Full iron body training

[Andrew Long]

Hej everyone,

Does anyone here do some sort of iron body, iron pal or iron shin training? I am keen to try this out but I'm looking for some good info about it. If anyone has some knowledge about the process and how it works or if you know where I can find some good information on it that would be awesome.

Cheers

[FREDERIC DUPONT]

You are choosing the long road --- not that it is wrong, to the contrary, but still a very long road.

Why do you want to do that, what are your goals and plans?

[Jon Douglas]

Hit the bags a lot. You dont need the full process to develop scary power, if that's what you want.

[Andrew Long]

I understand this training takes many many ears and I have no problem with that. As for goal well 2 reasons the first being I just want to be tougher all round. Gymnasticbodes training is all about building a bullet proof body right? Well I want a truly bulletproof body. Also I plan on begging martial arts training and would like to incorporate it as apart of my conditioning. I am tired of getting injuries. All of my injuries happened outside of training and were accidents simply because my body wasn't prepared very well. I understand I can still be injured but through gymnastics training and iron body training I hope to limit my potential for injury and become as strong as can be. I am interested in the full process how it works how to do it and what you can accomplish with it. My google search abilities aren't so great though and I'm not sure how to tell if it is some rubbish or e real deal so if anyone so some knowledge about the subject could fill me in that'd be great. In the mean time my plan is simply kick and punch the bag a little bit every day. Neck, hands, forearms, shins, ankles, torso and anywhere else I'm able to strengthen in such a way is my goal.

[Keilani Gutierrez]

you need to employ a full body workout, decicated cultivation of energy from your exercise, nutrition, your skill training which as Jon pointed out, is involved hitting the heavy bag a lot. 

 

start basic and you'll start to see that most of what revolves around iron body is mysticism. yes, you can deflect upto a certain point but the higher level stuff is more energy dominant and uses a different system to develop the "shield". 

 

I'm not particularly religious, but i did find wisdom in this simple and pretty straight forward verse so"Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know."
 

so idk. start asking yourself about it and convince yourself that what you are looking for, you will eventually most certainly find. 

 

kind of like this Lambic Framboise beer that i found tonight. total win.

 

Belgium beer. #waffles

[Joshua Naterman]

Iron body is no different than GST or lifting weights. You make slow, consistent, measured steps forward. You always stay within your threshold... reaching for your limits is the best way to get injured. Train smart, don't get greedy or impatient.

 

Belief is powerful, unless you believe it to be powerless, in which case the power of belief will make belief ineffective for you, since your own belief is exerting its influence.

 

Does that sound fufu? Perhaps it is, but it works equally well regardless of whether your believe IN an idea or AGAINST an idea. Both are belief, and both have the same power. Do some reading on medical hypnosis, the role of patient belief and attitude on surgical and chronic disease outcomes, and placebo effects. You will be quite surprised at what you find. These are real, and for them to work your belief has to be genuine. Learn to believe in yourself, and many doors will open up to you. 

 

A final piece of wisdom: TRUE belief includes taking all actions that a professed belief would require. Live your beliefs.

 

Having said all that, all the iron body training in the world cannot protect you (much) from the blow that your body is not ready for, and no amount of training OR belief will make your skin impenetrable. There is a reason that no one performs sword bending with a freshly sharpened blade... sharp metal will always cut through flesh like so much butter.

[Connor Davies]

Still tho Josh, I've read how you conditioned your knuckles for striking and it was, by far, the most level headed advice I'd ever seen.  I am interested to know if you ever conditioned your body to take strikes.  At a guess, I'm assuming you did a lot of headstands and bridges, but did you ever do any specific jaw training?  What else would you have trained to protect the spine and joints from injury?

[FREDERIC DUPONT]

(...)

Belief is powerful, unless you believe it to be powerless, in which case the power of belief will make belief ineffective for you, since your own belief is exerting its influence.(...)

 

 

You've lost me!

