Conditioning myself to take a punch.

[Gavin]

I was wondering if it would be practical to punch myself in the face, slowly working my way up to harder objects (boards, beer bottles) to condition myself to be able to take a punch better; IE, to be able to take a blow to the face and not feel as much pain/be able to ignore the pain better?

I know this works for the feet (walking barefoot builds up your tolerance to stepping on things until you can walk on sharp rocks with no problem) and other things like sleeping in the cold, etc. But I'm not sure about the head and face... my friend who boxes told me "It doesn't work that way..." but you see boxers taking hits that would knock normal people flat on their butt, so obviously there is something going on.

Would this be practical? Logical? Rasional? Or is it just insane and stupid? I met a person who would break wine bottles over his head for fun and laugh about it afterwards (I saw this with my own eyes by the train tracks) but he'd still have to go to the hospital for concussions/bleeding, etc.

Could I also do this for my stomach as well?, since these are the two main places people get hit.

[Dave.cyco]

You want to be able to take a hit? Why? Are you planning on being a brawler? Breaking legs for loan sharks, what?

If it's for defensive purposes, learn not to take hits. Start by toughening up your forearms. If you condition your forearms properly you can block a baseball bat. Juggle some limes. The hand eye coordination from that will help with blocking speed and accuracy.

If you feel you absolutley have to be able to take a hit, just get into boxing. And work your abs.

Or run away. Unless you have something they really want, they aren't going to chase you very far, and if they do, you really pissed them off and probably deserve it.

Or just ask VingTsunMonkey

[koltz]

I'm pretty sure your better off learning to avoid punches rather then punching yourself in the face that's stupid

[plancheismine]

do coke :wink: won't feel a thing.

maybe chew on a big wad of gum....build up the muscles. :-D
i;m gonna try that barefoot thing :-D build up the feet
also hiting your head with your palms toughens up the skull thickness

[kawana]

^^ bout the coke comment,thats not far off, dont mean togo off topicbut i got a story that hs to do with tihs. My dadsa cop right,so this is about... 10 years ago? There was a call bout some wackjob waving a machine gun, and threatening people. Eventually a bunch of cops come and the guy starts shooting at the cop. The cops emptied 57 round into him and he ws still coming after then, it took 2 shots to the head before he died, turns out he was strung out on Pcp and oher stuff lol. Ok back ontopic lol

[liero]

you cant condition the most likely spot for you to get knocked out...the jaw, its like the balls...no way to learn to take a hit there.

like someone elce said. If you want to learn to 'take a punch' go and learn how to fight. Take up boxing or something, after a few sparring sessions one night youll realise the next day why you dont want to hit yourself in the head over and over.

however you can condition the rest of your body, i watched this show about 2 brothers who could break solid concrete, heaps and heaps of blocks with their bodies, one even his head...ask him how to take a punch

[amorelli]

Could I also do this for my stomach as well?, since these are the two main places people get hit.
For the stomach, just get your abs really strong. I'm not necessarily talking fancy looking sixpack strong, although that works - I'm talking solid wall of muscle strong. If it happens to be separated into six parts, so much the better, but I've seen a lot of guys with no ab definition but abs of steel.

[VingTsunMonkey]

The Jing Wu Men is famous for it's style's body hardness. Basically, if you want to toughen up your face, yes, hit it. Be careful how though. Myself, I spar without a helmet but with sparring gloves all the time, it really toughens up your skull/face. I would never, in my whole life, put any faith in blocking. Sure, I use it, but the O3 goes as follows: "better to avoid than to fight, better to dodge than get hit, better to parry than block, better to block than take it". Especially with hard style forearm blocks, they're very ineffective in the sense that a snapped jab to your jaw will make it there MUCH faster than a block. Learning to take shots is ESSENTIAL if you're a fighter. There's no way around it. A classic karate saying is this: "it's not the punch you see that you should worry about".

