Hard Karate Techniques

Old Karate masters were able to use their full bodies as human weapons.

But most of us are not karate masters. Some techniques require years, maybe even decades of conditioning and hardening your body making your arms and legs as strong as iron.

And unless you have an iron body, those techniques just not gonna work for you.

So in this article, we’re just gonna show you our top three useless karate techniques, unless you’re a karate master of course.

Check them out.

Useless Technique #1

Useless technique number one is called “Nukite” (drill hand) in Japanese, and it looks like this. Just form your hand into a spear, and thrust it against your opponent. Now, we don’t have a problem with the classical finger jab. That was one of Bruce Lee’s favorite techniques.

Imagine just throwing up your hand, towards your opponent’s eye. Works great, because it’s a long-range weapon that you can then combine with other movements. And Bruce Lee was all about effective stuff, right? However, the Nukite in the classical karate style just requires so much training to make use of.

I mean, just try using it for yourself right now against the palm of your other hand.

It already hurts your fingers. So imagine an aggressive attacker coming at you, and in full force, you gotta thrust through his ribs and rip his heart out. He’s not gonna be able to pull it off unless you do what the old masters did. See, they had a bucket full of sand, and they will thrust down into this bucket to make their fingers strong like a spear. And then they will gradually shift that sand into pebbles.

Then they would shift that, into small stones and so on until their hands were hard as rocks. Otherwise, you’re just probably going to break your fingers. So unless you wanna spend years hardening your fingertips, just stick to Bruce Lee’s finger jab.

Useless Technique #2

Useless technique number two. This movement is known as “Shoken” or “Ippon Ken” in Japanese. Take your hand and form a fist, and it looks like this, either with the thumb on top, or the thumb behind your index finger. And then the idea, is that you hit with this tiny knuckle on your opponent’s soft tissue parts.

So you don’t wanna hit anything hard like a skull or a bone.

Fun side note, when I recently went to China to trace the roots of Karate, I learned this same technique from a White Crane KungFu master, and apparently, the Chinese translation of this fist formation is “Date Fist”. Because he said it looks like a date. And then he chewed on his finger which was kinda nasty. However, in Okinawa, the birthplace of karate, they call it the “Tiger Tooth”. Because it kind of resembles the tiger’s tooth.

It doesn’t make a difference what you name it, there’s one thing that remains. You’re not gonna be able to use it in a real fight. I mean, let’s say somebody attacks me and I could stab them into their liver using my Ippon Ken. Well, in that case, I would just rather form a classic regular fist, and go through that gut punch with an uppercut, as any boxer would do.

Which is super easy and practical for anyone to do, and it doesn’t involve the chance of breaking your fingers.

The old masters couldn’t use this either, without years of conditioning their hands against the makiwara (a padded striking post). They’re the classical striking posts that you see in a traditional karate dojo. One of the greatest karate fighters in history, Sensei Motobu Chōki, was famous for using this type of attack in many of his streetfights that went down in the Tsuji, the red light district in Okinawa. But just like the other karate legends, he had to spend years hardening his fist first. Otherwise, you’re just gonna break your hand.

I don’t know about you, but I just frankly don’t have the time or patience required to condition my hands to such a degree, that I could use either this or the previous fist formation in a real fight. And that’s why it’s useless for most people. This brings us to the third and last of the useless karate techniques.

Useless Technique #3

It’s known as Naka Daka Ken. Just look at that beautiful fist formation when you make it. The middle finger knuckle is sticking out when forming your fist. Completely useless but cool looking. I mean, just imagine defeating somebody with this knuckle. How hardcore would that be? And also, almost impossible. Again, just try using this on your hand.

It might feel okay until you realize that to really accurately punch something with this knuckle, you need to have a sort of bend in your wrist. Which means that you can’t hit with a straight wrist. If your wrist is straight then this knuckle points down, and that just makes it impractical. So to actually use this fist, you would have to have a slight bend in your wrist, which means that it’s super easy to sprain or maybe even break your wrist if you actually wanna use this with full force.

But maybe the Nakadaka Ken is not meant to be used in this manner. Maybe it should be used in a manner as if you’re striking down on something.

And that might work. But nine times out of ten, we’d probably just wanna use a classical hammer fist instead, which doesn’t require this weird dexterity and all those years of hardening, that the Nakadaka Ken would require. Now some people argue that this is not meant for punching or thrusting, but actually for pressing into different cavities, and anatomical weak points of the human body. But again, we would rather just slam a hammer fist or even our whole forearm into somebody’s neck, than try to just push different weird knuckle parts into their throat.

I don’t know about you, but in the heat of the moment, in a real fight, it’s hard to pinpoint those deadly “Kyusho”, those vital spots, isn’t it? By using something that is less granular, like let’s say your whole fist, you might end up hitting five of those deadly spots instead of just one. So that’s even more effective, right?

Karate was created during a time in history when people had more time to dedicate, to forging an iron body. Today, we’re probably too frail anyway, because life was harder back then.

A little bit of pain was not a problem. I don’t know about you, but many people are soft these days. They like being comfy. They don’t like hardening different weird fist formations, to actually defend themselves in a real-life situation. They would rather use the bread and butter of karate which is the classical fist, the forearms, and maybe their legs.

Speaking of legs, we’re going to give you a bonus. Have a look at the big toe on your foot. Do you see that? Imagine you’re kicking someone with your big toe, and then you could use the other toe to reinforce that foot formation. In Japanese, we call it a “Sokusen” or a “Tsumasaki Geri”, a tiptoe kick.

And that was the main way that the old karate masters would kick people. Because again, they could hit those anatomically weak structures of the human body. Those vital spots could hopefully knock out the opponent with one single blow. In modern times, we usually kick with the ball of the foot instead.

Which is way less dangerous for the opponent, but also for you. Unless you’ve spent years hardening your toes. But the funny part is, that the tip-toe kick might be useful if you’re wearing shoes. Because then it just makes sense to kick with the tip of your shoe, but back in the old days, the karate masters didn’t have our modern shoe technology. So obviously they had to spend decades hardening their toes to be able to use the tiptoe kick.

And we’re sure it hurt if it hits somebody. Anyway, we’ve already covered enough info and now we’d like to hear from you. What do you think is the most useful karate technique? Leave a comment and let us know. And then check out some of our other articles if you wanna learn more about the practical application, of karate’s classical self-defense techniques.

We think you’re gonna find something that you’ll like. Train hard and good luck, but make sure you’re having fun.