You face your attacker. It's going to be a close-range fight. Your assailant grabs you, and drops to the ground in pain. You already know this nerve strike. The beauty of this application is you execute your nerve strikes with your knee.

Nerve Strikes From Childhood Antics
When you were a kid, did you ever receive (or give) a "Charlie Horse?"

It's that sickeningly painful feeling you get when someone raps his or her knuckles on the center of one of your muscles.

When we were kids, the older boys in the neighborhood would pound us a good one on the edge of the biceps or on the middle of the thigh. Boy, did those punches hurt -- a nerve strike, right on the muscle. Ouch.

Using the Thigh Nerve Strike
Early in my martial-arts studies with Steve Golden (original Bruce Lee and Ed Parker student), the more senior students reacquainted me with the nerve strike on the thigh muscle.

Except, they executed their thigh nerve strikes with their knees.

We would be in close, fighting. I would concentrate on the hands, and make the beginner's error of forgetting about the lower lines of attack.

Suddenly, when my opponent's leg was slightly to the outside of mine, he'd angle his leg back in and dig his knee into my upper leg -- right on the Charlie Horse spot.

The knee would strike my leg, and I would instantly feel like vomiting. The pain started as a sharp pain, but would quickly spread to the rest of the thigh. I had to limp to the side of the workout area.

Improving Your Nerve Strikes
Execute your nerve strikes when your opponent's attention is focused on your face or hands. In other words:

* Take advantage of unexpected distractions

* Create your own distractions

* Knee strike as a secondary move

* Don't look down before you strike -- no sense warning your opponent

And as you strike with your knee into the nerves on the thigh, already be on your way with your follow-up technique.

What and where will you strike while your opponent is reacting to the nerve strike on the thigh? Will you follow with another nerve strike to a different part of the body?

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