Hand Conditioning

How many here actually partake in the practice of hand conditioning?Hitting constantly on a piece of steel or wood wraped with rope.Maybe even hitting sand or bags of sand.To make your fists hard?My next question is,do the techniques that are used in Kung Fu meant for this kind of conditioned hand?And is it possable that the lack of focus on those type of things may be weakening the effectiveness of the art?I am an avid fan of TKD.Yet I know that the Olympic style taught at most schools in the U.S. isnt as effective as the old style in real fighting.Has anyone thought about this in requards to Kung Fu?I have seen masters in TKD shatter stones with their bare hands.But they have conditioned them.They dont have nice soft hands. And they look like either hams,or penball hammers.Thoughts?

I practice Chinese Iron Palm. My opinion is that it is an integral part of a total system. The method I follow starts of with a bag of Chinese mung beans. You strike the back 4 times, 1 palm, 2 back hand, 3 side hand and 4 tiger claw. You then switch hands. After a period with the bean bag you move to a bag of smooth ¼ inch stones. After this bag you move to a bag with ¼ inch iron or steel balls and stay with that bag for as long as you practice. After about a year with the advanced bag I started to feel like my hands could do anything. After some 16 years of practice my hands still look normal. The knuckles on my right hand were damaged a bit when I was a Karate student and punching a board with rope around it. When I think about that now, I have to laugh. What a great way to damage you hands for the rest of your life.

For less "hard core" practitioners of Kung Fu, knuckles are the only part of the hands that are conditions, plus the palm. This is done by doing pushups on the first two knuckles of the hand. After a while, the skin thickens, or calluses up.

For more hard core practitioners of Kung Fu. We have many methods of conditioning the hand. Water training is one of the first stages, in which one of the practices is to do forms and such in a small pool on the pool wall. It conditions knuckles, feet and palms faster, but there is also a higher risk of injury.

Next stage is sand training, where the practitioner methodically shovels his hands in super-heated sand. This burns the first layer of the skin. If done for a long period of time over, say, a year, the whole hand's skin will become thickened.

The third stage is fire training. One technique in fire training is: A dense wooden poll wrapped with rope. The rope is lighted and the pole is striked much like practicing on a manikin.

Manikin is the last stage, in which we strike the limbs of the manikin, which are wrapped with thick rope.

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Underaged Drunken Monkey

Wing Lam has it right. My biggest obsticle in Iron Palm are the knuckes that I "conditioned" in karate. The cool thing about Iron palm is that you don't get huge swollen knuckles, but rather much more dense ones. Another nice aspect of chinese conditioning methods is that you don't have to look foreward to arthritis. I don't know what kind of medecine TKD has. I took Tang Soo Do for a while and for their blue belt (blackbelt) testings they break a smooth river rock with a knife hand. Thats all very tough, but without addressing the yin side (chi kung, medecine) your doing damage to yourself.

I guess to answer your questions, yes many of us here do condition the hands, and yes, many of the techniques in Kung Fu can be used with the type of conditioning you explained. Your strikes will be highly effective, and focused, but you may find some techniques a little more difficult, like some Chin Na. Not impossible, just a little more difficult. It may be better if you took it a little slower, and did something like iron palm (WingLamStudent explained it pretty good, but remember to use a linament). That way your hands maintain their full range of motion, and suppleness.

I've seen many people with hands conditioned the "hard" way, and they were still able to use their hands in normal everyday life, even though their hands weren't very flexible. They could still move their hands, they just didn't have the motion to twist out of, or avoid some traps and locks. Of course you would have to get past their well conditioned hands to prove it to them [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]. If this doesn't concern you, then that's cool too. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

I guess the important point is that conditioning is (or should be) a big part of kung fu, whether it's chi cung, muscle/tendon changes, iron palm/body, or just plain stance work. They are meant to sharpen your tools, or strengthen your walls of defense. I'm sure kung fu would still work without extreme conditioning, but if you can put in the time and effort, you will add a lot to your style.

My friends and I always make jokes about "the paw" that many hard style conditioners have, but that's just good natured ribbin' ... I'd never want to be on the business end of a good knifehand to the temple (or even leg for that matter). It's all good, I just couldn't tell you of any long term effects from it.

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Jaguar Wong
www.superaction.com

[This message has been edited by Jaguar Wong (edited 08-25-2000).]

WingLam Student,
You say that you do 4 tiger claw against the bag. Yet, i have read many books by iron palm masters that say banging your fingers against things can eventually ruin your eyesight. What do you have to say about this?

Yeah, I forgot to mention the liniment (Dit Dot Jow). With out that I would not even think of training my hands.

