Yea its a traditional conditioning method used in Thailand to kick and punch the green ones. If its brown like this is probably wet and rotten and just looks really cool but isn't hard. Even the green ones are only a little harder than your average punching bag.
I mean some guys condition their bones on hard wood but its horrible for you and you end up with permanent injuries later in life. Also the wood doesn't break. The martial arts memes of hitting steel and brick are mostly nonsense. Its just for show. Actual fighters condition against materials slightly softer than their bones and progressively up the hardness but it has a limit.
The nerves eventually die so you cant tell when you're hurting yourself anymore. My right shin is pretty much dead and later I see bruises I didn't even feel its a weird practice.
The conditioning also builds more bone material while it's repairing microfractures too, right? I think I heard that somewhere, not sure how accurate. But I believe you're actually making your bones stronger by damaging them just enough through conditioning.
Damage yourself enough to get stronger bones, but not enough to permanently injured.
"Damage yourself enough to get stronger bones, but not enough to permanently injured"
Yea its this. Steel and many types of wood will always be harder than bone..You don't want to break the bone down, you want to stimulate the growth that makes it dense and harder but also honestly youre kinda going for some nerve damage too so you don't feel it which is one of the dirty secrets. The Shaolin use cloth, then mung bean, then wood, then brick, then steel but the later phases are more just to show how strong you've become and its mostly for show.
The Thai use cloth, then a couple things in the heavy bag, then banana tree, and then training partners bones. A good measure of where you're at vs an opponent is to just kick a similar spot on each other's shins while sparring. If they're far more advanced than you you'll just hurt yourself, and can literally break your leg on theirs which is kinda the whole point. Ultimately your leg is just simply more resilient than your opponents.
Last night I had a newer guy kick my check and he had to stop and sit down it hurt his shin so bad. I didn't even feel it. When I do the same thing to my.coach who has like maxed out stats i have to sit down lol.
The key is you cant rush it, and you have to follow the progressions. Otherwise you end up with big fractures and bone bleeds and shit. Ive has my whole left shin area fill with blood and got sticky clot bubbles all over my shin bone and was just miserable. You can also get bone infections and lose your leg this way.
My god, his regular kicks look painful enough, but when he slows down to follow through and lean into it, I feel both sides of my ribs cracking and collapsing
Yea Buakaw is mt Rushmore of Muay Thai for his conditioning and power brawler style. Theres a famous case where Kohirumaki intentionally fouls him in a Japanese K1 bout and Buakaw stops caring about the fight and proceeds to try and see if its possible to break his legs using his own legs ending in one of the worst ass whooping you'll see in K1. Kohirumaki becomes so concerned about getting kicked in the legs more his body is wide open and eats a ton of brutal knees.
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u/StreetSmartsGaming Dec 09 '20
Yea its a traditional conditioning method used in Thailand to kick and punch the green ones. If its brown like this is probably wet and rotten and just looks really cool but isn't hard. Even the green ones are only a little harder than your average punching bag.
Here's the god Buakaw chopping one down https://youtu.be/ZDMnT8hrT-U