How to Condition Your Knuckles for Punches. A Guide on Hardening Your Fists For Fighting

In the world of martial arts and fighting, conditioning your fists is a useful tool that is sadly not always optimized. That is, if you strengthen and condition your fists then it can be massively beneficial when facing combat. However, a lot of people still don’t do this as it’s a less obvious way to improve. Nonetheless, if ever you’ve faced someone with conditioned hands, you’ll be well aware that they’re only beneficial for fighting. So, how do you do this and how long does it take? Everything and more is answered below.

What is the Kung Fu iron fist?

The term ‘iron fist’ is not a joke, and describes the process of transforming your fists so they feel like literal iron. Imagine getting punched by a soft fist, compared to one with years of conditioning. The result in force would be massive. Further, the more conditioned your fist is; the less likely it is to get injured. Just like any other part of your body, the more it’s trained, the better and more resilient it becomes.

In Kung Fu, this is where the term ‘iron fist’ originated from. In short, people would go through great lengths to make their fists as powerful as possible. Like all forms of martial arts training, this can take years or a lifetime to accomplish and there are a few methods to do this. By doing this, some Kung Fu practitioners would have fists almost double the size of regular people’s. When it comes to punching, you can see how this would help.

What’s the science behind conditioning your hands?

Although this is debatable, the idea is that everytime you exercise your hands, you make microfractures on the bones. Supposedly, these bones reform stronger, and bigger. By doing these exercises, your hand muscles should grow too. Imagine using a Captain Crush on your hands, they’ll naturally strengthen.

Further, by doing iron fist exercises, your hand bones will too. Regardless of your thoughts on the scientific data, the proof is there for all to see – and if you keep at it then your fists will grow bigger and get stronger as a result. Similarly, some fighters do this with their shins too, by constantly kicking a bag or hard objects. UFC fighter Tony Ferguson was known for this and actually broke his bones in doing so. One issue that some people claim that these methods bring is the issue of arthritis. Supposedly, in the short-term you’ll be ok but later on in life your finger bones and ligaments will pay for years of wear and tear.

Remember to condition your hands safely

As you will notice by reading this guide, some of the methods featured can be labeled as unconventional, or even dangerous by some. With this in mind, we’re not condoning you do these methods and that you should read more into the science before continuing. The last thing any prospective martial artist wants to do is injure their body in the pursuit of improvement.

One way to prevent injury is by wrapping your hands before trying these methods. This is done by boxers and MMA pros when fighting and is designed to cushion the wrist. Although this won’t save your hands fully, at least it literally offers a layer of protection. Having said this, perhaps the best way to protect your hands is by not over doing it. If they begin to hurt or you feel pain, it means you’re doing things with too much force. Instead, remember to be consistent but with a greater emphasis on reps rather than hitting hard. Like weight lifting, if you do lighter reps compared to heavy lifts, you’re more likely to avoid injury.

How long does it take to strengthen and condition you hands?

This is a commonly asked question, and it really depends on the number of time you put in. For instance, two people may spend one year conditioning their fists. However, in that years, some could literally spend double the amount of time doing so compared to their counterpart. In other words, it’s really about the hours you put in.

Initially, you may see success after about 3 months or so of consistent training. A good way to see progress is by photographing your hands before starting to see the gains in size, otherwise you may naturally think you haven’t progressed as much as you once thought. Like all martial arts though, strengthening your fists isn’t just something you can do for a year then stop. Instead, those with the strongest fists will spend years improving their conditioning, even if there’s no end goal in mind.

How to strengthen and condition your hands

Rice gripping

Gripping rice is great for strengthening your hand muscles and is a proven technique that has been used for years. This will do two things. The first is that it will strengthen your muscles and it will also make them bigger. In other words, your grip strength will improve massively. This is also a very cheap option to pursue. You literally just need a bucket and some rice, then you start turning the rice with your hands. Whilst this may not sound like you’re doing much, try it yourself. After a couple of minutes, your hands and forearms will burn.

Similar training methods include Captain Crush, as well as folding a towel back and forward. Although this will make your punches more powerful due to having stronger hands, it also makes gripping better. For grappling martial arts and even clinching in boxing, this is a good way to improve hand strength, and fast.

Punching the bag

Hitting the bag will naturally harden your knuckles. If ever you’ve seen a boxer, you will notice their knuckles are often worn from years of punching. As mentioned earlier, this supposedly works by causing small tears in your knuckles, and then they grow back harder and stronger than before. Sometimes, this will make your knuckles even grow bigger as a result.

Similar methods to this include hitting more harder surfaces. Of course, you should build up your fists before leaving the bag and stepping up. For instance, some may start practicing punches against concrete. This method may sound suicidal but nonetheless, some people swear by this and it will harden the front of your fist as a result. This doesn’t have to exclusively train your knuckles either. If you really want, you can hit with the side of your fist (the soft part) which will also harden too.

Hammering the fist

This is a very old school method that was used by traditional martial artists back in the day. Once gain, this method is met these days with grimace by people who disagree with it. Basically, you want to harden your hands by hitting them with a small hammer. Remember, you don’t want to break your bones so small but repetitive hits are preferred compared to fewer, harder hits with the hammer. The aim once more is to create small fractures that eventually heal your bones and make them stronger as a result.

As seen in the above picture, MMA fighter and BJJ black belt Baret Yoshida is literally hammering his fist. Notice something? Look how big his hand and fingers look. They almost look too big in comparison to the rest of his body. This is the result of years of conditioning his hands.

Press ups on your knuckles

This is another oldie but is certainly a goldie. The main reason to do press ups is to strengthen your arms. However, you can also do these on your fists instead of the traditional method, which involves press ups using your flat palms. The point of this exercise is that every time your body goes down, you put weight into your knuckles that are pressed into the ground. This creates the outcome that your knuckles get hardened as a result due to your weight distribution.

Compared to the other techniques listed, the main point of press ups is always to get stronger triceps and biceps. Nonetheless, if you incorporate this method into your training, you will naturally improve your knuckle and fist strength as you go along. Therefore, this is a passive yet effective method to improve your strength and conditioning whilst working out.

Conclusion

As discussed above, there’s a lot of ways to strengthen and condition your hands. The good news is that these methods are affordable and don’t require any fancy hardware or expensive tools. Instead, many of these techniques instead rely on consistent training and patience. Like the philosophy of martial arts itself, strengthening your fists has a lot in common with hard work and determination.

Whilst many people will naturally avoid strengthing your hands, as seen in the previous examples – with enough time spent, you can transform your hands and make them very effective when fighting. Whether for self defense, traditional martial arts or MMA, by hardening your hands, you’re only improving your body as a fighting machine. With this in mind, try out the above exercises and see what you think. Remember to do so safely and see where it takes you!