Is body hardening a lost practice?

[Spartacus Maximus]

The conditioning or hardening of various areas of the body to withstand impacts is a practice found in many martial arts. Especially external type systems native to Asia. Every system has a history of methods for achieving this and each has methods. However it seems that these are no longer as widely trained as they once were.

Besides the fact that these are physically difficult, painful and time consuming, what other reasons could there be for these to fall out of practise among practitioners?

How many of you out there practise or teach a type of body hardening or conditioning? Are the training methods used specific to your system or school?

It seems like an old fashioned thing to do as all the martial artist seen doing it are older people who began training decades ago. Outside Asia it is even rarer and nearly unheard of with very few notable exceptions

[126barnes]

I think generally speaking people are wimps these days. The avg guy with a labour job from years gone by were more hard core than the avg MA guy of today.

Forget body hardening, if dojo trained half as hard as they did even 15-20 years ago they wouldn't have enough students to keep the doors open.

[Spartacus Maximus]

From a certain point of view, it is true that people in today's modern society may be less willing to put themselves through physical practise that is time consuming and painful. This is the case with the majority of those who train as a hobby two or three times weekly in th average dojo. Other than professionals, very few people make time to train daily while having all sorts of other life priorities such as work or family living.

Even in a dojo where conditioning is trained it is not done by everyone and is a personal choice. An instructor who teaches it is also aware that insisting on it might discourage students from training at all.

[JR 137]

I think the people who would be willing to do this are practicing other styles/systems such as muay Thai, MMA, boxing, etc. They're basically the today's contemporaries to the people from the "golden age" of karate. If those schools didn't exist or have the popularity they currently do, I think hard-style karate training would be far more common. Or perhaps those people weren't getting that hard training from the average karate dojo and looked for it elsewhere. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

I also think full-contact fell out of favor because students were pushed into the deep end too soon.

Society has changed. For the better, but there are still some things, such as discipline and sheer willpower that have suffered as a consequence. People view it as they view their health - they want a quick fix in the form of a pill or crash diet. Slow and steady isn't fast enough.

[Spartacus Maximus]

The methods of Thai boxing are vaguely familiar and mostly unfamiliar to someone such as I, whose specific knowledge concerns Okinawan karate in particular as it is practised in its native country.

How about your martial art? Is hardening or conditioning only mentioned in passing or is it trained? If yes, what methods are used to do it?

[DWx]

We do it in TKD. Not to the same extent as we once did but it's still a part of our training at our dojang.

I do wonder though how much effect the old methods had physiologically or whether the main effect is psychological? I am aware of Wolff's Law and Davis' Law regarding soft and hard tissue remodelling according to the stress its under, but nowadays it just seems a bit unnecessary for the common martial artist to abuse their bodies like that.

[Spartacus Maximus]

Dwx

What methods are used to train in your school? Are there tools and implements for that purpose? TKD has links to karate so something like the Okinawan makiwara is likely to be used, but perhaps different methods that are specifically Korean.

[sensei8]

We train in Hojo Undo; Conditioning.

Primary Tools we use for Hojo Undo are:

Makiwara

Tou

Chi Ishi

Tetsu Geta

Ishi Sashi

Jari Bako

Nigiri Gami

Ude Kitae

Makiage Kigu

Kongoken

We use to use Tan, but we've decided to forgo with that in the favor of modern weight training; Barbells and the like.

[Spartacus Maximus]

We train in Hojo Undo; Conditioning.

Primary Tools we use for Hojo Undo are:

Makiwara

Tou

Chi Ishi

Tetsu Geta

Ishi Sashi

Jari Bako

Nigiri Gami

Ude Kitae

Makiage Kigu

Kongoken

These are all familiar tools and common in Okinawan dojos. Besides the makiwara, plain boards of pinewood are used much in the same way. My instructor seems to prefer them because they are easy to find, very cheap and portable compared to a standard fixed makiwara. It is used for toughening all parts of the hands and the toes.

Wrapped or bare hardwood baseball bats are used to work on arms and legs. However beginners are limited to using each other's limbs. Everything is done lightly and gradually the intensity is increased. Avoiding injury is paramount and safety a high priority. No one is permitted to proceed until correct technique is properly learned.

[Titanium]

Not at all, it worked for Buddhist Monks for centuries; its not as common nowadays unfortunately.