Kickboxers and hand conditioning

[Stranger]

I was just wondering how (or if) the Muay Thai, San Da, and Savate practitioners on this forum train to condition their hands for bare-knuckle strikes?

[bodhitree]

I would advise against bare nuckle for sport, even in training not a good idea. A buddy of mine who is a former professional muay thai fighter severly broke his hand hitting a pad. He has had to undergo 3 surgeries, and has metal pins in his hand now. I used to hit bags barenuckle, not anymore.

[Slade]

What the hell??? the worst I get from punching bags without mits is serverly grazed knuckles if I do it too much. Ive heard of people breaking wrists from hitting pads without wraps but I have never hurt my wrist from that personally, but a broken hand that bad?? ****!

And why is the word D.A.M.N a censored word, its not even a swear word at all!!

[bodhitree]

Yeah, he's been doing the stuff for a long time too, after that he changed sports to doing triathelons (sp?). The angle that he hit just pushed his knuckles into eachother and his hand. crazy stuff.

[Wong Fei Hong]

Its cause of the lack of chi in those arts :D
But seriously, i ve seen people njured who ****ed themselves severely with the weirdest movements.
Someone who got out of bed, their feet were cold and they cracked an ankle as they stepped out of bed. People who hit the bag really weak at an angle and their wrist bent and they damaged it etc.
Ive even hurt a tendon in my ribs whilst bench pressing, cracked a rib from a knee to the ribs in a demo that was really really weak.
And other times ive been hit so hard on a knee that people thought i would need surgery and i just got up and im like im fine i didnt even feel it.
I guess its the same with anything though , i know someone who crashed into a car at 220kph with a bike, he flew a few hundread metres into a field where people were looking for him for half an hour and yet the guy had a few bumps and bruises, and i know someone else who crashed at 40kmph and they were in hospital for 8 months.

But to reply directly to the post i dont think a lot of pure sports martial artist use conditioning in the method traditionalists do, unless they come from another art background. They use the term conditioning for things like running getting cardio up etc.

[Stranger]

TTT for 7*, Coach Ross, etc.

[Stranger]

The question came to mind when I was watching TUF (season 2). Luke Cummo, everybody's favorite Muay Thai nerd, was shown conditioning his hands using the iron palm bag and performing iron palm chi kung. I have also read comments by Bas Rutten where he claims that his kyokushin background (5th dan) helped strengthen his hands for his bare-knuckle/MMA career.

So it got me wondering if all kickboxers had similar routines. Is punching the bag and pads enough, much like roundkicking the banana bag and Thai pads does all the shin conditioning one needs, or is specific bare-knuckle conditioning required as a supplement?

[lkfmdc]

Hate to break it to the traditional "die hards", but you can't make the bones and ligiments of your hands any stronger. No matter what you do, they are still going to be small bones that are easily broken. You can beat your hands until you break stuff, it calcifies, you develop calused hands, etc.... but then all you are doing is making your hand into a foot.

[MasterKiller]

Hate to break it to the traditional "die hards", but you can't make the bones and ligiments of your hands any stronger. No matter what you do, they are still going to be small bones that are easily broken. You can beat your hands until you break stuff, it calcifies, you develop calused hands, etc.... but then all you are doing is making your hand into a foot.

Actually, that's not 100% true. Hitting the bag makes your bones more dense.

Baseball players have more dense bones in their right arm than left (if they are orthodox) from batting. Bones respond to repeated hard contact by thickening.

You'll still get fractures and whatnot, but there is evidence to suggest boxers have more dense hand and arm bones that non-fighters.

[Wong Fei Hong]

Well from what ive heard even people who have nothign to do with martial arts believe that running densens the bones .
On another note i believe the hittng practise is twofold for traditionalists

1 the constant hitting draws chi to the fist thus coverign it and protecting it
2 it causes microfractures in the bone which heal and the gaps fill up, making the bone denser.

[Stranger]

If we rule out the possibility of strengthening the hand's internal workings, how about training to toughen the hand's exterior protection, the skin? Jack Dempsey soaked his hands in brine to toughen them. I'm not saying that a martial artist needs or should condition their hands. I am not saying a kickboxer would hurt his/her hands in a streetfight. I just noticed something I had never seen from a kickboxer in Luke's training. I then wondered if it wasn't really uncommon, and my lack of familiarity with kickboxing was leading to a misperception. Just curious.

[SevenStar]

What the hell??? the worst I get from punching bags without mits is serverly grazed knuckles if I do it too much. Ive heard of people breaking wrists from hitting pads without wraps but I have never hurt my wrist from that personally, but a broken hand that bad?? ****!

