Anatomy

[IJ]

I think you would hurt your knee hitting into the vertex of the head. More likely to damage the neck than the brain that way. I'd suggest hitting perpendicular to the neck to jostle the brain for a fairly reliable KO.

Pressure point charts are a starting point, but yes, you need someone to practice with and ideally someone qualified to teach you about them. Luckily, you (IMHO) don't need to know that many. There are a few prominent effective ones and I've seen zilch in the way of data to suggest that any of the complicated theories on sequential striking and the elements and yin and yang hold any water. My favs:

--Large intestine 10, the owwie point from the hammerfist strike in kotikitae on the forearm
--lung five, on the palm/ thumb side of the forearm on the other side of the brachioradialis than the first point. A useful point to hit as you do a yank and throw, off, say, a downward strike
--Lg intestine 13 overlies the "nugie" point from middle school
--heart 2 is on the opposite side of the bicep on the inner arm. Median and ulnar nerves here, so if you strike this on an incoming punch, etc, it can paralyze the arm
--triple warmer 11 overlies the end of the tricep tendon above the elbow. It's where we check the reflex and in theory striking it enables the elbow to be locked. Or maybe its just that locking the elbow with rubbing your ulna on it just hurts.
--stomach 11 and 12 are just above the collar bone and respond to digging downward say after a bushiken or the crane strike from sanseiryu
--stomach 9 is over the carotid in the neck. if you hit one, or both, you can slow or stop the heart (and potentially, in someone with plaque there, cause a stroke). however, people "KO'd" there seem to crumple instantly which is inconsistent with that mechanism.
--lg intestine 18 is on the side of the neck. swing your right arm up at your left neck and tap around to find a point that zings. good to charge in with a forearm at.
-- triple warmer 17 is behind the ear and respods to pressure to the center and forward
--triple warmer 23 is at the outside corner of the eye (the back of the rim of bone on the side of the head) and behaves the same--fragile place to blow out the eye socket
--stomach 5 is on the jaw at the edge of the jaw muscle. hitting rotates the head for a KO, most common mechanism i see in MMA
--stomach 2 is on the cheek bone and might be useful for pressure in close quarters
--gov 26 is right under the nose, rubbing up can release the head to sink in a rear choke.

more later...

[Bill Glasheen]

Coronal suture.....

Bill, could this be the target in the kata seisan? When your attacker goes for the single/double leg take down. You strike with the knee followed by shokens.

Nope...

Let's back up a bit. If there is a repeating theme in Seisan that I see, it's making the neck available for a blood choke or a strike from behind. That's Bill's opinion, by the way, but I could spend a class showing and substantiating it.

As for your specific question, don't go there.

To start with, forget the application that the Okinawans gave us for Seisan kata. It's interesting. It works. A student of mine used it in a pick-up basketball game against a pissed-off wrestler. But that particular application doesn't move me as worthy of "combat," which IMO is what old-school Kanbun/Shushiwa style was all about. To me, it's just a piece of a bigger picture.

The classic application I see comes to me partially from Shinyu Gushi and partially from my own thoughts. It is reinforced by a fascinatingly parallel sequence in the Fuzhou Suparinpei I teach. It also offers much more sanity to the concept of "targeted sequential striking" than the unsubstantiated nonsense advocated by traditional Chinese medicine's cycle of destruction.

Back up a bit. Let's look at Seisan and then Fuzhou Suparinpei


SEISAN

• Left circle, left toe kick
• Right knee strike
• Push down, bend over, triple shoken

FUZHOU SUPARINPEI

• Double-armed grab, left knee strike/thrust (pull with hands, push with knee, similar to Seisan crane)
• Right knee strike
• Drag across to left with right hand, get in deep (horse) stance, quadruple shoken

If you squint your eyes, you'll see that this is 2 ways to do the same thing. So... What do I see?

• First, the kata tells me you are fighting more than one person. Long story...
• The sequential, targeted striking is all about getting to the neck and/or the side of the head. The bad guy is standing up and prepared to kick ass. I don't just want to hurt him; I want to take him out and get on with the fight. I'm thinking back of neck, or side of head.
• I start by grabbing him and folding him over either with a midsection left kick or a midsection knee strike. It doesn't matter how; whatever works at whatever range I happen to be.
• Now that the person is bent over, I smash their face with my right knee.
• At this point, I have a crumpled mass of a person in front of me, and I am holding their head. It's time to put them out of their misery. The final technique - the one you are asking about - is right here. By now, the sequence of strikes should have helped present me with one of two sets of targets.
  
  • Somewhere from C1 to C3 around the back of the neck. You can also do one of a number of grappling thingies to the neck.
  • Something on the side of the head. My favorite would be the temple, but there's also the option of TW17 if the head is at a slightly different angle.
• The additional shokens are actually all about the chambering, and not the thrusting. You are elbowing another bad guy who just jumped onto your back.

Note BTW how Ian and I are playing off of each other. We each know the other's special skills and understanding, and are presenting this information without one explicity prompting the other. I like doing this in a dojo. If you're lucky, you get a bunch of smart people to teach, and each individual can reach into their own area of expertise and provide that perspective.

- Bill

[IJ]

Ok, a few more favorites:

--GB-20: base of skull in that depression to either side of the paraspinal muscles. 21 is on the mid ridge of the traps and responds nicely to double shutos down--some do this in sanchin kitae.
--small intestine 18 lies over the less protected ribs below the lateral pecs
--liver 12 and spleen 12 are in the inguinal crease and are hit with a sokuto geri to fold over an opponent
--GB 31 is where your middle finger will fall if you stand at attention, right behind the quad muscle mass. Muay thai leg kick target.
--GB 34 is over the peroneal nerve which is over the bump on the outside of the lower knee. If you get the nerve, you produce a paralysis known as "foot drop," and if you miss, you fold the knee anyway.
--TW-23 is just behind the rim of bone at the front of the temple. A fragile place for an elbow which may collapse the bone around the eye.

Anyone have any other personal favorites?