RELAXED fist conditioning

[foolinthedeck]

i need to condition my fists, make the skin on my knuckeles less likely to bleed and split, but i dont want relaxation and sensitivity to suffer even 1%. whats a good way in your opinion to do this?
this is for hitting pads and focus mits, but hitting with no tension, my hands are fine but the skin still breaks.

not bags surely, so what sand buckets?

[yenhoi]

thai pads
focus mitts
wallbag
heavybag
other random things around you

:eek:

[foolinthedeck]

did i mention RELAXED training?
why do i need a wall bag just to condition the skin, i dont want iron palms, and i dont want to hit 'harder' just to have slightly tougher skin on me knuckles... maybe all i need is to rub them with sand paper or go down the beach and hit the sand - lightly!!- but i can do without all those external things

[[Censored]]

Coarse canvas sandbag should work fine. Or just glue a piece of sandpaper to a cement wall. ;)

[Stevo]

Foolinthedeck, try Friar's Balsam if you can get it in the UK.

[canglong]

foolinthedeck,
I thought it was the absence of relaxation and sensativity that cause these things to happen.

[[Censored]]

Or try dragging your knuckles along the ground as you walk, if you haven't already ;)

[John Weiland]

Originally posted by foolinthedeck
i need to condition my fists, make the skin on my knuckeles less likely to bleed and split, but i dont want relaxation and sensitivity to suffer even 1%. whats a good way in your opinion to do this?
this is for hitting pads and focus mits, but hitting with no tension, my hands are fine but the skin still breaks.

not bags surely, so what sand buckets?
The wall bag is your answer. Don't try to hit with power---that will come eventually---but start out with perfectly formed punches "from the heart" and stop before you abrade the skin.
After enough time, you will be hitting effortlessly with power and your skin and bones will be strong enough to handle it.

Good luck.

[OdderMensch]

Yeah, listen to John here. Hit the bag lightly, tap the bag, and do so while being relaxed and with proper structure in the hand. In our kwoon, Sifu gets mad when people bash on his bag till thier hands bleed, it's no good for training and it gets his bag dirty ;)

Thai stlye or other hand pads are much better for hitting with full power.

[stuartm]

Hi,

Cant you relax and hit the sandbag hard - surely thats the whole point. 'Ging' , 'Fa Ging', whatever you want to call it is created through that process of being completely relaxed until the point of contact.

What i tell my students is that it is a pointless exercise just hitting the bag as hard as you can and as many times as you can. You should make each punch individual and examine the structure (of the whole body) behind each punch - looking at the waist, rooting. directing energy and the mental focus.

I have seen many schools where they perform jic kuen in application and the punch is completely rigid without any elasticity behind it. Once the punch has hit it should naturally 'bounce' back as the hand becomes relaxed again. In other words the punch should whip back returning to its relaxed state and changing to another technique if necessary. Look at Ip Ching punching - very fast and powerful, but very relaxed.

John Weiland speaks a lot of sense - train for structure and relaxation initially - power and energy is learnt through time.

Regards, Stu

[Wingman]

Originally posted by foolinthedeck
i need to condition my fists, make the skin on my knuckeles less likely to bleed and split, but i dont want relaxation and sensitivity to suffer even 1%. whats a good way in your opinion to do this?
this is for hitting pads and focus mits, but hitting with no tension, my hands are fine but the skin still breaks.

not bags surely, so what sand buckets?

Assuming that you are punching properly, then this is what you should do to prevent your knuckles from bleeding:

Soak your hands in a mixture of vinegar, salt and soy sauce before and after punching.

This would also prevent your knuckes from developing calluses and becoming darker in color.

This is no joke! I'm very serious. Just give it a try before you ridicule at my suggestion.;)

[Mr Punch]

Wall bag.

[reneritchie]

You can relax and hit hard but very few people can do it right from the get go, hence the step by step approach John recommends. First learn walk, then learn fly.

Build the relaxation and path slowly, then use it (rather than brute force) to increase the speed/power.

[sel]

i found a cause of bleeding was that my knuckles weren't square on when connecting or they slipped down slightly apon withdrawal. so i was actually scraping the skin off them. with practice it stopped happening. maybe this could be a cause, it may be that your skin is fine, but your technique isn't.

[foolinthedeck]

thanks
especially for those replies geared towards conditioning the skin directly as opposed to how to hit with power while still being relaxed etc.. thats a given DONT TENSE!

it may well be that my structure is just bad, because i emphasise relaxation first, and i only did this hitting focus mits things for the first time yesterday in about 2 years.. i hit it relaxed for a long time and just rubbed the skin off.. its not something that i plan to do all the time, and i'd rather develop my power through other means that hitting bags, i just wanted to know that if i do do it then will my hands be tough enough.

to put it another way, say that i have loads of qi, loads of jong, i'm full of energy from lots of internal training, but havent really hit very much, this is great for transmission of enrgy thru palms in a no inch situ, but if aksed to hit a bag with a fist a few times, i want to be able to do so without physical discomfort at point of impact.

your responses may well be the same, but thought i'd express myself clearer.

[fa_jing]

When we trained using focus mitts, we often used bag gloves.

[teazer]

Originally posted by foolinthedeck
i need to condition my fists, make the skin on my knuckeles less likely to bleed and split, but i dont want relaxation and sensitivity to suffer even 1%. whats a good way in your opinion to do this?
this is for hitting pads and focus mits, but hitting with no tension, my hands are fine but the skin still breaks.

not bags surely, so what sand buckets?

If you really want to spend your time on it, any practice that causes abrasions followed by some alcohol rub. You can get witchazel at many supermarkets for cheap. Just don't abrade the skin to the extent it splits.
Personally I see it as a waste of time though. If your lifestyle required it, it would have already developed.

[EnterTheWhip]

Originally posted by foolinthedeck
but hitting with no tension, my hands are fine but the skin still breaks. This is because you are lacking the appropriate tension. You need to figure out what exactly needs to be tense and what needs to be relaxed.

[foolinthedeck]

on review of advice.
i'm going to take that of teazer basically.. i'm going to train on the beach more, since i live 5 mins from it, after i have done my nei gong and forms i'll hit the sand a bit in a relaxed way and then rub something in, be it calendula/arnica/witchasel/seawater...

also i think its worth doing my feet a little, i recently scuffed my foot on a rock in greece and bled very easily.

the point of all this is this:

say that i'm super relaxed and sensitive. i can beat anyone (hooya!) - now i roll with someone who is like sandpaper. no amount of relaxation will help me. but a little conditioning will.