Drawhand

[chen3141]

What is the purpose of the drawhand? I've always heard it was to chamber the arm before you punch/block. However, I've never seen someone fight with one hand chambered back as far as in basics. People have their hands up in guard.

[seienchin]

My understanding of this is that it is a "drill", that is, an exercise to teach muscle groups to work in a particular way.

It is much easier to teach someone to retract one side of their body as they punch forward with the other, if you get them to think about pulling the hand back.

Eventually, the muscles of the torso and back learn to co-ordinate the opposite actions, and this strengthens the punch no matter what position the non-punching hand is in.

In summary, it is about training the core muscles, so that ultimately, it doesn't matter where the hand is held. The muscles still work.

[Spirit]

Then perhaps you have not seen all fighting styles.
This is a question best explained by your sensei as well observation of WKA, WUKO, AAU type fighters.
Different types of fighting attitude fit each type of fighting style or rules of the game.

[Dent]

Osu!

Hikite can be literally translated as pulling hand. In some systems of fighting, the one hand is used to grab and pull/ push into punches. The effectiveness of the off-balancing by use of this technique is formidable, and certainly one of my favourites.

Osu!

[supergroup7]

I believe that we retract the hand for more than one reason.

a) It's a natural movement. I've noticed that Karate likes to take a natural movement, enhance it, and create potential effective self defense moves from it.

b) It offers clues towards possible wrist releases, arm locks, and take downs contained within each strike/block technique.

c) The action of rotating the wrist, and pulling back sharply ( as strongly than the punching hand) exercises the opposite side of the muscle groups offering balance in strengthening. Balance is extremely important when looking at muscle building. Injuries can happen when one set of muscles are stronger than it's opposing side.

d) The retracting hand can offer control of the opponent when used by grabbing, pulling, and holding. It brings them down, and off balanced.

[Nix]

NOTE: I have moved parts of this thread to 'Light-contact fighting stance' as it did not have much relevance to the original topic.