And why is the word D.A.M.N a censored word, its not even a swear word at all!!


because d@mn is a swear word, but is a socially accepted one. Now, ass is not a swear word... Also, it's more than just swear words that are censored. For example, we censor the word d0rk. on karate forums, they censor the word bullshido.

Broken wrists can happen if your wrist alignment is wrong. I've heard of it happening, but don't personally know anyone that it has happened to.

[SevenStar]

Yeah, he's been doing the stuff for a long time too, after that he changed sports to doing triathelons (sp?). The angle that he hit just pushed his knuckles into eachother and his hand. crazy stuff.


hmm... was he throwing a spinning back or bottom fist?

[SevenStar]

Actually, that's not 100% true. Hitting the bag makes your bones more dense.

Baseball players have more dense bones in their right arm than left (if they are orthodox) from batting. Bones respond to repeated hard contact by thickening.

You'll still get fractures and whatnot, but there is evidence to suggest boxers have more dense hand and arm bones that non-fighters.


in the arm, yes. What ross is saying is that even if the hands become more dense, the bones of the hand are so small that it still won't make much difference.

[SevenStar]

If we rule out the possibility of strengthening the hand's internal workings, how about training to toughen the hand's exterior protection, the skin? Jack Dempsey soaked his hands in brine to toughen them. I'm not saying that a martial artist needs or should condition their hands. I am not saying a kickboxer would hurt his/her hands in a streetfight. I just noticed something I had never seen from a kickboxer in Luke's training. I then wondered if it wasn't really uncommon, and my lack of familiarity with kickboxing was leading to a misperception. Just curious.


Nah, what you saw was uncommon. We advocate wraps and gloves at all times. I personally don't use gloves all the time, but advocate that my guys do. I've never seen or been taught any specific hand conditioning method via boxing or thai boxing.

Pre 1920's there were no gloves, but even then, I've never heard of any specific hand conditioning.

[EarthDragon]

as Ross said

Hate to break it to the traditional "die hards", but you can't make the bones and ligiments of your hands any stronger.


you CAN make the bones denser as MK said . and ligaments can also be strengthened.

As well as the muscles and facia in the carpels and metacarpels.

[PlumDragon]

thicker = stronger, more dense = stronger.

Cross-sectional area increases exponentially with an increase in radius, which is why your chances of breaking a limb of a tree are better than breakling its trunk.
Density only adds to the strength, obviously.

Tensile strength equations are available on the internet for further reading.

[lkfmdc]

"Condition" your hands all you want... only two things will be ture

1. great chance of issues later in life as you are turing your hand into a foot

2. Will not mean jack-you-know-what when you hit the top of a head, an elbow or similar hard object

[David Jamieson]

Bone density in the small bones of the hands is pretty hard to get without disfiguring the hands as Dave has pointed out. Better to correctly align.

If you are doing exercises to decrease neuralgia through conditioning such as slapping the bags or using a makawari type device or thrusting your hands into urns of hot stone, then you will need to also use the medicines that are applicable to maintain suppleness in the hands. (kind of like how old time boxers and some new use brine or pickle juice to keep the hands from hardening up too much)

typically speaking, bone density is increased through microfractures. It is difficult at best to do this to small bones as compared to large where the diverse effects in a large bone will be lesser than those in a small bone.

Alignment in strikes is by far more important than hardness of hands. With incorrect alignment even the hardest of hands can do relatively little damage.

Having said that, Bag work, mitt work, knuckle ups, finger ups and actually using the hands will condition them enough for the purpose of fighting.

diet that makes consideration of the bones is also important. eat your calcium supplements and try not to consume too much that is detrimental to bone growth or development. Like Caffeien in too large amounts will actually decrease bone density. And there are many other not so good things in diet that lead to problems in teh function and well being of the bodyt.

as a culture, North americans have terrible dietary habits as is indicated by the outstanding amount of obeseity in our society. ON the other hand, we also as a culture do not have much emphasis on exercise and most people look for the easy way out. Lazy is the operative word here, but that's another thread entirely. :P

[SevenStar]

..........
in the arm, yes. What ross is saying is that even if the hands become more dense, the bones of the hand are so small that it still won't make much difference.

[CrazyPalms]

the truth of the matter is ? Joints or your kuckel is not a bone so how can you make it more dense. :eek: ????????

[David Jamieson]

You cannot make knuckle more dense, it is mere cartilage. You can mush it up and make it flatter and you can even callous up the skin over the hand with repititious striking to a hard surface.

Hand conditioning exercises are more for the purpose of getting used to hitting and getting used to the pain and through repitition, easing the neuralgia of it.

Believe it or not, there are practices in martial arts systems that are not medically or scientifically sound and in fact there are a lot of things that are based upon superstitions of unschooled and illiterate men.

