RMAXing Iron Palm/Hand

[HereBeADragon]

As part of my Limalama practice we engage in special hand training (iron palm/hand, splashing palm and vibrating palm). I've been doing the basic iron hand exercises for about a year now and will be starting a more advanced level of training shortly. I am currently planning out my progression and building the needed equipment. I've decided to make use of RMAX training principles in my iron hand practice. I've posted a basic outline of what I'm planning to do in my RMAXing Limalama thread in the style renovation section. I wanted to know if anyone in the community has tried using RMAX principles in the more esoteric aspects of martial arts. I know there has been some venturing into this area with Rmax Powered Qi Gong and Internal Martial Arts but has anyone else gone in these direction? Does anyone have any insights or ideas that might be of value to me in this? I figure with the wide range of creative and intelligent people in this commuity I should try my best to make use of them ;)

[Coach Wilson]

Brian-

Even though he does not talk about it much, Coach Jones has EXTENSIVE training and background in Iron hand/Body training. I only know because I drug it out of him. He has instructor ranks in systems of Iron hand and Iron Shirt. He would be the guy to ask.

I have had a little exposure to such things, but would rather someone more qualified address this.

Smile.

Always,

Joseph

[HereBeADragon]

it somehow makes sense that Coach Jones would have iron hand training doesnt it :) lets hope that he will pop in here.

[Coach Jones]

Brian,

I have been fortunate to have trained in and taught several types and styles of Iron Palm. One thing I can tell you is this:

There is no way to make Iron Palm training healthy.

Sorry, but that's the truth.

There are hundreds of Iron Palm methods and thousands more that are not Iron Palm. In my experience, the most result producing methods were also the most painful to train.

Essentially, to develop Iron Palm requires damaging the hands (bones, muscles, tendons) and forcing them to heal stronger than before (like scarring)..and then damaging them again, and again...and ag... well you get the point .

The most dangerous aspect of Iron Palm training is that most of the teachers that provide this type of training are not instructed in how to teach it as safely as possible and methods of specific checks that need to happen constantly throughout a students training.

When I was teaching it, I wouldn't let a beginning student practice at all without my looking over their shoulder the whole time. Even at very basic levels this meant up to an hour a day, every day for a minimum of 3-4 months. If something looked off I would perform the checks. Depending on the results of the checks we would continue or stop. It's a very precise art.

The results from good training can be very impressive, but as I used to tell my students all the time, Iron Palm is icing on the cake. It's not magic. A good fighter with Iron Palm will lose every time to a better fighter without it. It's up to the individual whether or not the benefit is worth the investment and the risk.

The linament is an interesting thing. Does it really work? Beats me, but I wouldn't do the training without it. With that said, good linament is hard to find and all Dit Da Jow is diferent. If you're going to be doing this type of training - get to a Chinese herbalist, tell them what you're doing. They can provide you with Jow. They will try and sell you the pre-made over the counter pre-bottled stuff. Then they will grin and maybe laugh at you. Keep at it and they'll make you some stuff. It won't be cheap.

Once you get them to get the herbs together for you to prepare (99% of the time they won't have anything ready so you'll have to prepare it) it could very well still suck. No way to tell until you can tell.;) --Just another one of the little dangers of Iron Palm training.

Also know, that as you get into more advanced methods of Iron Palm training your other training will suffer. It suffers because while you're doing it you may very well be unable to hold a pencil and if anythour hand you may want to cry. Not all methods produce that result but more than a couple of the serious versions do.

There are a million more things to Iron palm training but I just wanted to throw in that it is, at it's core a trade off and a risk. It's not healthy. If you know what to look for in terms of checks it can be made as safe as possible but it's a risky process even then.

It's definitely a "train at your own risk" kind of thing.

[Glenn Sunshine]

Coach Jones,

The people I worked with who did iron palm insisted that done right, it does not damage the hands--in fact, they stay soft and flexible. Their hands certainly did, with no visible damage or loss of function. They insisted that it be begun very softly--you would literally hold your right wrist in your left hand and let your left hand gently bring it down on the bag on various surfaces of the hand; eventually, you progressed to doing it unassisted, but softly; from there you very slowly increased the amount of force. They used two different kinds of jow, one before, one after, and did other kinds of compensatory exercises for the hands. I don't know what they did at more advanced levels, but they ended up with very powerful hands--one guy broke someone's shin with a palm block in a full contact competition. I know next to nothing else about it beyond that. Does that sound like any of the styles you were doing? I'm curious because I didn't see any evidence of damage from that training among the few who did it at the kwoon.

[Coach Jones]

Glenn,

Absolutely. That is what I would consider a good basic level Iron Palm. Over time the results will come. When I say that you're damaging the hands, i'm not necessarily talking about damage beyond the bodies ability to repair. My hands work just fine - though occasionally I can tell if it's going to rain.;)

When you engage in any activity where you slam your bones and tissue into an object there's damage. Then the body repairs itself, it has a great capacity to do that, but it doesn't lessen the fact that there's damage occuring.

