Well, I can't speak for all Hapkido classes, but we definitely don't do that kind of stuff at my dojang. I've seen that done in Karate and other martial arts which tend to emphasize blocking. Since, in Hapkido, we use the approach of trying to redirect an opponents force rather than using straight blocks (although we do have blocks as well), skin toughening would not be as important. That's just my opinion though.
well there is one type of thing in hapkido that we do and thats knee walking. Toughens up the knees skin. I'm sure you people do, do that eh?
Knuckle pushups will toughen your punch. Shin kick on hard compact sandbag will toughen your kick. I feel that such conditioning is important since you will be more pain tolerant than your opponent and your strikes more powerful. However if you are taking up M.A as a sport then it will not be neccessary.
Check the various threads on conditioning and make up your own mind whether you think the risks are worth it first, just a recommendation.
In my school the skin toughing comes from within the techniques we don't train solely on trying to toughin up the skin it just a plus with the techniques.
Haha unless you are doing Uechi or Goju pushups regular knuckle push ups dont do anything. shin kicking a sand bag is to soft also, if you have a bo or something jam it in the ground and shin kick it. me i just beat the crud out of my wing chun dummy. oh yes another good thing for punches is just to order a makiwara board out of a magazine or something. up all night, come chat. Regards
I've never seen or heard about Hapkido being a Linear art so I wouldn't really understand why the skin toughing of such extremes would be needed. We don't strike we Evade and redirect and we do a fair amount of striking but the strikes of punches are not straight in they are glancing so as to just activate pressure points.
We do conditioning on our knuckles, forearms and shins. Yes of course Hapkido's goal is to avoid, harmonize, and flow with circular motions, but it's not always going to happen. Hapkido uses linear techniques, and hardness just as much as circular, and flowingness. I will get into more detail on this in a thread called opposites. John_IHF: I'm not sure what you mean about glancing blows and pressure point activation. The style of Hapkido that you practice sounds more like Aikido. We do some strikes to stimulate pressure points but a great many are used for knockout blows and finishing techniques. I'm not talking about being able to break baseball bats with your shins and forearms. But if worst comes to worst and you have to block with your forearm to stop a wild haymaker that you can't step out of the way from, you don't want to have your arm hurt from the block so much that you cannot continue to defend yourself. Your knuckles must be conditioned in the proper way to throw a punch aligning the bones in your wrist for the best support and striking with the first two knuckles. People that don't know how to punch and are not used to punching often break their hands when they actually have to punch someone for real. I guess I'll stop here I get so long winded. Joshua
