The heavy bag thread got me thinking of training to deliver and receive strikes. We all have familiar training methods for delivering strikes. However, how does your school teach students how to “take” a strike.
I remember in the 60s and 70s when point sparring was being replaced by light, or rarely, medium contact. Many practitioners soon found out that they had never learned how to take a punch or kick. In challenge matches with boxers, the karate peeps were getting their arses handed to em.
So how does your school teach students to take a punch?
mostly for the striking it’s a mixture of muay thai checking and boxing defense.
standup mainly keeping hands up at all times (drill that over and over) can’t stress this enough imo. in my experience fighting at angles and circling away have been a good mixture to negate a lot of the strikes coming in or not taking the blow directly. Fighting is fighting and your going to get hit. It’s more about taking more glancing blows and fade aways than actually standing there taking punishment. I’ve never been a big fan of taking a direct shot. some traditional schools have a warped concept of taking blows and teaching these concepts to students that i detest. Best advise i give students ‘get the hell outta the way’.
check out this post..in the middle of the blog there’s a clip of the Sifu taking hits during chi-sao. He says the best way to train to take a hit is to be hit.
I agree to a certain point, but to take un-needed damage is dumb. You need to know the effects of a shot so you can mentally be able to handle it but to just take shots is not smart or effective in the long run. I’m not a WC guy i’ve trained in many of the grappling arts though and the exercise he was doing (looked like sticky hands to me from some other styles i’ve done) looks like it does not move the hands from the inside position to the outside? correct? In the clinch with wrestling and judo alternating hands for grip is essencial plus changing levels is also not takin into consideration for this vid. In the vid the guy keeps his hand to the inside just trying to redirect the others forces not taking into consideration the grip. Of course i don’t know what he’s trying to do with this drill I didn’t listen to the commentary just watched so i might have it wrong on what he’s trying to accomplish.
[QUOTE=grasshopper 2.0;984250]check out this post..in the middle of the blog there’s a clip of the Sifu taking hits during chi-sao. He says the best way to train to take a hit is to be hit.
http://unemploymentroadshow.com/2010/01/15/i-know-kung-fu/[/QUOTE]
I watched that clip and think that was an excellent demonstration of being able to take multiple strikes and continue fighting. Props to Shifu Haenel!
Of course, NOT getting hit is optimal, but real life doesn’t always work like that.
Pai Da is an excellent way to train the body to take punishment. Though I think taking a strike requires as much mentally as it does physically. Perhaps mental training is more important than physical training.
Any ideas or comments?
Richard
get your students to learn iron body training. iron shirt and iron head is a beginner skill. its the first gong students shud learn.
dont make the wait 10 years.this isnt 1970s anymore where shady cantonese trick their white students
if u dont teach it get someone who does to come do a seminar for ur students
learning forms is NOT required in traditional northern kung fu. learning special conditioning and strength training excercises IS mandatory and is absolutely not open to negotiation
in modern times people get those two reversed
Having to relocate and find new schools I have found many schools have different training methods for this. Three of my favorites in order are 1 it is called many different things I just call it exchanging blows. You start out light and work your way up to hard exchanging combos on a partner as he returns the favor. The down side to this training in the school were I trained was students passed through in a hurry never sticking around. This was in a time were I trained at this school for 2 years and was in best shape of life. The closest way of describing training method is like watching a Kyokushinkai Karate fight. We also used training methods like shooting figures into rice, basic Celestines, medicine ball,
Heavy bags for entire body, bags of beans, rice, Steele shot, sparring 2. In kenpo we used medicine ball and sparring, and a drill were we would lay down and take turns walking across each other stomachs. 3rd in kick boxing we used medicine ball and sparring. So to answer your question in my experience for my self the best condition to take a punch is the first way as described as a kyokushinkai fight, then followed bye a lot of sparring, 3rd medicine ball unfortunate when training solo no matter how hard you train for this the medicine ball is the only tool I can think of for this practice and you dont get the same result with it as another tossing it into you.
Good luck on your findings.
[QUOTE=mooyingmantis;984267]I watched that clip and think that was an excellent demonstration of being able to take multiple strikes and continue fighting. Props to Shifu Haenel!
Of course, NOT getting hit is optimal, but real life doesn’t always work like that.
Pai Da is an excellent way to train the body to take punishment. Though I think taking a strike requires as much mentally as it does physically. Perhaps mental training is more important than physical training.
Any ideas or comments?
Richard[/QUOTE]
I don’t know too much about Pai Da. perhaps you can enlighten me?
pi dá (pat strike)
Pai Da is used in many traditional styles to toughen the body. It is a small part of Iron Body/Iron Shirt training (along with herbs for internal and external use) in which the body is hit in several ways using various instruments.
For example, years ago I made what looked like an old school paddle out of a 2X4. We used the edge (2" area) in class to strike our arms and legs to toughen them. Bags filled with sand, beans, or steel shot were also used to strike various areas of the body. We also took several pieces of 16g wire bundled them together with duct tape at one end and struck ourselves with the other end. The common “three star” arm and leg conditioning techniques would also be considered methods of pai da.
Clear as mud yet? 