You move up the ladder of hardness carefully when you do iron body training. Start with soft things, and progress VERY SLOWLY to harder things. It takes years. The problem with real hard training is it can cause bloodclots and permanent damage (circulatory and nerve) if you're not careful. I would personally say, however, that learning to dodge (slip, bob, weave) should be paramount. Face conditioning should come later.

[plancheismine]

however you can condition the rest of your body, i watched this show about 2 brothers who could break solid concrete, heaps and heaps of blocks with their bodies, one even his head...ask him how to take a punch
http://youtube.com/watch?v=os7pAzP5ULY
8) what a beast!

[1rickloyd1]

You can condition your neck by doing some supine chin tucks and rotations. lay supine and tuck chin to chest then look side to side slowly the relax and repeat. focus on head movement and not neck. This is an old boxing exercise that helps to condition your neck to absorb impact. Also there is no way to get use to being hit unless it is being hit. Need to learn composure.

[Moonduck]

You can only condition yourself to take a punch but so far. It's far more useful, and far less damaging, to learn the skill of taking a punch properly. By that I mean learning to direct a blow into a less damaging target, fading back from the blow as it happens to rob the hit of velocity, leaning into a hit to time it out of its' power range, etc.

As others have said, this is all boxing stuff. The reason referees stop fights when a fighter can't defend himself is that a punch taken unprepared can seriously injure even a well-conditioned boxer.

So learn how to take it. Don't just practise taking it.

[liero]

so the verdict is, to learn to take a punch. go and train in a combatitive art like boxing and do some serious conditioning...or just run away?

[Dave.cyco]

so the verdict is, to learn to take a punch. go and train in a combatitive art like boxing and do some serious conditioning...or just run away?

Bingo!

Let's say you don't learn all that stuff...are you just going to stick around when someone has nasty plans for your skull, and expect to get by on luck?

[Gavin]

I've never been the type to run away unless I'm really outmuscled or outnumbered... but then again, I haven't been in a real 'fight' since highschool... except maybe one or two... and you know, once you get into your 20's, fighting takes on a whole new dimension.

I used to be able to take metal trash cans to the face and keep on going. People used to slam my head into lockers, and I wouldn't even feel it until the fight was over and I was sitting in detention for beating someone up.

But now it's a lot different. A lot of people lift weights and have lived 'harder' lifestyles so their hits hurt more than I remember those trash cans used to...

I've heard the worst place to get hit is the gut, because it knocks the wind out of you and takes your energy away... so basically I strengthen my abbs. Okay.

What about kidney shots? How do I strengthen those muscles? I've read that you can actually kill someone if you hit them in that spot hard enough (like the pain overloads the CNS causing it to shut down or something).

As for blocking... blocking is useless unless your 'soft' sparring in Karate class. I've never seen a block in a real fight... mostly deflections or turtling (when you hold your arms over your face to block). But you know, you're not always gonna see a punch coming, so being able to take that first hit is pretty vital in defending yourself. Running away may save your ass occasionally but you won't always be able to run away; what if you run into a dead-end alley? Better be prepared to fight man! And if you wanna fight you gotta take a hit.

[koltz]

I've never been the type to run away unless I'm really outmuscled or outnumbered... but then again, I haven't been in a real 'fight' since highschool... except maybe one or two... and you know, once you get into your 20's, fighting takes on a whole new dimension.

I used to be able to take metal trash cans to the face and keep on going. People used to slam my head into lockers, and I wouldn't even feel it until the fight was over and I was sitting in detention for beating someone up.

But now it's a lot different. A lot of people lift weights and have lived 'harder' lifestyles so their hits hurt more than I remember those trash cans used to...

I've heard the worst place to get hit is the gut, because it knocks the wind out of you and takes your energy away... so basically I strengthen my abbs. Okay.

What about kidney shots? How do I strengthen those muscles? I've read that you can actually kill someone if you hit them in that spot hard enough (like the pain overloads the CNS causing it to shut down or something).

