Dit da Jow: Useful or Useless

[Jingwu Man]

The Iron fist training starts off with hand clenching the air 100 times, then you swing your arms to get circulation to your hands.
After that you lightly tap a bag of sand lying on a table with a relaxed fist 100 times. Then you tap your fist againstsomething hard (we use our stone pillars in our hall) 100 times. After that it's back to the sand tapping.
We have Iron fist Jow and bruise Jow, and other medicines for bones and sinews.
All of it is made the father of one of our students who used to do it in China.

I hope that everything is healthy and safe, but I do get the point that is being made.

[mantiskilla]

David,
On a thread like this, ignorance is not good.

Perhaps I wasn't totally clear. Iron Palm Jau is different to dit da Jau. Herein lies the misunderstanding. Two different jaus, two different recipes. And I'm really surprised you didn't know this as well.

And than there is the "Red Sand Palm" which is yet another super version of iron palm....with yet another type of jau, even more caustic and toxic than the other.

And the kind of Iron Palm I'm talking about is permanent and irreversable.

If you want to call conditioning your hands "iron palm", well, I'm not the terminology police - light, medium, heavy, intense, obsessive...whatever. But any way you look at it, banging your hands around injures them, however slightly, and the healing makes them stronger. Bone, tendon, muscle, vessel.... Nerve endings are deadened. Just like sam sing. Does anybody disagree with that?

Does anybody disagree with what I said, if so, what do you think happens instead?

And yes, without qualification, jau helps, I don't want that point to be lost. Slow and steady training, use jau, and stop when it hurts. Jau is also good for contusions, stasis and swelling, like when you get your a$$ kicked.

What set me off is the generic use of "Iron Palm" for basic conditioning, i.e. the slapping of phone books, canvas wall bags filled with shot and stuff like that. Real iron palm is dangerous stuff, not to be trifled with. You use exercise, impact, heat, friction and special jau that is toxic.

Winterpalm and Jingwu, is this the kind of Iron Palm training you do?

Sifu tells me all the old retired enforcers in Guangzhou always meet and eat at the same special restaurant. They have pretty girls to feed them and hold their tea cups while they talk about their glory days...

And for the record, my hands are pretty hard, but, I only started using jau maybe 20 years ago. I quit doing the hardcore impact conditioning 10 years ago. I still train to harden phoenix on one side and tiger claw on the other. Been there, done that, not just talking rubbish.

Monkey,
Ben Gay and other western meds have pain killers like asprin in them, thus the reason that you can injure yourself because you don't feel the pain. But the pain killers are temporary, they'll probably wear off before your next training session.

Anti inflamatories are another treatment...

I seem to remember my sifu telling me something about iron palm jow in which they would put rusty nails, etc. (literally 'iron palm'...iron going into the body) into the jow...sounds like really bad stuff. He also mentioned the same thing about having to have other people holding your tea cups etc. when you get old. Anyway, he wont teach it to anyone because he said there is no point in today's world...hitting the bag is enough.
________
THE CIGAR BOSS

[lunghushan]

hahahah....

Banging your hands around to build callouses, thicken micro-fractures of hard and soft bone and applying poisons to the skin that kill the nerve endings and promote the callouses/scarring is good for your hands in whose universe?

Iron Palm jau is poison. It contains aresnic, metals, and all sorts of similar crap. You don't do iron palm training, and put on magic jau to make it all better. Iron Palm means you sacrifice your hands for fighting, and pay the ferryman on your way out.

??? And you call yourself a Bak Mei student. ???

[Yum Cha]

In pak mei we condition the soul and the heart, not just the hands.

You start by putting small children into a canvas bag and suspending it chest high....

[lunghushan]

In pak mei we condition the soul and the heart, not just the hands.

You start by putting small children into a canvas bag and suspending it chest high....

Okay then ...

