If you practice martial arts on your own, you need a training partner who can help you in your training. When you go to learn martial arts from any martial arts academy, you can practice with other students. You do not need to look for a training partner.
You can practice on your own and go to a certain level, you have to do sparring with your training partner to improve your skills. Without training with your training partner, you will not understand many things.
You know and practice parry and block. When you start practicing that with your partner, that's a different story. You have to be good at timing to defend any punch or kick.
When your partner punches, you parry that first, then you grab his hand with your other hand and punch. You grab your opponent hand to have more control of the situation. Your opponent cannot hit you with his hand since you grab that.
When you hit with another hand, you can move forward a little bit to cover the distance. Use your body to generate power. You punch and hit with your hand, it does not mean you use only your hand. Your entire body movement generates power.
Let's watch this video where Master Wong shows how to practice parry, cover, and hit with your training partner.
So can you hit without grabbing your opponent hand after block?
Yes, you can. As soon as you block the punch, you can punch immediately as a counter-attack. You can practice this to understand how to grab and control your opponent in a fight.
If your opponent is very fast, you might not be able to grab his hand. Or, your opponent can punch and move back quickly. Now if you punch after blocking his punch, you will not be able to hit him.
To hit him with a punch, you need to step forward and punch. You can also kick him since he will be in a kicking range after moving backward.
Hope you will find this useful. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section. Thank you very much for reading this.
Stay safe. Always be happy!
Related Posts:
Why Is Headbutt Difficult To Defend and How To Defend Yourself?
Make Your Move Unpredictable - Martial Arts
Self Defense Technique Analysis # 1