Richard
There is also internal training we you are training the fascia of the body as well to help thick and toughen it so that you can train it to be brought into play when taking blows.
External tissue conditioning as well as internal fascial conditioning.
I also use varous tools to rub against my arms and legs and help condition them as well as train in Iron Palm.
progressive training will see you not injuring yourself and having these skills into old age.
Be silly, and you can harm yourself.
Having learned Hung Ga and Okinawan Karate hardbody methods, I would say to take a punch is really a combination of smothering it, and tensing and focusing the struck area, and taking it in the legs. In this way, you can sustain the force of the blow.
As a Chinese medicine practitioner, I do not advocate getting struck, as there will always be a blow you cannot handle.
iron skills as has been stated.
besides these there are simple ideas for killing power in your opponents attacks.
stepping in, crowding, and how to do these types of things are common in a lot of schools.
I would opt for iron skills and power killing techniques for this type of focus.
evasion is only going to get you so far before you get tired of running. lol 
Smashing your teeth and nose against a fist works great, so does driving your testicles against some ones foot or shin.
Blocking elbows with you temple or jaw is a good way to break your opponents elbow.
In Tai Chi there are methods of softly relinquishing space at the hit, say the shoulder, and redirecting the force through the other shoulder and out the fist to the combatant.
I teach basic iron skills in my school, beginning with samjien, and “pressure testing,” and graduating to leg and body strikes, as well as sam-sing, and other contact drills.
This is not so much so you can stand there and take strikes, but moreso to teach,“courage.”
People fear getting hit, and it will cause hesitation in sparring/fighting, and they will back away from sparring altogether.Many quit Martial Arts for just that reason.
In this way, they learn that,"Getting hit, does not mean “Getting hurt.”
In actuality, you get hit harder playing “touch” football with your friends, than you do in sparring. It is more psychological than physical. We attach an emotion of fear to getting hit while sparring, simply because it is an attack. This training breaks that connection. Students then enjoy sparring.
Everything has its place and its purpose, if practiced intelligently.
progressive contact levels of sparring is more efficent than iron shirt. For one your working on several things while getting psychologicaly used to hitting and getting hit. For another point it is far closer to the real contact you receive in fighting. Medicine ball drills are useful as well as drills with focus mitts where they “slap” you.
I’m not saying iron body training doesn’t work at all.. just that there are more direct methods.
[QUOTE=punchdrunk;984634]progressive contact levels of sparring is more efficent than iron shirt. For one your working on several things while getting psychologicaly used to hitting and getting hit. For another point it is far closer to the real contact you receive in fighting. Medicine ball drills are useful as well as drills with focus mitts where they “slap” you.
I’m not saying iron body training doesn’t work at all.. just that there are more direct methods.[/QUOTE]
Iron body methods progress to what is common viewed as “dynamic” training, in other words one is “attacked” while “attacking” so that the body “gets used” to being hit while fighting.
It is only static in its initial development stages and the reason for that is not to expose the practioner to potential injury too son.
[QUOTE=TenTigers;984633]In this way, they learn that,"Getting hit, does not mean “Getting hurt.”
In actuality, you get hit harder playing “touch” football with your friends, than you do in sparring. It is more psychological than physical. We attach an emotion of fear to getting hit while sparring, simply because it is an attack. This training breaks that connection. Students then enjoy sparring.
Everything has its place and its purpose, if practiced intelligently.[/QUOTE]
Excellent points!
Richard
I think that iron skills go even beyond rudimentary conditioning for being stricken.
We’ve had people come train with us and after some time, they will no longer get bruised up after 3 star drills for instance.
In fact, the incidence of bruising goes way down and flinching drops to nothing and people don’t have a problem with “taking a bite” after a year or so of iron skills training, particularly whole body and hands.
I don’t do any direct iron skills training until after at least 1.5-2 years of indirect training and another thing is that you cannot rush it. It has to be progressive and you have to be patient and willful to get through it.
Iron skills aren’t for the hobbiest, you have to do them properly and maintain them for life. I’m surprised that there isn’t more adoption of them into mma quite frankly, but then again, there aren’t a lot of people that train them properly or completely and there is also a lack of people who even do them at all anymore.
I mean fully and completely that is.
and no, they aren’t for standing there and taking a beating (although, if you had to, you would want this skill set), they are for sustaining, withstanding and recovering in a fully dynamic confrontation. One of the great treasures of Chinese martial arts that doesn’t really have a counterpart in any other.
Sil Lum particularly. Other styles have bits and pieces of iron training, but sil lum has the whole regimen.
anyway…rambling now. lol
[QUOTE=sanjuro_ronin;984635]Iron body methods progress to what is common viewed as “dynamic” training, in other words one is “attacked” while “attacking” so that the body “gets used” to being hit while fighting.
It is only static in its initial development stages and the reason for that is not to expose the practioner to potential injury too son.[/QUOTE]
thanx for the correction.. I’m not a Iron body practitioner, I was going by popular conception. (my mistake). I have heard about body slapping being timed with the person striking at the same time but it still seemed pretty static and definately far removed from the strikes found in sparring. From your post I guess there is more?