Toughening my shins and instep?

Jesse@RTKD · Aug 25, 2005

Ive just started cross-training in muay thai and i find that after belting someones forearm with roundhouses for 3 rounds my shin and instep get extremely tender and swollen and i have to miss training to let them heal.
Any tips to condition them?

|MT|omar · Aug 25, 2005

Kicking the heavy bag, or just getting your partner to hold up kick pads or thai pads and kick those, it's not something that happens over night, so give it some time

DO NOT use any rolling pins or bottles and and run them up and down your shins. Im not saying you do that or anything, but just so you know, it's not very healthy for your shins

SCP_Kensei · Aug 25, 2005

Whack the heavy bag, hard and often.

Start by aiming for 100 kicks in a session on each leg. You'll probably stop due to the pain long before that at first.

Rub some boxing cream or Thai oil into them whent hey hurt, it should dull/kill the pain. Then start whacking again.
At the end of a session massage you shins/calves with Thai oil or boxing cream before getting changed and going home. It stimulates the circulation to the area and brings down bruising.
Then so it alla gain the enxt time you go to the gym. Keep doing it till it doesnt hurt any more, then keep doing it anyway to maintain it.

There are 2 main schools of thought regarding shin "hardening":
a) That repeated smacking of the shin into the bag causes an increase in bone density, deadening of the nerves, and/or formation of a calcium "Callous" over the bone.
b) Some say the above in nonsense and it is just a combination of a deadening of the nerves and the psychological effect of conditioning to impact that causes you to not feel pain int hem any more.

Either way, repeated kciking of the heavy bag should do the business.

(Tip: I recommend snapping the shin kicks into the bag, causing the bag to buckle rather than swing too much, otherwise you spend half the time judging the swings and less time kicking. It's even better if you can find a sucker...er I mean partner to hold the bag for you)

TomB · Aug 25, 2005

try not to kick with your instep at all it dosent toughen up anyway, bruses just as bad, you will proberly get used to pain after catching a few elbows though thats the worst :bang:

slipthejab · Aug 25, 2005

TomB said:

try not to kick with your instep at all it dosent toughen up anyway, bruses just as bad...
Click to expand...

To echo TomB's comments you don't want to make a habit out of landing kicks with the instep of your foot. Kicks landed with it are not nearly as powerful as landing them with you shin and landing them leaves you open to the possibility of catching a bad injury if someone covers up and your hammer their elbow full force with your instep... needless to say... you instep will lose that battle.

Focus on landing the shin... you can land with more power and do more damage - as well you can toughen the shin up far beyond anything that you can do with the instep.

The kicking the tree myth hasn't popped up in this thread yet....
so I'll preempt it...

DO NOT run out and start kicking tree's to toughen your shins. :bang:

Anyone who tell's you this is what the Thai's do is talking rubbish. The tree's that the Thai's did kick were banana tree's - very soft and very flexible... much more similar to a kicking bag than an oak tree or that big maple tree in your backyard. The reason Thai's kicked banana tree's were because they didn't have or couldn't afford kicking bags. Now they have bags and they do kick them and banana tree's in Thailand live in peace.

Be kind to banana tree's... don't kick 'em.

Jahk Nah Rai · Aug 25, 2005

Well I don't have much to add other than what's already here. Just kick the pads and the heavy bags. Not them stupid water-filled kiddie bags, the real tough banana bags. Yes you will see red, purple, black, blue and other pretty colors come out when you are doing this for the first time. You should take a short break first, let it heal a bit, then go back again. Your shins will gradually get used to it.

philliphall · Aug 25, 2005

Just to add to what Slipthejab said - find your range and kick with your shin. I am sat here with a broken foot after getting it all wrong four weeks ago and catching an elbow with my foot. As I was waiting for my X-Ray I was looking at the a big picture of the human skeleton - those little foot bones look awfully small next to that big shin bone so it makes a lot of sense to hit with the big bit. Its a complete nightmare as I am meant to have my first fight in November.

mai tai · Aug 25, 2005

shin conditioning.

scp kensi said that some people feel that the coditioning of the bone is a myth and that its pychological.

to a degree it is phycological. (after a while you just get used to the pain)

however a study done at the university of oregon, concludes that you can condition and strenthen bone. they wer not useing the shin (they were punching wood with rope around it) but i think the same thing applies.

