Strike (attack)
A strike is a directed, forceful physical attack with either a part of the human body or with a handheld object (such as a melee weapon), intended to cause blunt or penetrating trauma upon an opponent.
Strikes are the key focus of several sports and arts, including boxing, savate, karate, Muay Lao, taekwondo and wing chun.
Some martial arts also use the fingertips, wrists, forearms, shoulders, back and hips to strike an opponent as well as the more conventional fists, palms, elbows, knees and feet that are common in combat sports.
Targets are numerous and some examples include the nose, jaw, ears, back of the head, the groin, the kidneys, the temples and abdominal cavity.
A strike using the part of the hand opposite the thumb (from the little finger to the wrist), familiar to many people as a karate chop, Shuto or Tegatana.
By tucking the thumb into the palm, a striking surface called the ridge-hand, or reverse knife-hand is formed, extending a few inches along the inside of the hand below the first knuckle of the first finger.
Suitable targets include the mastoid muscles of the neck, the jugular, throat, nose, jaw, the eyes, and the groin.
The ridge hand technique is very swift and when mastered can be a formidable technique, it was used successfully by Ian Fergusson (currently 7th degree Tae Kwon Do Master) in the 1981 Tae Kwon Do championships in Argentina earning him an individual bronze medal and contributed to the team international gold medal.
It does have the added advantage of increasing the range of normal hand striking by 3–4 inches or so as opposed to punching, backfisting, or hammer fisting.
It is considered a high-level technique requiring enormous conditioning, but even accidental spear fingering can be quite devastating on the eyes such as punching mistakes seen in modern MMA circuits.
Deriving from traditional and ancient Kung Fu, such striking was considered high level technique for advanced students/inheritors of the art.
Some modern martial arts, such as Krav Maga, Aikido, Hapkido, deliver this strike to the back of the hand while being held.
However, its effectiveness when the opponent is aware that a fight is occurring has been disputed, with evidence hard to obtain due to the nature of the art and its disuse in sport, combat, sparring, or matches.
Elbow and knee strikes, especially when delivered from a clinch are generally associated with southeast Asian boxing (Pradal Serey and Muay Lao).
It is commonly used in Bajiquan, the “Eight Extremities Fist”, as an explosive attack from the ‘zhen jiao’ (charging step) motion.
The shoulder strike can be used against the head of the opponent in close positions such as in a clinch or ground fighting, but is generally not considered to have knockout power.
Kicks play a significant role in many forms of martial arts, such as Taekwondo, Karate, Kung fu, Vovinam, Kickboxing, Muay Thai, Capoeira, Silat, and Kalarippayattu.
The most common is the straight knee strike, often employed from a clinch or double collar tie, targeting anywhere from the groin to the head.
In a bottom strike, as taught by Impact self-defense and other self-defense systems, the defendant drives his or her hips and bottom region backward into an attacker holding them from behind in order to cause the attacker to off-balance and bend forward and possibly cause pain by striking the groin or midsection forcefully.
While causing minimal striking damage on average, the attack can serve to develop a superior and/or freed position for the defendant.
These moves are generally unrefined and unprofessional, since they have a big tendency to miss, rely on brute force more than anything and usually require a run-up.
