“Hikite”…is NOT for power generation.

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In several martial arts, it is very common to see practitioners performing techniques with one hand while pulling back / drawing back the other hand. In Japanese, this is called “hikite” (pulling hand..there’s a clue in the translation) and is evident in most of the basic “blocks”, strikes and locks.

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The misconception that “hikite” generates power seems to rear its ugly head every few years or so. You would think that the evidence has consigned it to history, and then it flairs up again, fueled by the ‘true believers’ devotion to outdated instructions made by their Japanese sensei from the beginning of time. “They said it so it must be true.” Perhaps this has a beginning where at the commencement of the spread of karate worldwide, Japanese instructors were sent out to many places with a relatively poor grasp of English, and when asked for the reason they simply said; “power generation”, without having the vocabulary for a deeper explanation. The simplification of this to ‘pull the arm back for more power’ may have been lost in translation.

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With that in mind, I’m sure there were a number of Japanese/Okinawan instructors who were trying to say that “hikite” will make your strikes more effective because you’re pulling the opponent into them, but all they had in English was “punch more power.”

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Retracting one arm does not increase the speed, and therefore the power of extending the other arm. I have heard instructors invoking Newton’s third law: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”, as a reason for pulling back the opposing arm. This is simply not true. You just have to look at human biology and body mechanics to see this.

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It is also something I see where people just ‘train’ at the dojo, there is no real depth to their karate. In my opinion, this often comes across in how things are taught. The explanation that “Hikite” is for more power is a much simpler explanation rather than the more complicated pulling / stability / trapping / holding movement.

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In the karate of the old masters’, the main focus was unarmed combat, and in such combat you should use all tools at your disposal to accomplish your goals as quickly and efficiently as possible. Therefore, the main purpose of “hikite”, is pulling the attackers’ limb, hair, clothing, etc, to disrupt and off-balance them … the “close range defense” explantation…… “Hikite”…is NOT for power generation. 

Photo Credit: Fumio Demura…. Image of Demura sensei grasping the belt with “hikite”..