No, seriously, there's some post by the Bak Mei people in Vancouver outlining their training of boiling the hands and stuff and I don't think that's a very good idea.

But what do I know, I'm not in Bak Mei.

[Yum Cha]

Okay then ...

No, seriously, there's some post by the Bak Mei people in Vancouver outlining their training of boiling the hands and stuff and I don't think that's a very good idea.

But what do I know, I'm not in Bak Mei.

I know the Sifu in Vancouver you're talking about, and I think you'll find that he probably said, they used to do things like that for the iron palm training but because of the results, they no longer will.

He has one of the old school iron palm recipes but he will no longer pass it on or make it because he has students who have ruined their hands. Now, they are a pretty hardcore lot, and when he says that, you have to listen.

[lunghushan]

I know the Sifu in Vancouver you're talking about, and I think you'll find that he probably said, they used to do things like that for the iron palm training but because of the results, they no longer will.

He has one of the old school iron palm recipes but he will no longer pass it on or make it because he has students who have ruined their hands. Now, they are a pretty hardcore lot, and when he says that, you have to listen.

The thing that I found that seemed the worst was 'iron fist', training the closed fist by banging it into things (makiwara, sand, whatever), which seems to cause a lot of stiffness. I don't recommend that to anybody.

When I was at World Oyama Karate, they used to pound on the makiwara and posts, and really built up their knuckles with callouses, and that's just wrong, IMHO.

Anyways, somebody said NASA is actually developing some sort of bone density machine that pounds on the bones a little bit because in zero-G the bones lose calcium because of lack of stress. That should be interesting if it actually does come out.

[Yum Cha]

Yea, I read about the NASA research. Something important for long term space travel.

On a similar note, they found that for the old girls that get oestioperosis (sp?) a bit of impact aerobics improves bone density.

So, I think it rings true, use it or lose it. Stress increases bone density. Theoretically, stressing them should increase the amount of bone as well, theoretically. Over how many years? etc, etc...

I think the issues come in when tendons and cartlidge begin to get the same treatment. And I think slow and steady seems to be the best solution, like Jing Wu man mentioned earlier on in this thread. And there are tradeoffs, even at lower level.

But still, you have to ask yourself, why? So you can hit hard stuff? Boiling (well, not BOILING, but using heat and salting your hands) is something boxers and bare knuckle boxers did to keep from cutting up their hands in a fight.

Simple physics tells us, mass times the speed of light squared equals energy. Iron palm does not make your hands faster or measurably heavier, thus, there is no more energy released.

Its about pain/endurance, and psychological.

Heavy bag training works up the wrist muscles, teaches you to focus your energy and aim.

My philosophy is aiming for vulnerable targets is more efficient than smashing at hard targets.

[lunghushan]

But still, you have to ask yourself, why? So you can hit hard stuff? Boiling (well, not BOILING, but using heat and salting your hands) is something boxers and bare knuckle boxers did to keep from cutting up their hands in a fight.

No, not so you can hit hard stuff, but when people wrap up their hands before fighting because they worry about breaking their hands, it's always kindof funny.

But salting up their hands and all that, I don't know about that. It seemed like the boiling the hands before the tournament thing was a bad shortcut. But I'm not in Bak Mei, so I don't know.

[TenTigers]

in a nutshell, wolf's law states that consistant and gradual stress placed upon a bone will increase its density. This is where your iron palm and nasa studies meet. The hot water is only one part of the component, to increse circulation, which is why tcm does not advocate rice but heat and massage. cold causes stagnation, slows healing and exacerbates the injury. callouses are not the goal of makiwara. These are simply pioeces of the puzzles. look at them. put it together. it's all there.

[Jingwu Man]

Yum Cha, your definitely right about the psychological aspects of Iron fist/palm
training. The way my teacher puts it, the training is to not mind the pain and shock that comes from hitting a target, so that when you do need to use it, you can just belt out a heavy strike and not hold back anything for fear of damage. You can just beat.