As for blocking... blocking is useless unless your 'soft' sparring in Karate class. I've never seen a block in a real fight... mostly deflections or turtling (when you hold your arms over your face to block). But you know, you're not always gonna see a punch coming, so being able to take that first hit is pretty vital in defending yourself. Running away may save your ass occasionally but you won't always be able to run away; what if you run into a dead-end alley? Better be prepared to fight man! And if you wanna fight you gotta take a hit.
so where do you live to go fightign past highschool?

[Moonduck]

What about kidney shots? How do I strengthen those muscles? I've read that you can actually kill someone if you hit them in that spot hard enough (like the pain overloads the CNS causing it to shut down or something).


If you're getting hit in the kidney, you're either getting hit from surprise (and all the conditioning in the world won't help), or you're already so beaten that you're on the ground (and again, conditioning won't help).

Get the skills to prevent the shot in the first place, and the awareness to catch someone coming your way enough to turn to face.. That's it.

[cheesedog]

Old time boxers, like Jack Dempsey, uses to chew pine tar to toughen the jaw muscles. Sounds tasty!
More seriously, the exercises ricklyoyd mentioned are good, as are wrestlers bridges and neck harness exercises.

[Dylan10507]

Try shooting your self slowly increasing the power of the gun, that way if you get shot it won't hurt. But seriously don't punch yourself in the face strengthen your neck muscles with front and back bridges the strength helps to absorb some of the force of the punches.

[fearthepenguin]

your face and your feet analogy is a little off. With your feet, your just thickening the skin and making it more difficult for sharp objects to puncture the skin and cause pain. When you are training to take a punch, you're training for two things.

To be able to handle the pain of getting popped in the nose/eye. That hurts. Only way to make it hurt less is to deaden those nerves with lots of repeated trauma (bad idea) or not get hit (better idea). Invariably though, you will get popped in the nose at some point, work more on your mental strength to be able to overcome that pain then on your nose nerves. This is easiest done by pushing yourself harder and harder when you train, make your mind hungry and make it learn how to push past the pain to get what it wants.

The second thing is to keep from getting knocked out. You can take a punch to the head everyday and it wont make a bit of difference when it comes to how easy or hard it is to lay you out. In a short summary, you hit the floor because your brain cant stop itself from smacking into your skull when you get a solid hit. A direct hit on the top of the head won't usually knock a person out, but a nice twisting shot to the lower jaw will get them fairly easily. Reason? Look at what happens to a fighter when they get hit with that knock out blow, the head twists violently one direction and then back another, compounding the impact that the brain receives. To limit that motion, some people believe you should strength train your neck to help absorb the shock. Others believe it's all about a fine balance between a clenched and relaxed jaw. The truth is that no one has it down to a science yet or you wouldn't see folks getting KO'd.

If you want to learn how to take a punch, make sure your mind is animal strong and join up with a boxing gym. Someplace where the folks have enough brains to know that when you're down, the fight is over. Plus, you'll pick up some good lessons on how not to get hit, which in the end is far more important.

[juszczec]

I was wondering if it would be practical to punch myself in the face, slowly working my way up to harder objects (boards, beer bottles) to condition myself to be able to take a punch better; IE, to be able to take a blow to the face and not feel as much pain/be able to ignore the pain better?


No. It wouldn't be practical.

Just to re-emphasize a couple of points already made:

-learn to evade/avoid. King Kong can try to punch me in the head - but if me and my head ain't there it don't matter.

-learn to take a shot and keep going. The shots that are going to put you down are going to do so due to physical things you can't change (bones break under so much pressure, jar the brain around enough and you black out etc etc)

You can learn how to deal with the pain and discomfort of getting hit. Best thing to do is get some good protective gear and go somewhere you can spar (notice I didn't say fight) like a boxing or kickboxing gym. You need to do this with guys who are smart enough to know when to stop and explain why something did/didn't work.

Mark