Before I started Iron Palm training, I was concerned about the dexterity of the hands because I play the guitar. At the time a senior student who was training Iron Palm and also played the guitar told me that it actually helped him to play better. Over the years, I have found this out to be very true.

The important thing is to do it correctly, do it everyday, do not over train and use the Jow.

Phantom
The tiger claw strike is only one of the four strikes. It is done one time with each hand repetition. As far as it ruining my eyesight, well I have been doing it for a long time, I am now 45 years old and only need glasses to drive.

I have been using a makiwara for over 20 years. This is a traditional makiwara, not one of those BS little clapper things you see in the back of black belt mag. Yes I have enlargement of my first two knuckles, no I don’t wear glasses and I have no pain or arthritis in my hands. Funakoshi, Nakayama, Nishiyama, Kanazawa and more all consider Karate without makiwara training to be little more then aerobics. I can watch somebody throw ONE punch and tell if he has used one or not. It is that obvious. Any Karate practitioner who thinks he can defend himself but has not done makiwara training is fooling himself IMO. The sad thing is old style makiwara training is rare now. It is shunned as being old school and dangerous. The funny thing is I have a lot of friends well over 40 who have been hitting the board for 20 years or more and not one of them has any problems because of it.

Tora,
Could you please describe the old style makiwara training as opposed to the modern method? I am certain that the old Okinawan Masters knew how to train their hands without damaging them. It would be interesting to see what the difference might be. Did they use any liniment like the Chinese Jow?

Thanks,
Mark

Im not sure if what I did was a good idea or not but I simply used sand paper on my knuckles. I would take fine sand paper and grind until the knuckles bled a little then I would stop and pore peroxide on them. Do the same thing the next day. You grind away the callous and you are left with thick skin. This gives very quick results in like a week.

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I should be practicing right now.

Grinding sandpaper into my knuckles sounds a little extreme.But,I like the Idea that to use your hands as weapons,you have to make them weapons.There are two ways to take this however.Conditioning would be one.And technique or experience would be the other I think.I just cant get away from the idea that a backfist would be better with a hard conditioned fist than a softer fist from someone who doesnt do the hand conditioning.We all know that Mr.Bruce Lee had huge knuckles from hitting wood.Could he have hit as hard or been as effective if he had'nt conditioned his hands for that very purpose?

I think you can hit as hard or be as effective …. But only for one good punch. If you break or damage your hand with the first strike then were will you be? Sand paper on the skin will condition the skin but there must be some kind of conditioning for the muscles and bone too.

WingLamStudent, there are knuckle training techniques that I am aware of that exist...

The more common techniques are pushups on the knuckles of the fist. This techniques takes a while. For it to make a difference, it takes about a year or two. Doing pushups on thin carpet this way will also condition the skin.

There is a theory that when bones are continually stressed, it encourages bone growth. Punches against high stress may encourage bone growth of the carpals and wrist. I wouldn't try it though. I don't want people blaming me for their injuries.

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Underaged Drunken Monkey

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by WingLamStudent:
Tora,
Could you please describe the old style makiwara training as opposed to the modern method? I am certain that the old Okinawan Masters knew how to train their hands without damaging them. It would be interesting to see what the difference might be. Did they use any liniment like the Chinese Jow?

Thanks,
Mark
[/quote]

Old makiwara was like straw and rope. The straw has some kind of aniseptic effect. Repeated irritation could lead to cancer, and "other bad stuff".

There are a few different makiwara's. Ones using sponges and canvas. Sponges and some kind of spring from an automobile.

I saw a homepage describing how to make the spring one but lost the url and never was able to clarify what kind of spring is used.

I've seen ones consisting of rope wrapped around posts. And they just pound away.

There is a special method using muscle locking, breath and locking out the arm that develops power and kime but its not the same as pounding the fist.

You kind of penetrate and drill into the pad and lock tense and use the kaiai when it begins to offer a certain type of resistance to you punch.

The spongyer ones, i'm told, are good for strengthening your wrists.

Thanks

It's a leaf spring from the rear suspension.

JWT

Hey guys!!! When you're doing bag work (not neccessarily full out). Do you go with wraps or bare, and why?

At first I used bag gloves, because of the wear on my precious skin. After iron palm training, I didn't need the gloves when working the bag. I was working the bag pretty much full out without even a little redness in the skin and knuckles (well a little red, but that was from the sting of the bag).

I didn't have tough calloused skin, it was normal to the touch, and didn't look any different, but after the steel shot (bb's), the heavy bag was almost heaven. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

I haven't done iron palm for a long time (I quit the training a while ago), but I can still work a bag pretty good before I feel the need to put the gloves on.

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Jaguar Wong
www.superaction.com