Offensive Open Hand Techniques

There are as many Offensive Open Hand Techniques as you have the imagination to create. Students tend to like the class because there are a lot of takedowns and breaks. In fact one of my old time Florida students affectionately referred to the Offensive Open Hand Techniques class as “The neck breaking class”. I will list a couple of techniques here. To see more either attend a class or workshop or buy our DVD on Open Hand Basics.

After doing one of the Open Hand techniques described in the last section you should be in an excellent position to offensively act. Let’s say that you swipe their punching arm and are now standing in a position where you can turn them a little and be able to see their back. Take your other hand and go straight for their head. Now you can either smack it head on or slap across it whichever one will suit your purposes the best. If you step behind them while striking their head then in both cases it becomes a real possibility of being a neck break. If you choose to use your second hand as a swipe while you are stepping behind them then you have the option of throwing them and/or taking them down into what we in Silat call a kinjit. You can also choose to turn the neck break into a back break. With another adjustment of your Open Hands as they come down you can also put them into a hold where you have the option to break their neck, back or arm at any time.

If you use slap and cut against a punch where you end up on the outside of their arm and body then it is very easy to take your first hand and use it to break their arm or to knock them out by slapping the back of the head. So you would slap across with your first hand. Raise your second hand to replace your first hand and then your first hand would now go to the arm break or back of the head for the knockout.

If you use slap and cut against a punch where you end up on the inside of their arm and body (like for instance when you are defending against a big haymaker type hook punch) then it is very easy to take your first hand and use it to drive their head up and back to break the nose, jaw or neck or to knock them out by striking the chin or nose straight up and straight back towards the brain. Just a note: The nose does not go through the brain but if you are in imminent danger and lethal force is called for then you want to hit as if you were going to be able to drive the nose through the brain and such a hit will cause death. So, please do not use this illegally, unnecessarily or unwisely. In other words this should only happen to save the life of you or your loved ones.

There are many many more Open hand Offensive techniques and a lot of them are to detailed to describe in this format but the ones that I have listed here are a good start.