Hard Hits Soft, Soft Hits Hard.

Are you familiar with the saying, "hard hit soft, soft hits hard"?

In the context of wing chun, it means that one would hit hard parts of the body like the skull or face, with the palm strike rather than using your fist. And when hitting softer parts of the body, say the neck or kidneys, to use your fists rather than an open hand strike.

So what's are some differences between a palm strikes and using your fists?

Striking with the palm offers some outright advantages - first, you're not as likely to break your wrist or hand. You can also hit quite hard with the palm since you don't have to worry about breaking the tiny bones in your fist and wrist. You also don't have to worry about spraining your wrist as much.

There are some disadvantages - your fingers are exposed. The fingers can be jammed, caught in your own shirt sleeve (or your opponents) or seen as a target by your opponent. It takes considerable skill to learn how to deliver power through palm strikes and a certain level of finesse to deliver palm strikes, versus just crashing through with your fists. You also lose some distance in reach. Perhaps in the context of wing chun, this won't matter as you're supposed to be quite close to the opponent, but it's just a physical reality that the reach is shorter with a palm strike compared to a punch.

What would you prefer to use? At my skill level, I wouldn't feel comfortable using my palms as weapons, although I wish I could. In the heat of battle, with the adrenaline rush, using your fists would be quite 'natural' and more instinctive. That said, ideally, if I could produce amazing results with open hand striking - that'd be the way to go.

So what would you use?

Until then.

Go All Out or Do You?

It has been said many times, that if you're going to fight, you have to go ALL OUT. You have commit to each punch, to each strike, to knock your opponent down.

You can't enter a fight half-heartedly, otherwise, you might as well use that burst of adrenaline and run the hell out of there.

In the movies, the kung fu teacher or main character would demonstrate a level of skill where he or she can fight with half their attention or commitment so as to not hurt who they are fighting.

In some action movies, the main character would even try to do his best to spare his enemy's life, until that one point where he must kill them.

In reality, we don't have the luxury of going half-way. You have to fight with 100%.

But what does a 100% mean?

Does that mean you hit with all you've got?

Do you hit before the attacker really makes a move?

Does that mean you hit the groin and throat as hard as you can?

Do you punch the guy as hard as you can in the neck?

Is it all of these?

What is that 100%? what is enough? ..and in the case of pleading self-defense, is going all out considered, legally, too much?

Fight dirty and fight hard...but the consequences of that could be quite severe...either you going through the legal system..or you putting yourself in harms way. so what do you do? how much is 100%?

Until then.