Everything You Need To Know About Shin Conditioning For Kickboxing
There is a lot of misinformation and wild rumors about how to condition your shins. The truth of the matter is that some professional athletes use different methods than others. It seems that there is no guaranteed way to condition your shins, but you need to find a method that works for yourself. If you find something is too painful or simply doesn’t work, then there is no point in trying to condition your shins this way.
There are also two main ways to condition your shins. The first of which is a little easier – training your brain to ignore the pain. Of course, any time you have something hard hit your shin it’s going to hurt. However, our brains can tune in and out of how much pain we are feeling. Ideally, if you’re a kickboxer, you want to be able to turn off this pain for at least a short amount of time so you’re able to compete in a match without this bothering you.
The other type of shin conditioning is making your shins tougher and more resistant to breaking. Everyone who is familiar with kickboxing or MMA will have seen at least one horrific shin injury. This typically happens when one fighter performs a low kick and snaps their own shin against the shin of their opponent.
Even scientists argue about whether a broken bone can really heal back stronger than it was. Some suggest this is impossible, whereas others claim that the calcium released upon the break allows a more rigid bone in the future. The same can be said for other bone conditioning exercises and it really comes down to who you want to trust.
Needless to say, if you want shins that are as hard as rocks, you had better find something that works for you. The aftermath of pain will always be there, but it’s best to try and avoid catastrophic injury by putting in the work upfront.
Table of Contents
Undisputed Ways To Condition Shins For Kickboxing
Diet & Exercise
One area of shin conditioning that is not disputed is by eating a healthy diet that contains vitamin D and calcium. This may sound obvious, but if you want to compete in a contact sport, the healthier your body is, the better it will cope against injuries and bruises.
Much like using protein to build muscles, you cannot simply sit around and hope that they become bigger without doing exercise.
To put the calcium and vitamin D to good use, you must perform weight-bearing exercises on your shins. This could be anything from jumping to running or lifting weights. This will not help your shins in terms of resisting pain when hitting a hard surface, but it will certainly stop them from breaking when your low kicks are checked by an opponent.
Time & Persistence
Another way to condition your shins (against pain) is by kicking a bag, or whatever else you think is necessary to build up a tolerance to pain. This will take months at the very least and more probably years to achieve. After a while, your body will get used to kicking things very hard and will no longer be concerned by the initial stinging pain.
This can be seen in other martial arts such as boxing, where hands become tougher and more resilient to impact, as well as judo, where seasoned practitioners are used to being thrown onto the ground at a high velocity.
Sparring
Sparring is an often overlooked way to condition your shins. In reality, it is just a way of putting everything listed above into a single training session.
Kickboxing sparring will put weight on your legs and force them to withstand various body positions whilst moving and throwing kicks. This exercise will make your shins tougher than sitting around and doing nothing. Secondly, at various points during sparring sessions, you’re either going to kick and hurt your own shin, or get kicked and hurt your own shin. Both of these incidents will hurt a lot when they happen the first few times but eventually will be ignored by your brain and not bother you anymore.
Disputed Ways To Condition Shins
Hitting Shins With A Stick
Regardless of what doctors say, 99.9% of them have never taken a kickboxing lesson in their life and do not do any kind of combat sports. It’s all well and good to claim something from tests and studies, but if you haven’t experienced it yourself, you still could be ignorant of real world effects.
Stephen Wonderboy Thompson is a professional MMA fighter (16-5) and accomplished kickboxer (58-0). In the video below he encourages lightly hitting his shins with a stick. This is both physical and mental conditioning from someone who has not just talked the talk but had countless bouts and injuries.
How Not To Condition Your Shins
The main way people make mistakes when conditioning their shins is pushing through the pain barrier. This may seem like a good thing to do in terms of both mental and physical conditioning, but it is not. Bones can break, heal and grow just like muscles, but are often though of very differently.
Hitting your shins continuously whilst you are in pain is a terrible idea since it does not allow them adequate time to recover and heal. If you do repeatedly hit an injured bone, it is likely to become inflamed and damaged even more than it already was.
Shin conditioning is something that should be built up over time and is a marathon. The moment it becomes a sprint is the time you will cause yourself serious damage and injury.
Despite what people may say if you hit your shins hard, it is always going to hurt afterward and there is no getting away from it.
Crazy Exercises
There are many videos on the internet of people kicking metal poles as hard as they can, as well as people breaking trees in half with their kicks and punches.
In general, these people are very experienced kickboxers with years of conditioning behind them and are also doing something very stupid. Due to the level of technique and shin conditioning they have, the risk is somewhat minimal compared to an average person.
However, there is still no benefit to be gained from kicking a metal pole. It is a medium – to high risk situation with a 0 reward. Tony Ferguson is a fighter who has had a LOT of injuries, which makes sense if he is doing things like this.
