because of the knees and elbows. They didn't realize my stuff used those much, so we played a little. Afterward, they were mentioning that I was more fluid and facile with the elbows than they were, and were wondering where that comes from in my art. I explained how in Bagua, we really don't have a hard distinction between striking and grappling, and how each can flow right into/become the other. Keeping the hand from tensing into a fist is key to that, IMO.

RE: "I don't habitually carry a weapon so I beg to differ", and "But I would say most times I have rucked it has been pretty low level: I would not have been justified in upgrading the tension of the situation by drawing any kind of weapon.". Ah, now here's where it matters about the professional mindset I mentioned before. You see, I believe that nearly all fights where a weapon is not justified in self-defense can be completely avoided. Not all, but nearly all. With a professional mindset, I'm not interested in engaging in fights where I'm not truly forced to defend myself or a protective charge. In situations where I am forced to do that, a weapon is now justified, because the only way to force me into it is to physically threaten me with serious bodily harm or death and to prevent my escape otherwise. The situations where those criteria are actually met are vanishingly rare, which is why I stated that most fights can be completely avoided.

However, situations in which those criteria are met automatically justify the use of weapons and also of lethal force, legally speaking. Since I train for those situations, and because I employ a mindset appropriate to them, for me, empty hand skills are a stop-gap/first response measure to buy time either to escape or to present a weapon of my own. Frankly, many situations can be immediately de-escalated into a total cessation of hostilities with no further harm merely by presenting a weapon. It's important to note, though, that that is simply a common side effect, and not anything that can be assumed or depended upon.

The idea of choosing to remain unarmed in circumstances where lethal force is justified is pure Darwinian stupidity to me. For anything less than those circumstances, I won't be fighting anyway, so it doesn't really matter whether I'm armed or not. Still, there are possible situations in which one could find themselves unarmed and yet still faced with a serious assault, so one's empty hand skills do need to be sufficient to resolve even a lethal encounter if necessary.

RE: "Sure. But this is essentially the same point as (3) above.". Yes, it's an extension of it, but it's something that almost always goes overlooked by civilians, even those who are trained fighters. The ability to use man-made items and equipment of various kinds can be essential to survival in real assaults, and hand injuries such as those that can easily happen from using punches to the skull can diminish that capability enough to stall/prevent proper use of such equipment in an urgent situation. Most trained punchers IME don't even consider that consequence.

[JusticeZero]

I believe that nearly all fights where a weapon is not justified in self-defense can be completely avoided. Not all, but nearly all.
..I'm not interested in engaging in fights where I'm not truly forced to defend myself or a protective charge.
..the only way to force me into it is to physically threaten me with serious bodily harm or death and to prevent my escape otherwise.
..for me, empty hand skills are a stop-gap/first response measure to buy time either to escape or to present a weapon of my own. Frankly, many situations can be immediately de-escalated into a total cessation of hostilities with no further harm merely by presenting a weapon.
..to remain unarmed in circumstances where lethal force is justified is.. stupidity to me. For anything less.. I won't be fighting anyway

I'm having a difficult time reconciling some of your points here with each other, but I suspect it is because we are operating from different models of an attack.

I'm not entirely certain what model YOU are working from; it seems to be one in which combat follows negotiation. My model lacka a negotiation phase, and presumes escape to be at the outset of the attack a low percentage option. It's likely an interesting topic in and of itself, though.

[Chris McKinley]

I'm not assuming either way, JZ. Sometimes hostilities occur as a result of surprise assault, sometimes they don't.

[Andy_S]

SNIP
Ah, now here's where it matters about the professional mindset I mentioned before. You see, I believe that nearly all fights where a weapon is not justified in self-defense can be completely avoided. Not all, but nearly all. With a professional mindset, I'm not interested in engaging in fights where I'm not truly forced to defend myself or a protective charge.
SNIP

LOL, you have me bang to rights.

My little "situations" could mostly have been avoided, yes. OTOH, the, er, contesting parties were equally as up for it as I was...

Still, you are quite right. As one grows up, one mellows, but in one's youth, you know...

[bailewen]

I can't agree with Omar: There was even a famous incident where Tyson broke an metacarpal thumping some chap outside a night club in his glory days. For Iron Mike, this was not a life threatening situtaion, but if you break a bone early in the fight and the naughty boys are still coming at you, you have just take one of your own key weapons out of the fight. (ie a hand). Perhaps in non-lethal situations (ie 90 percent of them) this holds true, but in a very nasty situation, it is not a good idea.

Two things about that. (and I remember that incident when it was in the news)

1. Iron Mike's hand was broke. How do you suppose the other dudes face looked?

2. Plenty of guys can finish a fight with a broken hand. It tends not to hurt really that much until after the fight it over. I know of plenty of Judo guys who broke fingers early on in a tournament and it didn't stop them. I've injured my hand bare knuckle sparring but that too didn't really slow my down until at least 20 minutes after the injury occured. It swelled up like hell that evening but at the time I was just like, "fuck man ...I totally didn't block that right..." It took like another 20 minutes of sparring before I was like, "Dude, I think I hurt my hand. Let's knock off for today."

I have talked to other guys who have injured hands in real fights and they all had similar stories. "What's up with your hand dude?" (his hand was all wrapped up).

He answers, "Oh I got into a fight last night and had to take out these two dudes."

[klonk]

About hand damage when using the front fist... Yes, it can happen; it has happened to me.

One answer is to try not to hit above the chin line. The jaw is an articulated bone and has substantial give to it, and the neck is only bony in the back. Shots to the ribs and belly don't break hands as a rule. So, basically, the problem is likely to occur only when you hit the skull.

If you are going to use the front fist, I would suggest you avoid Napoleonic tactics; don't hit the bony parts.

The time I sheared a knuckle, it was because my timing was off. The other fellow had started to duck, so my straight right caught him between the eyes instead of on the chin. (He was KTFO.)

Slaps and palms are well and good, and far less likely to damage your hand, but there are some angles they do not address very well. Some people (Including W.E. Fairbairn) have suggested never using the front fist, because of the chance of breaking your hand, but that seems to me to eliminate a whole category of useful attacks. It's a tradeoff; use your knuckles or lose a number of attacking options.

[Andy_S]

Omar:

No argument with your statements - when I sheared my knuckle it was not that painful either at the time (felt a bit nauseous, though) or afterward, and there are plenty of accounts of 18th and 19th century prizefighters fighting on with broken hands - but if one has a choice between cracking someone with a weapon that may break, or cracking him with a weapon that probably won't, what is the best option?