first bone...while it does no longer grow after a certain age. it is constently remodeling. it is being torn down when your body need ca in its system. and is being built up if you have enogh ca and bones are under stress.

you can see this is skelitons.... people who were manule laborors have a much thicker bone in the right arm than in the left. (in fact it kinda look weird)

that being said. what they found in the study was that if you banged your fist alittle. it would cause slight dammage to the bone. with rest the bone would repair itself. and get stronger and thicker.

if you banged it hard all the time it would get weaker since the body has no chance to heal. this sets yourself up for a stress fracture.

how does this relate to shin conditioning......well like most science, an in depth study is done to tell us what common sense should already be telling us.

kick the bag hard as you can without shin gaurds. when they are sore ....put on some shin gaurds and hit alittle softer until the pain goes away...repeat.

if they are super sore...work on your boxing for a few days

i suppose you could bang on them. but imo you are better off hitting the bag cause your increasing your technique at the same time.

ED-209 · Aug 27, 2005

Jesse@RTKD said:

Ive just started cross-training in muay thai and i find that after belting someones forearm with roundhouses for 3 rounds my shin and instep get extremely tender and swollen and i have to miss training to let them heal.
Any tips to condition them?
Click to expand...

be grateful that it was not your forearm being belted for 3 rounds

slipthejab · Aug 27, 2005

To touch further on what Mai Tai has spoken of check these out:

http://www.martialartsplanet.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35375&highlight=ossification

and here is some relevant info on 'ossification' of the bone; the process of the bone strengthening itself in response to stress. I'd posted this article in this thread earlier this year - http://www.martialartsplanet.com/forums/showthread.php?t=31551&highlight=ossification: .... note: the title was added by me for clarity.

Slipthejab said:

OK here's the real deal as opposed to my low-brow low-tech version. lol.
Read up and enjoy.

The Science Behind Tough Shins and Strong Bones

Q:How do I best condition my shins for kicking and my legs for taking kicks?

A: Ok , having a traumatic flashback of Anatomy and Physiology I has revealed to me that there are two types of bone compact and spongy bone.

An example of compact bone is your femur since it is defined as bone which is heavily stressed in one direction. I use the femur as an example since it can support 10-15 times one's bodyweight but can easily be fractured by any perpendicular forces applied to the side of its shaft-one of the reasons a Thai round kick to the leg can and many times has broken a femur ,not necessarily because of the strength of the kick but because it is striking a particular bone at its weakest point(s).

An example of spongy bone would be your rib cage and all the various individual structures which compose it since it is defined as bone which is not heavily stressed or where stressed arrive from many directions.

I am mentioning these things to give you an idea about the variety of bone that is "naturally" occurring in the body without other undo stressed being placed upon it due to labor or activity of a specific nature.

Bone development and growth of the kind we are concerned with is commonly known as ossification , specifically the kind we are concerned with is called intramembranous ossification which occurs to fibrous connective tissue such as that which surrounds bone ;the fascia sheaths which enclose each individual muscle and allow us to actually differentiate that they are indeed individual muscles since in reality NO muscle acts alone even though they are physically separated from each other ,though admittedly not to the untrained eye.

This type of ossification occurs at the shin bone and to the surrounding areas when forces are exerted unto/into it. Whenever a bone is stressed the mineral crystals generate minute electrical fields. Certain bone building cells called osteobalsts are attracted to these areas of negative charge and upon arrival begin to produce bone at the sight of negative electrical charge. Because bones are adaptable ,their shapes(and according densities) reflect the forces applied to them.

This should not seem strange since it would help to remember that the nerve impulses of our very cells are determined by an exact ratio of MINERALS of which the bone is composed. So when the bone is physically broken down by pressure and blunt trauma it naturally breaks of pieces of the various minerals which compose the bone and are essential building blocks for NEW bone.

Basically the osteoclasts upon being informed of the electrical charge difference on the outside of the bones shaft begin to actually break down that part of the bone on the inside of the shaft(that part of the shaft closest to the marrow center)in order to provide more building materials for the osteoblasts on the outer edges of the shaft. Thusly the cavity of the bone becomes larger and the shaft becomes thicker. There is also a difference in the thickness of the shaft both laterally and medially. For instance the lateral (facing away from your torso and centerline) part of the shaft becomes denser and the medial (facing towards your centerline) becomes stretched and more flexible in order to handle the compressive forces that are being exerted on its opposite side.

