Empty Hand

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Highlights:

• Bones provide the framework.
• without which we would be a sack of wet stuff unable to do more than ooze ourselves around on the ground :-) .
• Muscles, tendons and cartilage provide additional support along with strength and stability.
• These provide the additional support and stability to the framework that is the bones or skeletal framework of the hand, wrist and forearm. 
• Cardio-system provides fuel along with energy conduction, etc.
• blood circulation, nerves and others, etc.
• Skin provides feel for tactile sensitivity.
• Covers the hand and is the largest of the sense organs of the body that allow us to feel how the hand works along with what it touches to gain a feel for an object be it a hammer or a person.
• Also provides sensory input when touching an object or a live entity. 
• Hands are one part of the body with the greatest collection of nerve endings.

Looking at the hand as a whole it seems logical that a focus on the bones as to the thought one has to cause stress fractures to make them stronger or denser is patently misleading. If you continuously cause such stress fractures you actually weaken the framework of the hand. I have experience with this as a Marine who suffered stress fractures of the shin and today I still feel the sensitivity of the shins walking, etc.

Once, long ago, I experienced a knife wound in the palm of my hand. The emergency room staff went through a variety of tests to ensure that I had not severed any of the nerves in that area of the hand. They explained that the hand has a condensed grouping of nerves so any such injury in the hand often resulted in severed nerves which would cause mobility, etc., problems affecting the use of my hand for things like feeling, grasping and holding, etc. I was very lucky because I just happened to have avoided the nerves although the likelihood was slim, lucky me! This just goes to present that the hand, being a critical necessary tool of our bodies, is vulnerable far and above what we might think and to injure it has consequences and repercussions far beyond what we are taught in martial disciplines like karate making it also critical we learn and understand these things so that we train properly and correctly as well as ensure we use the hands to effectively, efficiently and appropriately feel and manipulate, etc., an adversary if forced into using force for self-protection. 

Reminder: learn about the soft-hard/hard-soft concept and the many methodologies available to us using the hand as a tool of self-protection for self-defense. 

Before I move on to other aspects please take a look at the graphic of the hand anatomy because seeing the skeletal, muscular and nerve collective gives a visual sense of the density and vulnerability of our hand especially as it apples to dangerous and violent situations and actions. 

• If you visualize stripping away all the outer coverings of the hand you are left with just the skeletal system, the bones. 
• Now visualize how the body, anatomy, supports, stabilizes and manipulates the hand structure so add in tendons, ligaments and muscles. 
• In order for the muscles, etc., to function we now visualize permeating and covering the muscular system with nerves, vessels and arteries, etc., that feed energy from our lungs and digestive systems, etc. 
• Now visualize how the muscular system can manipulate the bones to flex and extend, etc., while dependent on the strength/power applied not only helps the structure of the hand bones but also helps them to strengthen by the addidion of density that comes from and only from how we use the hands and how much positive stresses we apply. Positive stresses come from proper use that will build strength and endurance that naturally builds density of the bones and 
• remember, it is only through continuous positive use of the hands, as in exercises, etc., that the density of the bones underneath remain - dense. 
• Now visualize overlaying the hands with all this gear with a layer of skin. The skin is the largest organ of the body and has a good deal of functionality to include, but not limited to, touch or tactile sensory input and output. We feel through our skin and that is critical in martial arts especially as to our hands, i.e., “hands-on” if you will where we sense through our hands/skin how things move and how we can use our understanding and skills to move or manipulate that which we touch. 

As we already instinctually know and feel and understand, the hand is a wondrous thing we humans have and is and was critical to not just our survival but to our evolutionary progress since we first crawled forth from the primordial ooze to walk partly upright to full upright and so on. 

We tend to take our hands for granted and it is a wise sensei who provides guidance to the complexities of our hands to the practitioners who would follow sensei’s path. A full understanding of the hand and its anatomy along with its strengths and vulnerabilities goes a long way to proper teaching, practicing and application of things like tameshiwari and makiwara as well as use of the heavy bag and the hanging makiwara, etc. After all, if you fail to train on these, hojo undo, devices correctly, safely and with health involved you will destroy the best tool you have in your tool box. 

In karate, practitioners tend to focus a lot on the hands simply because they named the system “empty hand” while assuming the practitioner would understand that empty-hand is symbolic toward self-protection when all other tools or weapons are lost, forgotten or just plain caught without a weapon when an attacker decides to make you their latest victim. When all weapons are unavailable and you are left to your own means, meaning just what you have on your body, you may be required to apply skills and methodologies that involve the hands, arms, legs, etc., to stop severe damage and possible death from a determined violent adversary. 

Just some thoughts to consider, meditate over and analyze in brining out the most and best of your karate, martial art, lifestyle regardless of end-intent (sport, philosophical or self-protection OR any combination of).

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