Quote Originally Posted by Yum Cha View Post
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.

A little Dit ta jau on bruised forearms, or fist prints on your body is not iron palm, don't confuse the two. Jau heals by promoting circulation and letting your body do its job in optimum circumstances. Western medicine talks about cold/heat. Cold for the first few hours and heat thereafter. Not a lot of difference, in my opinion. Boxers always had a witchazel rubdown. Witchazel is jau. So is Ben Gay, Denko Rub, etc, etc... Recipies may vary, and the effectiveness from person to person as well.

It may contain something like speerment oil, or other herbs which many new age lawsuit weary "health consultants" say is "unfriendly" and may cause a reaction in some people, (especially if it gets on the pink bits!) and thus some people say they "can" be bad for you.
After four or so years of doing iron palm two to three times a week, and two years with a fifty-pound bag of steel shot that I literally swing my hands into, I have seen none of this. At one point I was getting callouses on my knuckles and my Sifu made me change my training to avoid this. By all accounts, you cannot tell if someone's hands, forearms, etc, are conditioned if they do it properly. You are probably thinking of the Okniwian guys.

In my experience a bag of ice is very good for swelling that is associated with severe injuries, gooseggs, and contusions, but it does not aid in reducing the bruising and the circulation.
I'm sure there are bad ways just as there are good ways at using and making jow but my Sifu is in his fifties and he doesn't have any of these problems and types at his job as well as has very sensitive and desterous fingers.