For your Students:

So very simply you can use a great analogy-the katana. It is a sword which's very construction can illustrate the end result of someone who has properly conditioned their shins. This is a weapon whose edge, length-wise, is very hard in the middle, somewhat hard at the actually edge, and very pliable at its ridge or back. The reason for this is so that the sword will not break even when it is met with a great collision.

Also for the same reasons a swordsman did not practice with his katana on hard armour and metal to perfect his strikes (but rather on soft substances of considerable thickness-such as a tightly bond stand of bamboo) neither should you be training your shins on hard metal/wood surfaces in an effort to "toughen them up”. Rather choose the thickest bag you can find and lay into it (I prefer the diameter of the bag used to be close to the length of my shin bone so as not to strike with my instep and not too narrow so that I strike with only part of my shin-though this last thinner type of bag can be useful for practicing accuracy in hitting with different portions of the shin).

Same as a swordsman had to smooth down the chinks in his sword made by striking his opponents armour before landing the necessary and preferred blows to softer fleshier regions (neck ,groin ,armpit-we are talking for a sword of course)so will a muay thai fighter after a legitimate fight without shin guards gone at with full fervor-you will have to wait a week or two to get those eggs down on your shins. But in between fights keep those shins healthy and make sure you are kicking with bone that is currently built back up not currently being built back up after taking an excess of abuse.

Ok, second part of the question-keep in mind my analogy of the construction of a japanese katana to help facilitate a better understanding of this discussion on bone.

Bones are very strong to resist extreme forces when those forces are applied along the axis of alignment .Speaking of the femur ,it can withstand 10-15 times the body's weight without breaking as long as that force is distributed along its axis; however if a force equal to less than a third the body's weight is applied so that it intersects the axis of alignment the bone will break.

If an extreme force were to intersect the bone against its lateral side(the side we were kicking in that drill)it could cause the femur to brake along either its lateral or medial sides but it is far more likely for the break to occur along the medial side.

Here is the reason why. Our body weight is applied along the axis of the femur with the majority of the force being distributed along the medial side of the shaft. Thusly the medial portion of the shaft is compressed and the lateral side is stretched.

Try thinking of a drinking straw that has one entire half circle of its cylinder composed of a slightly thicker material upon which force is being applied and the other half circle a thinner, more plastic material.

If you were to compress such a straw it would be very hard to break if one were to rely on pulling the ends apart or even pushing on different ends with equal force. However if the straw has pressure being exerted on it from both sides and you apply pressure on the side it will bend.

So what does this mean for conditioning? It means that you sure as hell shouldn't have your weight planted on a leg when it is being kicked. And if you DO(caught by surprise)you SHOULD tense your muscles as hard as possible so that they dissipate some of the force before it is imposed on the femur or you can stay relaxed and let the kick cut clean to the bone, risking the chance of a fractured femur.

The best option is to first remove force from being applied to one end of your cylinder(femur) and that is by lifting one's leg off the ground.

Give a straw an attachment to another object(like taping it to the edge of a table) and leave it elevated off the ground and then flick it with your finger and see how hard it is to bend versus taping it to a table that allows the straw to be in contact with the ground. I am sure you can already imagine the results of this simple experiment.

As far as conditioning bone the same information I wrote for shin conditioning applies to the femur EXCEPT for the shape of the bones in question. The femur is far easier to brake do to several factors (shape cylinder versus cylinder supported by a secondary cylinder).

It is now useful to imagine ancient roman columns with a wider eminence at both the bottom and top. This is just what a femur is like and similar to the construction of a tibia and fibula (their structure is unique in that the fibula is shorter than the tibia and thinner so that it actually lodges itself in between the upper and lower eminences of the tibia thusly acting as a secondary support for the tibia[since this is what is being struck I say it this way but in reality they BOTH support each other].

As far as that drill is concerned tense the muscles as violently as possible and try to shelf the kick with your leg if it is too late but to be honest just get your shin up there. Condition the muscle up top as a last resort and the shins below as a first line of defense.