Most practitioners practice in the methods like the one you describe. It will produce results, absolutely. There are other methods which produce greater result but everyone should start there. The greater the result the greater the damage to the hands. Ideally no permanent damage occurs (with good instruction this is usually the case). However, poor instruction or just bad luck can easily produce more damage than the body can quickly heal and repeated abuse can create a problem that'll be with you for life. It's why people need to make sure their teacher is knowledgable and careful.

There are many different methods.

Most of the people I know who have trained in Iron Palm don't display any evidence of injury. I also know a few people who can't hold a soda can.

A lot of people use different jow before and after, in addition there are specific types of jow for specific methods. In some methods it is continuously applied, soaked in , heated, boiled, etc.

All depends on the methods.

It's just important to realize that any time you're engaging in this type of training you have to be very, very careful.

[KD Jones]

There is no way to make Iron Palm training healthy.

Sorry, but that's the truth.

I've heard it said that anyone that can get past 50 years of age after Iron Palm, and still has useful hands either quit doing it soon enough, or is extremely genetically gifted.

Of course, having tendcies toward musical pursuits, I would be one to listen more closely than some to such stuff.

I have seen some pretty large knuckles here and there, though.

Oh... and one other thing regarding the effect of intentional damage and healing of this sort regards the way nerves regrow after damage. Apparently they tend to "tangle" during regrowth, because the previous pathways are shut down, and they have to "wind" their way back out, resulting in changed sensation at best. Also, I'm also always hearing about the rate of shin cancer in Thailand due to shin training... one thought is that the consistent and fairly large-scale regrowth of bone tissue makes it more susceptible to problems related to cell division, such as cancer...

Don't know what the come-uppance is on these ideas, though the nervous issues make sense to me, having experienced some of the lighter-end effects of nerve damage from other causes. The body's ability to fix itself is indeed amazing, but amazing still often falls short of optimal...

Given the risks, even in the light of missing science, I can't help wondering if there aren't more productive directions to focus training...

[Glenn Sunshine]

Thanks. I know that White Lotus had much more advanced methods down the line--the guy who broke the shin used very hot jow (boiling was how it was described to me), and I'm sure there were other methods I haven't heard anything about. What I found curious was the insistence that the training had to leave the hands soft or it wasn't being done right. Anyway, thanks for the information!

[wildman]

Has consideration been given to applying a 4x7 type cycle to iron palm.

[Coach Flanagan]

Mark,

see Coach Jones' post above:

There is no way to make Iron Palm training healthy.

CST is a Health First system (as opposed to a performance-first system, or an attributes-first system). As such, if there is no way to make a certain training method healthy, then there will not be a CST program on such method.

[wildman]

well i'm not sure that punching peeple in the head can be considered healthy either but their is rmax powered fighting and flowboxing. my master is 70+ years of age and breaks RIVER stones with his hands, he is by far the healthiest person i know. people do these things and lead healthy lives. maybe applying 4x7 to iron palm could make it healthier. i'm not sure we should discount discussion of a topic because it is less that 100% health oriented.

[Coach Jones]

Mark,

I think the key here is that Iron Palm training is not necessary. It's something extra that someone engaged in a particular system might decide to do. The question is do the benefits outweigh the risk.

With iron palm, the benefits exist, but they are something extra, they're not needed. Breaking boards, concrete blocks, river rocks or other things can all be done without Iron Palm.

I don't doubt your teachers health. However, he is not healthier for having done Iron Palm, if that makes sense.

It's also very easy for people to get caught up in the hype of something like Iron Palm. Once we start putting undue importance on it we fail to concentrate our efforts to the real work of training.

In all the time I spent training in Iron Palm methods the single biggest problem wasn't injuries, it was people wanting to jump on the bandwagon and pursue that training when they should've been concentrating on thier other conditioning and skills.

If someone is in condition to fight, has trained their attributes and skills and then decides that they want to train in Iron Palm, I think that's fine.

When you are talking about more advanced methods of Iron Palm, there is a lot of time in which the practitioner cannot really train other than their IP training. When peoplle try to get in on that type of training w/o the other skills it's purely a waste of time.

So the diference between RMAX powering fighting and training and trying to RMAX Power Iron Palm is that in the latter, it's something extra and nothing about it improves your health nor does it in any way protect your health. It's just something extra that people may or may not choose to do.

[Coach Jones]

Just to clarify. Having had the oppurtunity to train in several of the more "advanced" versions of Iron Palm, I may have been a bit unclear as to risks and dangers. By my way of thinking, their are Iron Palm methods which can produce staggering results and then there is the more standard versions that are normaly done by most schools.

