Kickboxers and 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. ????????

[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

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/N...al_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/q..._uids=15793082
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q..._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.

[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...

teh things people say....