Originally Posted by
IronFist
Well, palm conditioning is a real thing. You don't see MMA guys do palm strikes too often, though (maybe some Sakuraba style stuff). I assume there are no rules preventing this type of strike. A punch has better range than a palm strike so more guys punch. A punch also better protects the fingers.
Also, real fighting is very instinctive, and making a fist to generate power is more instinctive than using a palm. Not to mention, a tightly clenched fist allows more overall tension to be generated thus more powerful strikes can be generated.
I suspect palm strikes would work best from a grappling range when you're already close and distance isn't an issue.
Professional fighters do body conditioning. They don't call it "iron body" but they get struck a lot and it increases their ability with withstand strikes in the future. There's no silly qigong component to it. It just happens as part of their training. I don't know if any guys do specific body conditioning training outside of sparring, but I'm sure some probably have at some point.
Most of the "iron body" demos you see are just stage tricks and physics tricks and are blamed on "qi" and designed to make people who want to believe think you have mystic powers. I have written at length about this in other posts so there's no reason to repeat myself here, but if any qigong-based iron body practitioner wanted to show that he was actually using qi rather than physical conditioning and stage tricks, there are easy ways to do so. So far, no one has done it.
So obviously you don't see any of that stuff with professional fighters because they are more concerned with improving their fighting rather than impressing people who want to believe with mystic stage tricks.
Muay thai shin conditioning is basically the same thing as iron palm. The bone gets denser because of Wolff's law. Resistance to pain is increased because of a gradual increase in training intensity. Some Muay Thai guys use some liniment. You can use jow, or that peppermint smelling stuff, or Arnica if you believe in homeopathy, or just regular massage, or whatever. The point is to stimulate blood flow. There's no qigong involved in Muay Thai shin training. Iron palm will likely work just as well without the qigong component.