4. Soft Calloused Hands

Is the mark of a potent life gentle, but calloused hands?  Karate – the empty hand – an empty hand can be an open hand or a closed fist.  But many people close their fist and shouldn't punch something or someone.  Their fist is just a superficial feature of evolution: the semblance of a weapon, of potency.  Most unconditioned people who punch something hard will sprain their wrist or break a bone.  Having a fist isn’t enough.

In the same vein, hands that are too soft are obviously not indicative of a strong body behind them. The makiwara taught me this lesson first - pullups reminded me.  I look down at my hands and they hurt, long before my muscles burned.  Your training and your life can be hidden within your body in many ways but it really is difficult to hide them from your hands.  Your hands either have callouses – where you grip things with purpose or strike things with intention – or they don’t.  They are indicative of your growing skill and your dedication, or they aren’t.  They potentiate everything that happens in your body every joint in the chain later.  No one with unconditioned hands could have a truly strong body.  You can have a strong heartbeat without calloused hands but not a strong body.  And getting strong hands usually cannot happen without having more heartbeats.

Obviously callouses aren’t the only mark of strength, of a person who tests themselves.  It is the easiest to see perhaps, but hands aren’t merely the first link in a chain of applying force.  They are also magnificent instruments – perhaps in the final analysis the most remarkable instrument in the universe.  Maybe there is a species with better formed hands somewhere out there, or a form of life that can move things with their minds alone, but until we find that pinnacle, the human hand was ultimately the tool of note in every single made or crafted thing in our human world: from the plastic tips on the end of laces to the Panama Canal and the Great Wall of China.  Human hands, making tools, making more tools, making tools to make other better tools.  All of them which have their start from our first instrument – four fingers and a thumb.  There can be no mistaking the fact that a human that uses the hand primarily in fist form - as a bludgeon or to simply lift things from here to there - has barely scratched the surface of what it is to be human at all.

Soft, calloused hands then.  Gentle and precise, when sitting at the keys of a piano or signing one’s signature.  Strong and tough enough to support one’s weight, hanging from a bar.  This is self-realization, making the most of what we are physically and spiritually.  I would argue that karate creates an expectation of both – the hand capable of caressing and abusing.  Is a key problem to humanity that most people only use their hand as one or the other?  Would our world be more balanced if humans were more balanced?  And would humans be more balanced if they could use their hands as easily as an instrument of fine precision as they do a blunt, simple, dull object?

Chop wood, carry water – this builds callouses quickly.  Sitting and writing about chopping wood & carrying water – maybe this is part of the softness that should accompany the hardness.

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Consider the shooters pocket

the feel of the release point, elevated, the elbow held high
fingertips – hold the ball lightly, like jello, tofu

guide hand? More like the anchor hand…locks the ball comfortably and then you drop anchor, pops off the ball, reverse flick of the wrist

elevated elbow, push through the elbow
minimal finger tension
relaxed wrist – tofu – more tension & action as range increases
up and over the rim

targeting b. r. a. d. – kime, focus intently upon the front then back ring
follow up and through to the point of your gaze
range doesn't matter, control & consistency