Judah Ciervo
ISSA Certified Trainer
Fight Factory@ www.BodyArtsGym.com
Click to expand...

cityofangels · Aug 28, 2005

I found this article in my favourites, so to conclude...

Ironlife Magazine said:

One of the many properties an aspiring Thai, Low Kick Kickboxer or even MMA fighter requires are conditioned shins and one of the questions I get asked frequently is just how do you condition your shins? Should I kick trees like in the Jean Claude Van Damme movie, Kickboxer? Tap them with bottles? Roll them with Rolling pins?

Well there are certainly many methods employed to getting the shins conditioned to a level where by you can fight and check leg kicks however, due to misinformation and a lack of understanding about the body, some of these methods utilized by trainers and fighters alike actually could be detrimental to the body in years to come.

The idea that the shin can become harder, due to calcium deposits developing over the shin bone or the bone itself getting harder is somewhat of a myth. A conditioned shin comes in various parts.

1. The nerves surrounding the shin have been weakened or deadened so the pain is not as excruciating as it was before shin conditioning started.

2. A lot of it can be psychological. In a fight anyway, adrenaline will be responsible for the fact that you might not feel the shin on shin contact as greatly as you would in training. Tell yourself that there’s no pain and carry on fighting.

3. Correct technique. The way you block a leg kick can also be a factor in the amount you feel when you check.

So what’s wrong with hitting trees or tapping shins with bottles and sticks?
Well, when you hit the shins with anything that’s harder than the bone you run the risk of causing tiny stress fractures on your shin. In the short term this may deaden the nerves however, in the long term this could actually weaken the shins causing pain and injury, even arthritis later on in life.

And what about kicking trees? Hey didn’t the Thai’s kick trees back in the day?

Before I went out to Thailand I had this vision of Thai’s just whacking away at trees. Haha how wrong I was. Nope, in this day and age, no trees are harmed in the making of a Thai Boxer however, it is true that before, Thais kicked the trunks of soft banana trees (the trunks were very rubbery and soft thus not like kicking an oak tree) The trunk of the trees they’d hit would be so soft in fact that they would make makeshift hand wraps with the strips of bark from where they kicked.

So how exactly do you condition your shins?

The tried and tested method is to basically kick the bags and pads AS MUCH AS YOU CAN!!!

The harder the pads and bags, the better the conditioning however, you must start at a level where by you are not feeling as if you are damaging yourself. After all, what’s the point in hitting the bags that are so hard that you are all bruised and battered and then can’t hit for at least a week?

Sure you will feel some pain on your legs after training but with the right treatment (Massage, Ice etc) you’ll be good to go for the next training session.

In Thailand I would see fighters train on the bags kicking away at them morning and afternoon, continuously kicking with one leg for over 3 rounds then switching to the next leg. This amount of kicking is the correct way of conditioning your shins. Along with patience and perseverance (Hey, it’s not going to happen over night in fact it could take at least 6 months of training like this)

Kicking leather Thai pads should also be placed as a mandatory training drill in your shin conditioning regimen.

What about sparring?

Sparring is a great way to condition shins and get used to blocking but it must be done with shin pads on as stated above, you must try not to strike your own shin with anything as hard as or harder than except of course for in a fight.

So It's all about deadening nerves?

Not entirely. As stated above it is also a psychological process. Another thing to help condition shins is to condition the muscles that are surrounding the shins. These muscles are usually worked out from the intense amounts of running and skipping a Thai boxer will do. The Thai style of running, whereby you strike the road/floor with the ball of your feet and stay on your toes, works the Calf muscles which in turn builds the muscle defenses on the side of the shin. As is the same with skipping.
Click to expand...

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Toughening my shins and instep?

Jesse@RTKD New Member

|MT|omar Thai Boxer

SCP_Kensei www.taintedlover.com

TomB Train Hard, Fight Easy

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Jahk Nah Rai Valued Member

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Toughening my shins and instep?

Jesse@RTKD New Member

|MT|omar Thai Boxer

SCP_Kensei www.taintedlover.com

TomB Train Hard, Fight Easy

slipthejab Hark, a vagrant! Supporter

Jahk Nah Rai Valued Member

philliphall Valued Member

mai tai Valued Member

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