Could you please type a bit slower when you explain philosophy Joshua?

 

 

 

[Connor Davies]

You've lost me!

Could you please type a bit slower when you explain philosophy Joshua?

 

 

 

Basically you can never be wrong in your own head.  Even when you think you're wrong, you're right about being wrong.

 

But I think we're getting slightly off topic...  Ausswe, if you haven't already, go check out https://www.gymnasticbodies.com/forum/topic/9144-maximum-hypertrophy-vs-maximum-strength/page-5

 

Also, I'm going out on a limb here to say if your muscles around the joints are bigger, it will protect them more.  So hypertrophy training and a makiwara bag would probably be a good starting point.

[Joshua Naterman]

Still tho Josh, I've read how you conditioned your knuckles for striking and it was, by far, the most level headed advice I'd ever seen.  I am interested to know if you ever conditioned your body to take strikes.  At a guess, I'm assuming you did a lot of headstands and bridges, but did you ever do any specific jaw training?  What else would you have trained to protect the spine and joints from injury?

I did a ton of things to prepare for taking strikes. This probably consumed 60-90 minutes per day, because I was VERY thorough. No, I will not share specifics on that.

 

No headstands, no bridges. I did weighted neck work for my head. That's all you can do, whether it is with a machine, head strap, headstands, neck bridge variations, whatever. There's no specific Jaw training you can do, other than learning to keep your teeth lightly clenched, and to use a Brain Pad type mouthpiece.

[Connor Davies]

There's no specific Jaw training you can do, other than learning to keep your teeth lightly clenched, and to use a Brain Pad type mouthpiece.

Didn't Jack Dempsey chew wood?

[Joshua Naterman]

Sigmund Breitbart and Joseph Greenstein both bit through silver quarters and 20 penny nails. Joseph did so under laboratory conditions.

 

I don't think that will make a significant difference in your ability to not get knocked out from your jaw getting clocked in the right direction, but you could certainly chew wood if you like Beware of splinters...

 

Clenched teeth are the key. The mouthpiece I mentioned makes a bigger space in your temporo-mandibular joint socket, which makes it harder for someone to make the mandible hit the temporal bone (the skull part of the jaw socket) and overload your nervous system (instant knockout). Clenched teeth + mouthpiece are the best combo you'll get.

[Blairbob]

 Your best bet is to find a system that trains in this I guess. Not really sure how lucky you are going to be in searching for one, especially in commercial karate/kung fu/kenpo. But anyways...

 

 Back in my teens I trained in Okinawan karate, a split off of Uechi ryu. Though our style's name translates as Half-hard, half-soft there was a lot of conditioning and body training ( aka getting punched and kicked and slapped on the body ). Techniques are considered "soft" err the blocks were besides taking angles. Strikes weren't. Very similar to the Iron Body training you see in some kung fu styles such as Hun Gar. Which makes sense since the founder supposedly brought it from Fukien (Fujian) temple.

 

 One of the core training principles was using the kata, Sanchin. It's not exclusive to that system as you will see it other Naha-te ( karate from Naha. There are 3 main places in Okinawa karate comes from ). Goju ryu has a form of it as does Isshin-ryu besides Uechi. I do not believe it is in Shotokan founded by Gichin Funakoshi as I believe that was based mostly on Shuri or Tomari-te. It is in Kyokushinkai

 

 During sanchin, you basically keep everything tight and there is a particular breathing method. Just think of it as a kata of TimeUnderTension.

Then sensei will slap, punch, and kick you in various places. None of it is done to the head or balls or particular pressure points (atemi). Pretty much everywhere else is fair game to keep body tight and get used to taking punishment. Sometimes a shinai is used but that probably isn't as powerful as kicks or punches though they can sting. Force depends on the individual. Sometimes we wore the gi, other times we might go topless though I'm sure some wore a white t-shirt. I don't remember going in shedding our pants either ( though in Okinawa there are pictures of them doing it in shorts or fundoshi ) I do not believe the females got punched in the chest and they generally wore a white shirt and some feminine garment underneath. You might go lighter for lower grades or weaker individuals. I don't really remember if it was done in the kids classes and I know there is some contention in Uechi styles whether Sanchin should be practiced by children this way or the breathing method.

