At school, my friends used to run around me shouting ‘aya eeeyaa aiyyyyya hai ya,etc,etc’, whilst performing a strange chopping action with their open hands. It used to drive me crazy. But I always made out it didn’t bother me in the slightest. I never quite understood my friends doing this and I don’t believe they realised how stupid they looked!
I always used to wonder why, not just my friends, but people in general, associated karate with these open hand strikes, it must have been something to do with the old films like, the pink panther films, not Now Kato!!!!! Or the James bond movies, where ‘Odd Job’ would be karate chopping his victims, into an untimely demise, or even one of my favourite cartoons, Hong Kong Fooey!
But as the years have rolled by, I now realise that the karate chop is used in karate, way more than I first realised.
Shuto or knife hand, is everywhere in karate! From the basic shuto uchi (knife hand block), through the heian kata, eg. double knife hand block and counter in Heian Yondan (pictured), to the more advanced brown and black belt shotokan karate kata. The karate chop is everywhere.
My friends were right! I believed, that I very rarely used open hand, but in reality it’s everywhere in our karate training!
Ossu
Linden
Heian Yondan
