Teisho-uchi 底掌打ち
Palm-heel strike
The technique, and its job.
A strike with the heel of the palm, the wrist bent back and the fingers lifted clear. It puts a large, robust surface behind the whole arm and is far more forgiving of imperfect alignment than a closed fist.
Application. Close-range striking where a fist is a liability, and — because it does not require a formed fist — a technique that suits self-defence teaching.
Mechanics
What each part of the body does, in the order it does it.
- Starting position
- From the hip or the guard.
- Hips
- Rotate as for a punch.
- Trajectory
- Straight forward, or upward to the chin, the wrist bending back as it arrives.
- Target
- Chin, nose, sternum, ribs.
- Contact surface
- The heel of the palm, wrist bent back, fingers curled clear of the target.
- Kime
- At impact, with the wrist held firm.
What survives when the name is forgotten.
- No knuckles to break, and no wrist alignment to get wrong. It is the strike that keeps working under stress.
- The bent wrist is a strong structure, not a weak one, provided the elbow is behind it.
Common errors, and how to fix them.
Naming a fault teaches nobody. Each one below carries why it happens and what corrects it.
Why it happens. Insufficient wrist extension.
The fix. Bend the wrist back fully and curl the fingers.
Drills
- Pad work checking the contact surface, and upward strikes to a pad held at chin height.
Where it appears.
Kihon is the vocabulary, kata is the literature, kumite is the conversation. Every link below was written down deliberately; none of it was inferred from a name matching.
- Defensive kumite Defence and counter
- Shuto-uchi Knife-hand strike
- Uraken-uchi Back-fist strike
- Tetsui-uchi Hammer-fist strike
- Empi-uchi Elbow strike
- Haito-uchi Ridge-hand strike
The Japanese, explained.
- Teisho-uchi 底掌打ち
- Palm-heel strike. A strike with the heel of the palm, wrist bent back and fingers clear. Forgiving of imperfect alignment.
- Teisho 底掌
- Palm heel. The heel of the palm, with the wrist bent back and the fingers lifted clear of the target.
Video
No recording in the register is tagged to Teisho-uchi. MMAKF has not filmed this technique, and the discovery pass did not find an external recording specific enough to attribute to it without guessing.
Nothing is shown here rather than a search link dressed up as a demonstration. What has been found, checked and registered is listed in full on the source register.
The video source register →