Josann, there is a major difference between throwing punches at air and throwing at a sandbag. Learning to punch against a solid surface that has enough give to not hurt the hands leads to both stronger hands and, hopefully, no lasting damage to one’s self.
Further, even with my training I would not intentionally strike a bone target with a closed fist, that’s a good way for even professional boxers to break their hands. Open hand, elbow, knee, or soft targets are all better alternatives than punching a guy’s skull with your unprotected hands.
As for people not wanting to mess with me, there’s probably a good 10-15 guys just reading this board that think they could take me. A few of them may even be right. I don’t train to intimidate, or to pick fights. Avoidance and situational awareness have gotten me out of a lot more injuries than hard hands and a quick left hook.
[quote]devildog_jim wrote:
Josann, there is a major difference between throwing punches at air and throwing at a sandbag. Learning to punch against a solid surface that has enough give to not hurt the hands leads to both stronger hands and, hopefully, no lasting damage to one’s self.
Further, even with my training I would not intentionally strike a bone target with a closed fist, that’s a good way for even professional boxers to break their hands. Open hand, elbow, knee, or soft targets are all better alternatives than punching a guy’s skull with your unprotected hands.
As for people not wanting to mess with me, there’s probably a good 10-15 guys just reading this board that think they could take me. A few of them may even be right. I don’t train to intimidate, or to pick fights. Avoidance and situational awareness have gotten me out of a lot more injuries than hard hands and a quick left hook.[/quote]
Agree. Such an attitude is neccesary if one is to keep training MA, or surviving a confrontation of any kind. Mostly I avoid confrontations for the fear of getting kicked out of my gym. If you wanna fight, go do it in a ring or cage.
People reading this and thinking they can take you isn’t as bad as actually looking tough and having wannabe tough guys looking at you in the streets thinking if they should make a move. Fortunately I haven’t had a street fight, yet, and the worst that happened was a guy who didn’t like me for some reason(who wouldn’t like me?), and he ended up grabbing my arm. Fortunately he grabbed me hard enough not to let go when I countered it into something that looked like a standing Kimura arm-lock. But it ended there, and I let him go and there were no problems.
josann your quote i think is wrong it should be “boards dont hit back” that was said ohara from bruce, when ohara shows off his board breaking while bruce thinks one dead dumbass…
I’ve started doing this a little. About two days a week I’ve been doing single punches into the heavy bag barehanded, much like the guys at my old dojo used to do with the makirawa. I’m concentrating on good form and putting as much power into the bag as possible.
After about a month, it does seem like my wrists are a little more stable when striking, and my fist feels “tighter” if that makes any sense.
I try to throw one set of punches from the traditional karate hand position- chambered under the arm- and one set from a more traditional boxing stance.
The only problem is that it’s almost automatic for me to begin stepping and twisting in the boxing stance, so it almost adds more power than I want into the punch just yet.
What I forgot to mention about hitting rigid stuff///stuff with no/little give:
-Not hours of hitting, like the Shaolin. More like a few to 50 punches.
-Punches: “strike so the bone understands it must get harder” not “strike like it’s a person who’ll kill your family if you don’t kill him in one hit”
-if there’s any pain, it subsides in less than a minute
Until now, my knuckles have gotten much harder, and I can strike a concrete surface “harder” without pain (or it goes in a few seconds)…guess I’ll make a vid to show what I mean when I say I’m not striking too hard.
Also, the skin on my knuckles is much thicker.
And, “testing” by hitting the other palm (don’t laugh): it hurts a lot more than before I started “training”. Heck, before I started, after a few punches my knuckles would hurt.
Not too many hits: I read that (some) karate students were supposed to hit the makiwara at least 50 times a day. Makes sense. The body was adapts to stresses which might occur during “day to day life”. And that’s why low volume/abbreviated routines work (Hoffmann and many old-timers would do/reccomend one set of a bunch of exercises. And they did have results)