Open-Hand Strikes Playbook

Mat Manual companion guide to "Open Hands: Shuto, Nukite, and the Strikes You Skip." Print it. The article teaches the four open-hand surfaces as strikes with their own chambers, structures, and honest targets. This book builds them on pads and equipment: structure checklists, drill cards with the contact level printed on every card, kata-spotting sheets that find each strike in your own kata, and partner-work gates that keep every rep on the safe lines.

Name: ______________________________ Dojo: ______________________________ Grade: ______________ Start date: ______________ Current kata: ______________ Hand or wrist history noted (Y/N, discuss with instructor): ______________

BEFORE ANYTHING: SAFETY AND PARTNER AGREEMENTS ☐ The neck rule, first and without exception: no strike in this book is practiced landing on a partner's neck, at any speed, at any power, as a drill, demonstration, or test of control. Strikes toward the neck are knowledge-level in this book, as in the article: known, placed in kata, and never drilled on a person. Any drill suggestion that breaks this rule is refused, whoever suggests it. ☐ Every drill card prints its contact level: touch, light, firm, or full to equipment only. The printed level is the ceiling for that card, not a starting point to negotiate upward. Either partner can lower the level with one word, and the set obeys at once. ☐ Nukite (spear hand) is tested only on soft equipment lines stated on its cards: focus pads and shields at the body lines named there. It is never tested on a rigid target, a makiwara, or a partner's body. A student whose fingers cannot hold the Part 6 structure at slow speed does not throw nukite at any speed. ☐ Finger, hand, and wrist pain stops the set. Open-hand structures load small joints in ways a fist does not. Note the pain in the session log (Part 21), tell the instructor, and switch to a surface that does not load the painful structure, or end striking work for the session. ☐ Partner body work in this book, where a card allows it, runs only on the lines the card names, at the card's printed contact, with the receiver's consent stated that session. Head lines in partner work are pad lines or withdrawn lines under your dojo's rules, never contact to a partner's head with an open hand. ☐ Makiwara work, where your school uses one, starts at light contact for open hands regardless of fist experience on the board. Edge and ridge surfaces meet the board at an angle set by the instructor for your school. Pain is a stop, not a stage.

Part 1: The Four Surfaces at a Glance

Family law: each surface is graded on its own cards. A strong shuto earns no credit toward nukite structure, and teisho's forgiving surface does not excuse a splayed spear hand in the next set.