Hand Conditioning with Knuckle Pushups

[Taff]

How many should you do? And on what surface?

Right now I'm doing it on very thin carpet, in class we do it on hard floor. I'm doing sets of 25, usually 4 of them.

Cheers

[Vajramusti]

Dont need to do knuckle push ups for wing chun IMO.
But it's upto you and your sifu.

[Kevin Bell]

Hey Taff,

To be honest i prefer impact training on pads/wallbags etc.This conditions your hands and also good muscle memory training to hit.

I always harp on about and question the benefit of doing endless amounts of pushups at a VT lesson.Dont get me wrong i'm a fitness fanatic but you can do this in your own time.I go to VT to concentrate purely on fighting skills,practise this in your own time.

Endless amounts of press ups what does it train??Level of difficulty is relatively low.Endurance?Probably train endurance in your hours of Chi Sau.Strength?Far better methods of strength training/conditioning out there such as westside etc...

So after endless amounts of press ups what have you actually achieved?Not a great deal (in my opinion only).

[Taff]

Hi guys, the pushups we do in class are part of a warm up that's all.

I just heard that knuckle pushups were helpful for conditioning.

In general, I use normal pushups just as a fitness method. I like to use it to check how my body is. If I can't do 50 then I reckon there's something wrong. Also, I find clap pushups and other variations pretty handy. Of course you're not going to build huge amounts of strength with this, but there are many types of pushups that can exercise muscles you sometimes wouldn't use.

[anerlich]

There's little value in these as regards "hand hardening". You can't really do that much with the small bones in your fists other than grow knuckle callouses, and pushups won't get you there, though on hard floors you can develop pain tolerance by supporting yourself on one fist, if you're into that.

Supporting yourself on your fists can be good in ground grappling, though mainly on mats - it makes your arm slightly longer and thus gives more reach than a flat palm.

Variants thereof IMO give better wrist conditioning -

on mats, rollover the bottom of your fists onto your elbows. Then roll forward over the fists as far as you can, until your are like in a pushup position on your thumbs. reverse, repeat.

mats again, collapse gradually to one side - back of hand on the ground, then forearm (at 90 degrees to trunk), then upper arm until you are lying on one side, then reverse back to fist pushup position, then go other side, repeat.

Hindu pushups are good, though more for grapplers than WCers.

Boxer Kostya Tszyu does about 500 knuckle pushups at a stretch, including dropping onto the backs of both wrists simultaneously and then jumping back up onto his fists, while dong continuous pushups. Don't even think of trying this without working up to it.

[Vajramusti]

Comments on parts of Anerlich's post:

Hindu pushups are good, though more for grapplers than WCers.

((The pushups(dund-s) and squats(baithak-s) were bread an butter for old time pit wrestlers. Good stuff- seen lots of them))

Boxer Kostya Tszyu does about 500 knuckle pushups at a stretch, including dropping onto the backs of both wrists simultaneously and then jumping back up onto his fists, while dong continuous pushups. Don't even think of trying this without working up to it.

((Yep- Kostya built that up overa long period of time. Most folks would yank something. I go to see Kostya fight here next Saturday. Have a reasonably good seat- cant afford ringside...leave it to those who wish to be seen))

[Stevo]

Knuckle pushups should be quite painful if you're doing them correctly. Contact with the ground should be the same as the contact you'd have with a target during a punch, i.e. not with the flat of the fist (proximal phalanges), but with the lower 2 knuckles, and with the back of the wrist straight, not bent.