 

Sometime we trained when it was pretty hot. Fortunately Sacramento gets pretty hot, especially in a commercial dojo setting. We had fans but I don't think we ever used AC or heating. Throwing up happened and we sweated like buckets though we hydrated. A few times we went up to the hills towards Tahoe and trained in shorts in the snow in barefeet. 

 

Of course, you also hit the makiwara lot. We used to do lots of knuckle pushups, fingertip pushups, pushups on cinder blocks, pushups using different striking methods, etc. Some of our partner training consisted of just standing in kamae and kicking each other for long periods of time. To be young again. Kotekitai was also done which is sort of a hard style of sticky hands for forearm condition of the bone and forearm muscles. I also had a tree in the yard I practiced striking since I didn't have a bag ( poor tree, lol ). No, I did not practice Tiger Claw against it. 

 

So I still can do finger pushups. A fun trick sensei taught us was to go from 5 fingers to just thumbs, one finger at a time or maybe 2 or 3 fingers. We used assistance like doing it on the wall or knees to scale. Hardest was either index knuckle pushups or tiger claw. Sometimes you would do just holds. One knuckle would develop some callouses on the cinder blocks ( since we had carpet floors ) besides mid knuckle pushups. One arm pushups were something we played around from hand to hand or fist or switching off fingers or thumbs.

 

For those who know me, these were before I got under a barbell so I was 5 foot or under, 105-120 lbs vs my 145-150 I was during my T&F and when I got into gymnastics during college. 

 

We also had those jars where you have to hold them with your hands and practice Sanchin. 

Another unique system of training is kicking dowels in a stand. The stand has holes for dowels that fit sort of loosely. Take a stance and kick them. Part of the shodan test is breaking a baseball bat with a shin kick instead of breaking a block of wood ( we never tried that ). Yes, your shins get bruised and bumpy and you end up breaking wooden dowels a lot. We also had a hard punching bag filled with sand for kicking and striking.

 

One of the additional things we used to do was use an iron bar to roll on our shins and tap. I think I used to use the shaft part of my Kryptonite bike lock. Not the U part.

 

From what I have read I know there are some other implements used in the hard iron body Kung Fu training I've seen in other books. We also did a lot of BW conditioning. Partner squats in Horse stance, holding stances for long periods of time, leg lifts and we also had a rope to climb. Sensei also used to make us do really long L-sits and that's where I first learned how to do frog stand to handstand though I don't think we ever really trained handstands. We might have done planks or maybe we just held pushup positions a long time. That's nearly 20 years ago now. We did lots of situps and I think that's also where I learned how to do pistols, more of as a trick than anything else. I'm pretty sure I remember doing wall handstands and wall HeSPU at home on my own. I also remember lots of duckwalks and hopping around in an asian squat ( we had a particular game called chicken fighting that involved this ).

 

I do know in those years I did a lot of head bridging but well I've been doing that since I was pretty young because my dad was a judoka and it was my first martial art. To be honest I remember getting really sick of it when my dad would make my bridge out of him pinning me down. " Grandma! " 

I also had a sand bucket in my room. I can remember walking to the village hardware store and asking for a bucket with only enough sand to fill the bucket and carrying it home. Pretty good walk but not too bad and I only bought enough sand to fill the bucket up. ( No need or desire to carry a 50lb bag of sand ).

 

No, we never trained in the technique where you pull your balls inside your body. I know that is something in the Iron Body system that is the last level to learn. I know it's in Hun Gar and I read about it in other systems as well as the stepdad of my friend was a Hun Gar sifu ( he past away a few years ago so we used to talk about training a lot especially as his dad did karate and he also trained in some of the philipino systems [ as that what his ethnicity ] ).

