Iron palm
Body of training techniques in various Chinese martial arts
- Type
- Open-hand strikes
- Martial arts
- Kung fu
King's Kung-Fu and Tai Chi has taught 5 Animal 5 Family kung fu, tai chi and chi kung in Southern California since 1982. These original school pages cover this style:
Iron palm or iron hand (Chinese: 鐵沙掌, 鐵砂掌 or 鐵絲掌; pinyin: tiě shā zhǎng or tiě sī zhǎng; lit. 'hands hard as iron yet soft as silk') is a body of training techniques in various Chinese martial arts. It is one of the original 72 arts of the Shaolin temple. These conditioning techniques are typically meant to condition the hands to allow a practitioner to deliver very powerful blows without injury to their hands.
Japanese terms for open-hand strikes
| Term | Reading | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 貫手 | nukite | spear hand |
| 掌底 | shoutei | palm heel; heel of the palm |
| 塵浄水 | chirijouzui | ceremonious clapping and rubbing of the palms |
| 八卦掌 | hakkeshou | eight trigrams palm; ba gua zhang |
| 張り手 | harite | slapping the opponent with the open hand |
| 猫騙し | nekodamashi | slapping hands in front of the opponent's face to confuse him |
| 叩き込み | hatakikomi | hatakikomi; slapdown |
| 素首落とし | sokubiotoshi | head chop down |
External links
Facts from Wikidata Q3278307 (CC0); text quoted from English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Data retrieved 2026-10-22.
Data: Wikidata (CC0 1.0); Wikipedia (English) (CC BY-SA 4.0). Retrieved 2026-10-22.