The methods that Glenn alluded to with regard to "boiling" is a good example. Those types produce much greater results than the basic, foundational Iron Palm methods that are traditionaly taught. Those are also much more dangerous and more of a risk.

If we're talking about the incremental progression of hitting a bag softly and building up over time, there is not much danger there as long as it's supervised by a competant teacher.

[Coach Flanagan]

maybe applying 4x7 to iron palm could make it healthier. i'm not sure we should discount discussion of a topic because it is less that 100% health oriented.

Discuss away. You asked if any consideration had been given to applying CST to Iron Palm. If you meant via an RMAX program(which is what I thought you meant originally), its certainly a no for the reasons myself and Coach Jones have provided. If you want to experiment with it and discuss it for your own personal reasons, thats really up to you. I'm personally unsure of what 4x7 would offer Iron Palm training as 4x7's purpose is to stimulate the NeuroImmunoEndocrine response in a daily sequence designed to follow the bodies own energetic tendencies to target said response. It sounds like the adaptation people seek in Iron Palm is one of adaptation of the tissues of the hand from impact trauma, which seems to be an entirely different mechanism than what 4x7 is for. Thats not to say its not worth exploring, it just seems to be the adaptation you seek may not be something that works on the same mechanism as 4x7.

[KD Jones]

well i'm not sure that punching peeple in the head can be considered healthy either but their is rmax powered fighting and flowboxing.

There is also a critical difference between training and performance.

Training, with its most common intent being the accumulation skills and attributes over an extended period of time, has to be sustainable, at a minimum. Performance of any kind (in my opinion) - athletic, martial, military, even musical or theatrical - is for a vast number of reasons (ranging from emotional/physical drain to attention span of an audience) occurs in a much more limited timeframe, and in virtually every case under much more intense circumstances.

It's not uncommon for a mere musician to do things with her/his voice, hands or body that would decimate their ability to perform if it were their common training method.

The circumstances in which we get "hit in the head" with unyeilding severity are tests of our training - which in CST (or any truly meaningful) terms is to say "the whole of our lives."

All tests have a price. And they are far from the full measure of the life lived leading up to them.

[HereBeADragon]

I'm glad this topic has gained so much steam! Coach Jones thank you for your input its been helpful. I'm fortunate to have a teacher that knows real iron palm otherwise I would not even think of taking something like this on. As you said it is not a healthy activity and it is not for everyone. It is definintly not something anyone should take on alone. Done wrong it can be a crippling experience. This undertaking is something I decided I wanted to do. I'm learning it to help preserve an important part of my martial art that is quickly dying out and so this type of information will be available to future practitioners. Over the last year I've been thrusting my hands into a big bowl of playground grade sand as a prepatory exercise along with basic sinew and overall hand strengthening, clubbells have proven very useful for that part. Now I will be working with striking bags, I'm making them myself. The basic level bag is filled with mung beans, rice and a few other herbs.

Coach Jones I would definitly like to hear more about your iron palm training. Its not easy to find people the know about true iron palm and its even harder to find people that are willing to talk about it. What styles have you trained in? What type of checks do you use? Are there any Jows you've used that you found particularly effective?

I'm hoping my teacher will be able to make some of his Jow before to long its a bit tricky to find some of the ingredients but wow is that stuff amazing. Stinks to high heaven and tends to knock you out for a few hours but I swear it would probably regrow a missing limb ;)

[Coach Jones]

We have to get you to a seminar. I'd be more than happy to discuss it with you in person, but i'd rather not get to far into it online. As soon as I did there'd be a few people running out and trying it even with the simplest description.:rolleyes:


I do want to say though, that it sounds like you have the absolute right mindset.




I'm learning it to help preserve an important part of my martial art that is quickly dying out and so this type of information will be available to future practitioners.

[HereBeADragon]

We have to get you to a seminar. I'd be more than happy to discuss it with you in person, but i'd rather not get to far into it online. As soon as I did there'd be a few people running out and trying it even with the simplest description.:rolleyes:


I absolutely know what you mean. I'm worried I may have said to much about my own training already :) I'd have signed up for your flowbox seminar the day it was announced but I'm not sure if I can get the money up by then. Thanks for your feedback coach Jones this has proven to be a very useful disucssion for me.

[Vbrown]

Hey folks,

Coach Jones is giving extremely sage advice here without stepping on any toes. There are too many variables in this type of training for something a health centered as RMAX to want to tinker with. And to even think of trying to give the level of information that would be required to do it "right" over the internet...Just ain't gonna happen.

There are plenty of people who have done it with no ill effects, sure. But the margin for error is slim and the consequences are aweful big.

I'm way too familiar with the training Coach Jones has done and I'm glad he's still a great bluegrass guitar player after all of it.

And yeah, getting a good herb formula for dit da jow is tough. Even when you're in the biz.

FWIW,