 

I do know I've tried to kick the hard bags with shins the past few years and it freaking hurts. So screw that. I trained in that system for about 2-3 years.

[Craig Mallett]

I would aboslutely NOT recommend doing any iron body training without a good teacher.  You can mess yourself up really bad (arthritis, joint issues, etc etc) if it's not approached correctly, especially amongst the harder techniques.

 

Also be aware that there are more than one approach; hard methods that rely on striking things (trees, dowels, buckets of sand/rice/metal filings/whatever), and soft methods that rely on body structure/composition (the "qi" based methods). A lot of the hard methods also rely on application of ointments in between training sessions (dit da jiu), and good reliable formula is often hard to come by.

 

There are some cool dudes around if you want to look into learning from someone.  Not sure where you're located in the world, this guy in the UK has some nice skills: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E36Gep2xW7o&feature=c4-overview&list=UUUhKKy87XHUhTevIvtpR5gg

 

and I've got a friend named Dale who is a TCM doctor and iron body practitioner who is also quite awesome.  He's in Massachusetts USA.

 

rumsoakedfist.org forum might be a good place to do some searching for a teacher

[Andrew Long]

Awesome replies guys really appreciate it. I'm currently in Brisbane, Australia thinking about going to Melbourne next year. I'm really hesitant on doing anything towards this simple because I don't know how it will affect me especially as I age although right now I'm only in my mid 20s. I'm thinking he best start is just get a heavy kickboxing bag and work on that for sometime starting soft and working my way slowly to harder blows over the year.

[Nicholas Herreros]

I think you'd have to properly develop your chi.

But yes this is something that takes years of patience and time to develop your inner self.

You'd probably be best at searching out someone who's either trained with shaolin monks or actually look into training with a shaolin monk, not just some wacked out martial arts guy who's gung ho about what he does and thinks he's great and makes a good side show performer.  

[Jon Douglas]

Awesome replies guys really appreciate it. I'm currently in Brisbane, Australia thinking about going to Melbourne next year. I'm really hesitant on doing anything towards this simple because I don't know how it will affect me especially as I age although right now I'm only in my mid 20s. I'm thinking he best start is just get a heavy kickboxing bag and work on that for sometime starting soft and working my way slowly to harder blows over the year.

This is exactly where you should begin.

[Joshua Naterman]

This is exactly where you should begin.

Yes. Do not hit solid objects, there's far more risk than reward. Hit things that are heavy, and dense, but that still give.

 

To start your iron body training for areas other than your striking limbs, you can fill a thick hiking sock with dry rice. Then duct tape the crap out of it, tie it off so it stays tight, duct tape it some more, and put it inside the other sock of the pair. It will give slightly when it hits you, but will still be quite firm and give enough impact for initial iron body conditioning. Hit yourself with that, starting very gently. Only do what feels good. 

 

It is a very good idea to get a teacher, but the heavy bag and the rice sock are a safe beginning.

[FREDERIC DUPONT]

(...)  fill a thick hiking sock with dry rice. Then duct tape the crap out of it, tie it off so it stays tight, duct tape it some more, and put it inside the other sock of the pair. (...)

 

ROFL thinking of how you would explain what you really intended to do with that to the TSA officer with the rubber gloves... :D

[Joshua Naterman]

I just tell them They don't seem to care.

[Jon Douglas]

Yes. Do not hit solid objects, there's far more risk than reward. Hit things that are heavy, and dense, but that still give.

This. Do not be the `hardcore` idiot with a calendar and a brick wall >.<

You can also safely start beating with a bundle of dowels or bamboo tied together. Be prepared to start a little lighter than the rice or beans if you try this. A simple way is to do the beating in low stances-- when you can't hold it, you're done for the day. This is a trick to keep newcomers to class from overdoing it AND from resting