I was just wondering how (or if) the Muay Thai, San Da, and Savate practitioners on this forum train to condition their hands for bare-knuckle strikes?
I would advise against bare nuckle for sport, even in training not a good idea. A buddy of mine who is a former professional muay thai fighter severly broke his hand hitting a pad. He has had to undergo 3 surgeries, and has metal pins in his hand now. I used to hit bags barenuckle, not anymore.
What the hell??? the worst I get from punching bags without mits is serverly grazed knuckles if I do it too much. Ive heard of people breaking wrists from hitting pads without wraps but I have never hurt my wrist from that personally, but a broken hand that bad?? ****!
And why is the word D.A.M.N a censored word, its not even a swear word at all!!
Yeah, he’s been doing the stuff for a long time too, after that he changed sports to doing triathelons (sp?). The angle that he hit just pushed his knuckles into eachother and his hand. crazy stuff.
Its cause of the lack of chi in those arts 
But seriously, i ve seen people njured who ****ed themselves severely with the weirdest movements.
Someone who got out of bed, their feet were cold and they cracked an ankle as they stepped out of bed. People who hit the bag really weak at an angle and their wrist bent and they damaged it etc.
Ive even hurt a tendon in my ribs whilst bench pressing, cracked a rib from a knee to the ribs in a demo that was really really weak.
And other times ive been hit so hard on a knee that people thought i would need surgery and i just got up and im like im fine i didnt even feel it.
I guess its the same with anything though , i know someone who crashed into a car at 220kph with a bike, he flew a few hundread metres into a field where people were looking for him for half an hour and yet the guy had a few bumps and bruises, and i know someone else who crashed at 40kmph and they were in hospital for 8 months.
But to reply directly to the post i dont think a lot of pure sports martial artist use conditioning in the method traditionalists do, unless they come from another art background. They use the term conditioning for things like running getting cardio up etc.
TTT for 7*, Coach Ross, etc.
The question came to mind when I was watching TUF (season 2). Luke Cummo, everybody’s favorite Muay Thai nerd, was shown conditioning his hands using the iron palm bag and performing iron palm chi kung. I have also read comments by Bas Rutten where he claims that his kyokushin background (5th dan) helped strengthen his hands for his bare-knuckle/MMA career.
So it got me wondering if all kickboxers had similar routines. Is punching the bag and pads enough, much like roundkicking the banana bag and Thai pads does all the shin conditioning one needs, or is specific bare-knuckle conditioning required as a supplement?
Hate to break it to the traditional “die hards”, but you can’t make the bones and ligiments of your hands any stronger. No matter what you do, they are still going to be small bones that are easily broken. You can beat your hands until you break stuff, it calcifies, you develop calused hands, etc… but then all you are doing is making your hand into a foot.
Actually, that’s not 100% true. Hitting the bag makes your bones more dense.
Baseball players have more dense bones in their right arm than left (if they are orthodox) from batting. Bones respond to repeated hard contact by thickening.
You’ll still get fractures and whatnot, but there is evidence to suggest boxers have more dense hand and arm bones that non-fighters.
Well from what ive heard even people who have nothign to do with martial arts believe that running densens the bones .
On another note i believe the hittng practise is twofold for traditionalists
1 the constant hitting draws chi to the fist thus coverign it and protecting it
2 it causes microfractures in the bone which heal and the gaps fill up, making the bone denser.
If we rule out the possibility of strengthening the hand’s internal workings, how about training to toughen the hand’s exterior protection, the skin? Jack Dempsey soaked his hands in brine to toughen them. I’m not saying that a martial artist needs or should condition their hands. I am not saying a kickboxer would hurt his/her hands in a streetfight. I just noticed something I had never seen from a kickboxer in Luke’s training. I then wondered if it wasn’t really uncommon, and my lack of familiarity with kickboxing was leading to a misperception. Just curious.
because d@mn is a swear word, but is a socially accepted one. Now, ass is not a swear word… Also, it’s more than just swear words that are censored. For example, we censor the word d0rk. on karate forums, they censor the word bullshido.
Broken wrists can happen if your wrist alignment is wrong. I’ve heard of it happening, but don’t personally know anyone that it has happened to.
hmm… was he throwing a spinning back or bottom fist?
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.
Nah, what you saw was uncommon. We advocate wraps and gloves at all times. I personally don’t use gloves all the time, but advocate that my guys do. I’ve never seen or been taught any specific hand conditioning method via boxing or thai boxing.
Pre 1920’s there were no gloves, but even then, I’ve never heard of any specific hand conditioning.
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.
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.
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“Condition” your hands all you want… only two things will be ture
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great chance of issues later in life as you are turing your hand into a foot
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Will not mean jack-you-know-what when you hit the top of a head, an elbow or similar hard object
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. 