Knuckle press-ups

[ESA-Shotokan]

Something I have noticed a lot in many karate classes is the absence of knuckle press-ups in any of the sessions!

 

Does your dojo include these as start or end of lesson exercises? If not, do you do them yourself and again, how many per day; per week?

 

I do them every day but only about 50 at a time.

 

If you ever want to give your hands a good punishing, do sets of 20 knuckle press-ups followed immediately by some bare-knuckle bag work; say 50 punches on each hand, hard into the bag. Then straight back into more press-ups. It certainly toughens the hands BUT not recommended for a new person as you will simply injure yourself.

 

[equaninimus]

We work our way up to about 50, beginning with sets of five at the beginner level.

 

I don't do them on my own anymore. Ironically, I got in trouble for doping them in Basic Training. I was dropped and did my "twenty" on my knuckles (the only way pushups seemed natural to me at the time ), and found myself with a hollering drill sergeant inches from my face, adn was made to continue until "he was tired." It was only another forty, but I learned my lesson.

[turonaga]

nope, no knuckle push ups for me nor will i allow it in my juniors. but we do finger push-ups (diving push up and regular) our reason, we just want to toughen the first two knuckles, plenty of way to do that without knuckle push ups.

[cross]

Its the students choice. Juniors are asked not to.

[Sibylla]

We do lot of knuckle press-ups. Often at the start and/or at the end. I think it is more for strengthening the wrist than thoughening the knuckles.

[trekmann]

For some reason I just got into the habit of doing Knuckles push-ups when I first started training. I can still only do up to 30 though. Generally it is up to the student if they want to do normal or Knuckle PU's. However as you become more advanced I think there is an expectation that you will use knuckles. Never seen anyone use fingers though.

[Shorinryu Sensei]

We do both knuckle pushups and finger tip pushups every class. There are no set number, but rather as many as you can in a minute or two. Some, like Rod in my class, can do them all day long (he's 50 years old and built like a bull!), while others can only do a few, then have to relax, then start again.

 

The knuckle pushups are to strengthen the wrist, not to toughen the knuckles.

[TheDevilAside]

It's your choice at my school.

[equaninimus]

In a conversation with Sensei Zempo Shimabukuro this summer:

 

ME: Sensei, what about KI?

 

ZS: Key? Your hotel key not with your clothes?

 

ME: No, Sensei, Ki. Internal energy.

 

ZS: Oh, yes, I see.

 

ME: Well, how should I work on building my KI?

 

ZS: More fist pushups, don't worry about ki!

 

[Ironberg]

Knuckle Pushups seemed to go beyond conditioning when I tried doing them on my driveway concrete.

 

More than ever, I'm being asked to lead the beginning class exercises and warmups. Being more conditioned than most people in my tiny town, I'll usually be doing knuckle pushups equivelant to the the amount of pushups I ask people to do (40 or 50). My instructor wouldn't care if you turned regular pushups into knuckle. He wouldn't care if you turned regular pushups into clapping pushups, people do that to. A person shouldn't be penalized for making his workouts harder, as long as they aren't effecting anyone else's workout.