Sunday, October 14, 2018

Conditioning the Spear Hand


 
 

Conditioning the Spear Hand is not something I have heard come up before.

 

I do remember Charles Murray describing a training device he experienced in Agena Okinawa back about `1972.

 

He described how being struck by the Shimabuku Shinso, was extremely painful.


He described the nature of the hand formation of Shinso was more the fingers all being the same length. And that his fingers were not so structured Shinso had him hold his fingers such as they would all strike at the same time.

 

Charles also described a Makiwara
 (or something for striking with the spear hand)
As a box on the wall, a frame with a piece of tire inner-tube stretched across it.
So you would strike into the rubber covering to condition spear hand strikes.

 

I have never seen this in the States,
nor heard of anyone doing serious Spear Hand conditioning.
Of course that does not mean it doesn’t exist, just I haven’t heard of it.

 

On the other hand I just saw this photo of Miyagi Sensei
Observing his students conditioning their Spear Hand strikes a different way.

 

Bundled Bamboo for Spear Hand practice.

Miyagi Sensei looks on as students practice.

2 comments:

Victor Smith said...

Training youth and mature adults, such was not where I was concerned. i was not focused on use of the Spear hand for them. However it is interesting to see who is doing so. I had a different way to use the spear hand for other things.

Victor Smith said...

Charles H. Murray

One night at the Agenda dojo and home of Shimabuku Tatsuo Sensei, after the dojo closed for the night, a bunch of us were sitting around talking and drinking the tea that Sensei's wife put out for us.

During the conversation, Shinsho, Sensei Shimabuku's youngest son, told a story of a time that a gang of guys tried to rob him. He said when they confronted him he took a kind of cat stance and held his nukite hand in front of him and told them that he would kill the first one to attack him.

When he did this I smiled and he asked why I was smiling. I told him I didn't think anyone could kill someone with one strike. He then nukite'd me in the shoulder and then in the upper part of my leg.

Result was both went numb. He practiced nukite'ing that box every day to train his fingers and hands.