Etybolik

when i was 12 i slipped out of a tree and during the decent managed to catch myself with my arm causing my head to slam into the tree. I fell the remaining 15 feet landing on my arm. my arm had been injured the week before. Damn i was a stupid kid

How many stupid pointless things do we do every day in reality, how much do we subject ourselves to at the hands of traditional society, no matter where in the world you are. There's probably more point to conditioning your knuckles than there is to saying "God bless you" when someone sneezes, or taking off a hat when indoors. The point, or more correctly value, in the process is up to the person undertaking it to decide.

maleluka trees are often called paper trees, they have a very soft papery bark that covers the trunk, but underneath it' solid. Makiwara training is where you practice your punching technique on an object to build strenth in the knuckles and wrist so that when you throw a punch and connect with someone you don't hurt yourself as badly as if you only ever did open ait punching. normally makiwara boards stand chest height from the ground and have some give to them so that when you punch you get the resistence but not too much when you're starting out... I just use the tree with a section of the soft bark stripped away.

I gave a bad example and emphasised the wrong point, moving three inches in a push up does nothing. but shortening the push up a little bit and doing them faster would be effective at keeping the muscle from bulking but keep it strong. For some reason a weight training routine based on the opposite just came to mind, doing as much weight as possible for 3 sets with only 4 to 6 reps. If you can't do 4 you decrease the weight, if you can do 6 you increase it.

despite the fact that this thread's been dead for a little bit I found a stie a while ago that mentioned a method called hill training. You run up a hill with maybe about a 20 degree slope at least and then run back down it. at the bottom you continue your sprint for as long as you can. What this does is breaks down the central nervous system's limits on your leg speed. You mind sets limits on what your body can to do keep it from injuring the muscles, which is why some weight lifters hate the concept of a pyramid workout because of muscle memory yadda yadda. Hill training shocks your central nervous system by making you run 'faster than you can run' and your mind re-evaluates the limits it has set because of the sprint afterwards.

A good way to improve strength without bulking the muscle is to do the exercise quickly and for a sustained period of time. example would be moving only maybe 3 inches while doing your push ups, but doing 200 of them.

I asked this question of my sensei once. The stucture of the bone itself is made so that when the impact of the punch damaged the bone it builds the calcified area over the knuckles and actually strengthens the bones in the wrist, elbow, and shoulder if you're punching correctly. I don't remember his exact explanation on the structure of the bone itself, but he suggested working up from softer materials to harder ones. I read someone suggesting gluing nails and glass to a cinderblock, if you train hard enough that may actually be a good idea after a long time. only after a long time...

I started training in the style USA Goju Federation about 4 or 5 months ago and the abuse that some of the people in Goju (mainly the Okinawan forms) can take is amazing. While talking with a friend of mine on the subject of long neglected training methods he mentioned a form of training called Iron Arms, Ironl Chest, and Iron Legs. Martial artists would have training partners strike their forearms, up and down their legs, their entire upper body. all around in just about any area a strike may hit on the main trunk of the body for a sustained period of time. When they healed they were able to take just about that much punishment on their body again without such intense injury occuring to them and eventually would get to the point to where being struck with sticks would do very little damage and could be incorperated(sp) into the training to further strengthen the body. I have not been able to find very detailed information on this myself but was wodering everyone's opnions on it here. I plan to start this form of training once I can find a more reliable source of information on it, I've already begun makiwara training on the maleluka trees near my house and notice a strengthening in my knuckles and wrist.