How do I know when my knuckles have hardened?

[Katriona1992]

I have been doing taekwondo (the real thing- not ATA whatsoever) for around one year and four months now. Nearly every week (I got for two sessions per week and each session is three hours long), I come back home with bruises around the knuckles and foot. My room always smells like dit da jiao on Tuesday and Friday nights lol.

Since I know that bone hardening is actually possible, I want to know is there any way I could check how much my bones have hardened?

I know it wouldn't be much (like duh...I am still pretty much a noob), but even the smallest change would make me very happy.

Thank you!

P.S. I am very sorry if this is not meant to be in this forum. I am still exploring around here :gay:

[searcher66071]

Hardened knuckles? Why do you want that? They do make gloves.

Can you punch a tree and kill it? No? Keep working.

[MMAMickey]

your knuckles will never harden to the point you can't break your hand. you should spend your time learning to fight.

[helmutlvx]

I do makiwara all the time.

Your knuckles will never not be bruised. It'll just get less noticeable. Bone growth will also not be very much unless you punch trees all the time and that isn't healthy.

edit: P.S. Bruises on your instep mean your kicks suck.

[hungryjoe]

Bone hardening is achieved through damages healing. In many cases, harder hands (knuckle areas) come at the expense of risk of lost dexterity and issues later in life.

You're still a teenager aren't you? Why worry about hard hands now when there is so much more to work on?

You should at this stage, as pointed out above, be working more on how to hit. Hard hands can come later when there's less chance of injury.

If you're hell bent on achieving this, go slow and train smart. Injuries need time to heal.

[nomamao]

Well, at least you are using Dit Da Jow. Thank Kungfu for that, ok.

Hard knuckles don't mean a thing if you can't hit the side of barn PROPERLY. Just remember that pain is all in the mind and that harder knuckles won't get you laid. Continue to train your TKD and learn to make grown men cry.

[Mr. Machette]

I discovered that the years of punching wood and steel payed off when I hit some douche bag one time and his face shattered while my hand only smarted for a couple of days. The guy dropped like a stone. Mission accomplished. (he had already wailed on my head BTW, it wasn't an unprovoked KO)

Honestly though, the hardening only protected my hand. The actual payoff came from training how to throw a punch, and working the heavy bag to learn how to put "real ultimate power" into it.

[SaintHamish]

Since I know that bone hardening is actually possible, I want to know is there any way I could check how much my bones have hardened?

I dont think your bones become harder as such, I believe they become denser after repairing small fractures over a prolonged period.

Even so I wouldnt recommend testing your bone 'strength' by kicking moving cars or punching brick walls.

Id take note of other posters and worry more about developing your striking ability before worrying about getting shins like a Thai fighter...

[Petter]

I discovered that the years of punching wood and steel payed off when I hit some douche bag one time and his face shattered while my hand only smarted for a couple of days. […]

Honestly though, the hardening only protected my hand.

This is a good illustration of why anecdotes are often useless as evidence. How do you know that the ‘hardening’ protected your hand? How do you know that your hand would have broken had you not spent time hardening it? (Now, if we had 100 guys hit a bag bareknuckled and then punch someone in the face, with a control group of 100 guys hitting a bag with gloves and then punching someone in the face…)

I don’t consider it implausible, mind you—load-bearing exercise and healing microfractures may both (I gather) increase bone density and therefore bone strength; and of course hitting bareknuckled will presumably teach you to hit in non-injurious ways. What I am saying is merely that your anecdote has no value as evidence.

---

To the OP,

Personally I wonder how useful it is to condition one’s knuckles. Why do you feel it will be valuable? Personally I don’t see any value in it—but that’s me and my values and priorities. Two things to keep in mind are, first, there may be a risk of triggering arthritis: Arthritis tends to begin in stressed or damaged joints, I gather, and often affects the hands. Is this a likely outcome of this sort of training? I dunno; citation needed. Second, judge the æsthetics for yourself, if that sort of thing matters to you…

From here. (I originally googled for a picture of “oyama's hand”, but for some reason that failed to find pictures of karateka hands, instead finding a picture of a nude lady with a dragon tattoo. It is unclear to me why this was so.)

[Smoke]

Why don't you just learn to punch properly rather than worrying about breaking something?

I remember being in jr. high bragging to the kids that I had bruised knuckles from a makiwara.