My Thai coach has over 300 fights under his belt that were all fought in Thailand where he grew up. I asked him about the banana tree idea and what they do/did to toughen up thier shins. He said, "first of all, the only reason we planted banana trees was for the bananas and we would of gotten in big trouble if we were kicking it all the time, it would die and then no bananas." His opinion is that the best way is kicking a heavy bag and thai pads. That together with regular sparring is the most natural approach.
On a different note, when I started out kickboxing, I would go rounds on different bags, different thicknesses and weights for each and then I would often finish with a couple rounds kicking a tire. We would just nail a light duty tire to a 4x4 or tree or something and lightly kick it until the shin goes numb, soon you can kick it for 3minutes with no pain but to get to that point you have to endure the pain and soreness and if you don't keep doing it, it's all for nothing.
I go along with my thai coaches suggestion now and sometimes I get caught off gaurd with something that hurts my shins since they're not de-sensitized to the extreme.
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"Life is what happens while we're too busy making other plans"
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