Open vs. Closed Hand Blocking

[tallgeese]

To spin off some thoughts started in another thread, I thought I'd start a new one to explore what everyone preferred in regard to parrying or blocking- the closed hand or open hand and then find out why.

Personally, I use both but the closed hand sees limited use. I close the hand when executing a boxing style block of a hook to the head. This way the fist covers more area and provides more shock absorbtion.

My hands go to a half closed position while using my elbows to parry mid level kicks. I think this is just habit and have no real good reason why it's either.

The hands are opened for any sort of coverage of strikes to the head. This occurs either as I use them to intercept strikes or move the forarms to cover.

I like the open hand for a couple of reasons. First off, it allows for a more relaxed muscular structure. This in turn allows for faster movement which means you're more likely to actually intercept things.

Next up, it allows you to initiate grabs easier. This is paramount if you're either trapping, working small joints, or trying to initate a grapple. It also allows for the eye gouge almost automatically.

On the down side, as was pointed out elsewhere, you can injure the fingers easier this way and you'll have to take time to clinch the fist down to a stiking surface when it's time.

Still, despite this, I like them open. Now by open, I mean about half to a quarter clinced and together giving them some solid funcion. The increased relaxed posture makes everything quicker and this in turn will snap those punches out faster as well, despite the fact you have to lock the hand down a bit.

The injury factor is there, but I feel it's mitigated by the off set advantage of everything else.

Just my view. What's everything think?

[Erin]

I like your thoughts a lot, that's why I come here, to learn about these kind of things.

When I first started out training, we were drilled repeatedly during kata and complexes to keep our hands CLOSED all the time first. I was told this was to teach us to keep a proper fist, because without learning how to do things with a proper fist you can't do other techniques. But I have found going on, I like open hand stuff so much more, for kind of the same reasons. I have just found open hand to be more versatile. Truthfully, I've found it hard to do much with a closed hand anymore.

[joesteph]

When I was tutored in fighting by an Isshinryu friend, we went through all the blocks, and they were closed fist. But he'd progressed to the point in which he'd learned to use open hand to grab, such as an opponent's overextended fist, as well as to block by slapping down or away, particularly kicks.

When I took Tae Kwon Do, the emphasis was on the closed hand, but I felt I was pounding when I blocked. The only time we were to use open hand was when we soft-blocked (as I call it), and that was against punches, the back of the wrist connecting to block. When I used open hand against kicks, I was cautioned that I'd break my fingers. As closed hand was hurting my sparring partners, and since it was non-contact (people who didn't expect such impact), I used open hand anyway.

Back with my Isshinryu friend, we both took Taiji, but in different schools. He was more advanced than I was, meaning that our sparring was really learning how to smother or trap, and when sparring came to a halt as we worked on forms, including a two-man form, we utilized applications that were all open hand blocking, particularly in the form of redirects.

I've been admonished in the past for using open hand in my present school, but I'm just not going to use a closed hand and my wrist bone (which can fracture) to block a kick, favoring an open hand against what I can slap down or redirect. The former assistant instructor, who is a certified instructor himself now, has told me that I can, if not directly slap, keep in place with open hand the opponent's fist in order to deliver a punch.

What I've experienced in my school is that, as a lower belt, I've been, with other lower belts, directed to use closed hand, but higher belts have been permitted to use open hand. This reminds me of a Peyton Quinn video, "Self-Defense Against the Sucker Puncher," in which he disagreed with those who used force against force, demonstrating the force clash with closed hand, and presented favoring redirects, which he demonstrated with open hand. He even made it a point at the end of his video to say that what he was showing was nothing new, that it was used (in his experience) by higher belts.

I do keep a "guard up" position with my fists, but since the non-contact punches land away from me, they're pseudo-blocking, so I can't comment on if I'm "really" blocking with closed hands and forearms or not. In the sparring that I did during testing, my first move was to use open hand against the shin and knee of my opponent to block the roundhouse he'd telegraphed. With kicks, I'm on more solid ground that I use open hand (and raised lower leg).