For some reason these men are held in high regards as thinkers when in factthey were only good at fighting.

But it's not all bad. There's just a lot of nonsense tossed into teh mix that makes it a lot of snow to shovel before you can get to the cabin door.

[MasterKiller]

For some reason these men are held in high regards as thinkers when in factthey were only good at fighting. Well, if I want to learn how to ride a pony, theoretically I would find the best pony cowboy around and learn how he does it, right?

How come no one ever mentions the rice-grabbing training in Gracie's "SuperFit" sport training exercise book?

BTW, he has horse-stance training in there, too. ;)

[Wong Fei Hong]

Dudes if knuckles are made of cartilage then i got a wooden woody and a boney boner. Knuckles are 2 pieces of solid bone but have cartillage around the joints where the bones meet etc.

As for making them harder or not i reckon if you did a double blind study of 50 dudes who did iron palm and were builders.
With 50 women with equal sized hands who baked cakes at home for a living, and got them to play that game where people take it in turns to bash each others knucles in.

Then we could come to the conclusion of if it is possible to toughen up knuckles or not :rolleyes:

http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/xray/ a pretty pretty xray of a hand with bones.

Quoted from this amazing site about our body http://library.thinkquest.org/2935/Natures_Best/Nat_Best_Low_Level/skeletal_page.L.html

The tips of these bones are the knuckles you see when you make a fist.

And last but not least.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=knuckles
# A rounded protuberance formed by the bones in a joint. Even gives you a little wav file to pronounce it correctly.

I dont understand why after all the evidence of people toughening their bones through iron palm, running or batting as someone mentioned. People will still say oh noo it doesnt.

[mok]

Actually, it is proven that bone density increases with sustained contact.

Got these links off bullshido (to give credit where it is due).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15793082
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15793082


But I've been hitting heavy bags, wooden dummies, even walls bare-knuckled for some time now and I can assure you that my hands can take and dish alot more punishment than when I started. And my hands and knuckles are noticeably bigger and heavier than before - the top knuckles have raised and expanded sideways and now form a ridge of sorts; and it is bone, not cartilage.


Of course trying to explain that to anyone who's only ever used gloves is like trying to explain the colour green to ablind man. :rolleyes:

[Badger]

Want to tuff -up your hands? Forget all that putting mungbeans in a bag & quoting some ancient chinese prayer. Try carpenter work. that's right: hammer swinging. board-carrying, beam-lifting, tool-toting, no whining.......and hit the bag bare-knuckle(start slowly of course).



Badger

[Oso]

I disagree.

Plumbing is the way of the hand...

[Shaolinlueb]

seems people jsut go wail on a bag. put some hand wraps on and do teh antural progression of hitting the heavy bag without 16oz gloves. if you go wailing on it right away and go into a fight without hitting the bag some, of course you're gonna break your hand. i hit the bag without gloves, but i dont wail on it. sometimes i throw a hard punch or two, and quite frankly it does hurt. just condition a bit. other then that wear gloves if you are worried about it.

[Shaolinlueb]

"Condition" your hands all you want... only two things will be ture

1. great chance of issues later in life as you are turing your hand into a foot

2. Will not mean jack-you-know-what when you hit the top of a head, an elbow or similar hard object


pretty much.
look at the iron silk actor. chan fu (i forget his name) his hands are all callised and messed up.

and true on the elbow comment. you have a lot of other weapons to use too.

[lkfmdc]

punching walls.... yup, right up there with rolling bottles on your shins and kicking trees... :rolleyes:

teh things people say....

[greendragon]

These methods may sound unorthodox, but...
1. Playing video games for long periods of time builds hand strength
2. Rinsing the hands with urine after the trauma will make the skin healthier. This is used by mexican street fighters and midwest outlaw bikers.
3. Smearing your hands with your feces before a fight will make the opponent run away making you the winner by default. This is taught in Special Education Forces training.

[David Jamieson]

auto mechanics will give your hands a hearty callouse.

you can ease neuralgia (pain) with hard striking exercises, you will likely damage bone in the hands before you can create a method of safely and slowly microfracturing in it.

You can develop thinkness in your hands from increase blood flow and callouse on your knuckles from repetitive striking.

if you do not use softening agents and massage, you will have issues when you age. Possibly rheumatism, maybe arthritis, but you absolutely need to use the medicine if you're going the iron palm way and frankly it takes such a long time for results that will count, it is not an efficient practice for a competitive fighter.

Maybe a medieval soldier, or warrior, or a kungfu practitioner who wants to invest the time. lol

mostly these exercises are in teh realm of force feedback and get you used to the pain associated with striking and to correct you way of striking to ensure that you don't cause damage to your wrists or hands.