example, there are dozens of hand striking techniques that you might attempt including fore-fist punches, standing- fist punches, sword-hand strikes, palm-heel strikes, hammer fist blows, back fist strikes, wrist strikes, swing strikes, uppercuts, and single knuckle strikes, to name a few. Unless you have substantial skills, however, it is dangerous to hit a solid target with your closed fist. If your alignment is off, you will break your hand and/or damage your wrist. Wilder has broken his hand three times; it’s not all that hard to do in a fight.
If you want to become a skilled fighter, you will need to study a martial art. Despite what we will cover here, there’s really no substitute for hands-on experience. Since striking can be an excellent tactic, albeit one that takes a fair amount of skill to avoid hurting yourself while attempting to do it, we’ll cover a small number of strikes that are relatively safe to perform yet powerful enough to end a fight if you do them correctly.
Before we begin, however, it is important to cover a few overarching principles surrounding striking in general. No matter how skilled you are (or are not), strikes work best when you catch your opponent by surprise, control distance and direction of your blow, relax until the moment of contact, and strike ferociously and repeatedly until the conflict is over.
• Surprise. As with any fighting application, if the other guy doesn’t see it coming you’re much more likely to be successful. Be careful not to telegraph your blows; you give your adversary a huge advantage whenever you do. Each punch should suddenly explode from wherever your starting point is into your target as fast as possible with no warning. Avoid cocking your arm back, taking a sudden breath, tensing your neck, shoulders, or arms, widening your eyes, grinning, grimacing, or making any other inappropriate or unnecessary movement before each blow. The same thing applies to elbow strikes, kicks, and knee strikes as well. If you train in martial arts, practice in front of a mirror can help eliminate these tells. Videotaping training sessions can also be a great way to objectively evaluate your performance and look for areas for improvement.
• Distance. Ensure that you are close enough to strike before you throw a blow. That’s often closer than you’d naturally think. If you have to roll your shoulder or lean forward, you are too far away. Whenever you have to stretch to reach the other guy, your alignment will be off, your blow will be slower, and your power will be significantly reduced. Worse still, it will be easy for your adversary to disrupt your balance and drive you into the ground. Furthermore, if you lock your elbow to get a few extra inches of reach, you can damage the joint as well. Once you are in range, strike directly at the target covering the shortest distance possible. Keep your elbow pointed downward and your arm as close to your side as possible. Hook punches, haymakers, and other wide-swinging blows take longer to reach your target than straight punches. They are much easier to spot, hence easier to block or avoid as well. The same thing applies for kicks. Unless you are skilled enough to disguise your intent, roundhouse and hook kicks are easier to block than more direct applications such as front kicks or joint kicks.
Punch from incorrect range: overextending your reach dramatically reduces your power and leaves you vulnerable to counterattack.
Punch from correct range: proper body alignment focuses all of your strength and power.
• Relaxation. Controlling the mind is the difference between being good and being great. In Major League Baseball, a pitcher can have a ten million dollar arm, but paired with a $10 head he is worthless. It’s the same in fighting. If you are tense, letting your amped-up mind control your body, you will be slow and easy to block. It might sound counterintuitive, but it’s not. Try it for yourself. Make a tight fist, lock all your muscles down hard, and try to throw a fast punch. Now, try it again with an open hand. Flick your hand forward as fast as you can as if you’re trying to touch or poke someone. Which is faster? When you are relaxed, you can move much more swiftly. Experienced martial artists know that relaxation does not require you to sacrifice power. The trick is tensing at the moment of impact, not before. Here’s how it works:
• Ferocity. All things equal, the guy who attacks with the most ferocity wins. Even if the other guy is a bit stronger or more skilled than you are, he’s likely to disengage if he realizes he’s bitten off more than he can chew. If you have no other choice but to fight, do so wholeheartedly. Your adversary should feel like he’s run across a rabid wolverine wielding an industrial buzz saw. Strike fast, hard, and repeatedly until it’s over and you can escape to safety. Throwing a single blow or short combination and dancing aside to see if it had any effect may work well in the tournament ring, but it’s woefully inadequate on the street. Give it everything you’re worth and don’t stop until it’s over.
Now that the principles are out of the way, let’s talk about some common striking techniques that lesser skilled individuals can usually pull off successfully. These include hand strikes, forearm strikes, elbow strikes, knee strikes, foot strikes, and head butts.
Hand Strikes. The hand is a great weapon in a fight. We’ve already mentioned that you don’t want to hit a solid object with your knuckles unless you are very skillful, yet you don’t need to make a fist to hurt the other guy. Palm-heel strikes, for example, can be very powerful yet relatively safe if you contact something hard like the other guy’s jaw. You can thrust straight out with your open palm (for example, to the face) or slap sideways, for example, to the ear. When we teach children how to break boards for the first time, we have them strike with an open palm because they can generate much power with relative safety.
Rotate your hand upward and pull your fingers back so that you won’t tangle them on anything. Aim so that you will hit with the meaty heel of your palm at the bottom. You can improve your power if you can get your bodyweight behind the blow too. The easiest way to do that is to step forward as you strike. Begin with the hand movement and then follow with the step. Your opponent will undoubtedly see the blow coming if you step first and then strike. The goal, however, is to land the blow at the same time you complete your step, adding impetus to the strike.
Another way to strike with reduced chances of injury to your hand is with a hammer fist blow. While this is done using a closed fist, you hit with the bottom of your hand rather than with your knuckles. This softer striking surface protects the hand yet can deliver solid power in your blows. You can strike downward (for example, to the face or nose) or sideways (for example, to the side of the head or temple). The hammer fist is a smashing type of blow not a penetrating blow.
There are dozens of other effective hand strikes yet they require a fair amount of training to execute successfully and safely so we won’t go into detail here. If you do choose to punch with a closed fist, however, it’s critical that you straighten your wrist and strike primarily with your first and second knuckles so that the line of power passes directly through the knuckles, traveling up your arm and into your body. If you connect with something solid like the other guy’s jaw with a bent wrist or with your third and fourth knuckles you can hurt yourself severely.
Forearm Strikes. A forearm smash can be extraordinarily powerful, though you need to be relatively close to an opponent to make it work. It looks like a basic head block, if you have trained in a striking art such as karate, yet is designed to be offensive rather than primarily defensive in nature. Forearm blows work best when you rotate the hard ulna bone along the outside edge of your arm into the other guy, using the torque from your twisting movement to augment your upward force. Adding a forward step to magnify the blow with your bodyweight can be beneficial as well. Forearm strikes can also be executed sideways like a hammer fist blow, though that’s usually intended as a defensive technique to block or deflect an opponent’s punch.
Elbow Strikes. The elbow is a pretty hard bone, one of the hardest structures in the human body. Nature knows that you are very likely to land on your elbows in a fall, so the bone is very resilient. The