I wish I could do more with open hand, particularly to redirect, smother, and trap. When we do required one-step sparring exercises, the first set of blocks is knife hand; the two sets that follow use the closed hand. Yet some sparring combos that are not required have used open hand. Our newest forms have knife hands in them, but also retain the closed hand as well. What's funny is that, as I've seen bunkai within the newer forms, those fists sometimes represent blocking and grabbing. To be fair to my teacher, perhaps the way the art expects students to be trained is in a certain order, and more open hand will be introduced.

In the self-defense JuJitsu course I'm taking, Sensei has block after block be with open hand.

[tallgeese]

I would agree that you shouldn't throw the open hand down vs. a kick. The risks of injury at that point out weigh any benifit.

However, I try to black anything below the waist with legs and anything to the mid-section with a forarm or elbow. This makes the hand position less important.

For head high kicks simply not being there is the best option. Not always possible, but the best option. If I get caught inside, I try to crash the gap first to take the brunt off the kick. In this case again, I try to go to the forarms for the parry and keep any force off the hands.

[sensei8]

For me...I prefer to use open handed blocks/parry due to the ease of transitionaling into Tuite. Plus, the open hand allows me to keep myself relaxed and not prematurely tensioning.

For me...closed handed blocking is prefered as to meet the power. Meeting the power with a closed handed block allows me to provide the proper tension to "stop" the advancing attack. Whether it's with a foot or a hand technique means of little to me, although, the foot attacks are usually stronger than hand attacks based on the fact that the legs are stronger than the arms due to mass.

Either way, open/close are both effective; it's what is preferred by the practitioner at any given time. Point is...block as though your block will distroy the attack...Ikken hissatsu at all times!

[BDPulver]

I started off using closed but as the years and training went on. I grew to using open more now. I find i can transmit just as much power with a open hand block as a closed fist block for starters.

Also, I can do certain techniques with ease using a open hand (ie. grab and pull). I even learned how to block against kicks after many many sprains and broken fingers.

When training students though I try to use a closed fist so they learn open yet. Its tough though when ya started on something that feels more comfortable.

[bushido_man96]

When I spar, I tend to close my fists a lot. But for Combat Hapkido and DT training, I find them opened up a lot more for trapping and such. I do think that open hand has more options available for follow up.

[tallgeese]

For everyone in LE professions, the open hand works out nicely due to the heavy emphsis on controlling with minimal force rather than beating into submission.

Well, there's got to be a downside to every job .

[Kempohands]

I tend to prefer open handed defensive movements, but when I do execute a true block, that is, an attempt to stop my opponent's energy, not redirect it, and to cause pain in the process, I like the closed hand blocks. I don't use the wrist bone as someone earlier mentioned though, but the forearm.

Being a smaller person (5-9, 135), I tend to sidestep, redirect, and parry quite a bit, and for those situations I use open hands. In my particular system, we are trained with the mentality that a parry is not a block; they are not synonyms. There are two primary goals of a block in our training mentality: to stop an attack and to cause damage to the weapon which attacked you. Sometimes I'll use tiger palm blocking techniques which use an open hand and a snap of the wrist to cause pain with a hard block, but usually I find the closed hand block with the forearm better suited to accomplishing both tasks simultaneously.

As for blocking kicks, I rarely use the open handed swat, even in light contact sparring with gear on. In a tournament two years ago I swatted a kick down and broke a finger doing so. I prefer to use my closed handed blocks now. That's assuming the kicks are coming to my mid section or of course. For low kicks I use my own legs as defense and for kicks to the head I have a similar mentality to tallgeese. If I have to block a head kick for some reason I will try to catch the shin with my elbow as I move in so that any impact my arm takes is not at the point of furthest extension of the kick.

[KarateEd]

As some others have said I feel more tense when my fist are clenched. I prefer the relaxing feel of an open hand (by "open hand" I mean a loose fist with fingers curled and thumb touching the side of index finger). If I was to look at my hands when sparring I think I would see them transition between "clenched" and "open" pretty frequently.

I don't like to run with my fist clenched either; I feel too tight, not relaxed. My fingers are usually slightly curled and if I am sprinting then my fingers will straighten out.