Shin Conditioning

[Ikken Hisatsu]

no, its one of those things hollywood put into a movie to make it seem tougher. inadvertently inspiring a generation of stupid people to think that it is a good way of conditioning your shins.

[holyman]

i also read that thai boxers cut off the nerves in their legs so they dont feel any pain and thier legs become iron bars yeilding destruction.

Also rub glass bottles up and down your chins

no, its one of those things hollywood put into a movie to make it seem tougher. inadvertently inspiring a generation of stupid people to think that it is a good way of conditioning your shins.

[silapathai]

sigh...

Normal training over time will take the "honey comb" out of your shin. If you must try to flatten the "honey comb" out of your shins all you need to do is take a stick, bottle, rolling pin..but DON'T ROLL. You just press whichever you're using against and push down over and over..and don't go up and down..if you go back and forth often you will develop "balls", calcium deposits on your shin. Use some common sense when doing this, only do maybe about 5 minutes of this a day for about 2 months. If it starts to hurt a lot than quit doing it stupid.
If done properly all this will do is make your shins harder, it doesn't really deaden the nerve endings in your shin..the only thing that does that is a lot of training..i.e. kicking on the bags and/or thai pad rounds. I have had two doctors tell me about the shin being a natural honey comb and both of these doctors also said that the shin conditioning I just mentioned will "flatten" your shin but they tried to tell me it has no benifit.
On another note when i first started training and did shin conditioning I used thai liniment when doing it. There is other stuff out there besides thai liniment so use some common sense. I have never got any dents/fractures from doing shin conditioning but maybe that's because I was somewhat cautious about it. I have got "dents" from checking kicks in the past but who hasn't that's trained hard enough?

[koto_ryu]

i also read that thai boxers cut off the nerves in their legs so they dont feel any pain and thier legs become iron bars yeilding destruction.

Also rub glass bottles up and down your chins

And where did you read this just out of curiousity?

[Garland]

If you wanna be hardcore...this will deaden the nerves after the initial burning, but it will not strengthen your shin...i.e. the nerves in the skin above your bone won't feel shit, but your bone will still get that clack...two sticks reverberating feeling when you connect shin to shin...

When you shower, take a small hand towel, moisten it, and roll it up and across...with the wet towel you vigorously rub down both shins...and you won't feel it then, but when you get out, you'll feel the friction burn that has taken all of the skin away from the flesh... do this...DO IT. And then go kick the pads 50 times each leg as hard as you can.

You will NEVER bitch about the pain again...because you'll know better. This hurts so much worse, and one of my instructors had me do it. (my other instructor at a different gym laughed at me for being dumb enough to do it, but also felt sorry for me for believeing the other guys bullshit.) Now..I can kick pretty solid stuff hard, but not as hard as I can (I don't want to break my leg), because the pain is relatively not as bad as the shit my poor little shins have been through.

[Garland]

or...be a puss and do it with a bottle gradually.

by the way...the linament is not for the bone...it's for muscles. Build up strong leg muscles, throw a lot of kicks, and you'll have tough legs...you don't have to **** up your legs...But I did, and it worked to some degree...it was awful...I'm gullible....yada yada yada...not good for your health, and so on.

[gabbah]

Normal training over time will take the "honey comb" out of your shin. If you must try to flatten the "honey comb" out of your shins all you need to do is take a stick, bottle, rolling pin..but DON'T ROLL. You just press whichever you're using against and push down over and over..and don't go up and down..if you go back and forth often you will develop "balls", calcium deposits on your shin. Use some common sense when doing this, only do maybe about 5 minutes of this a day for about 2 months. If it starts to hurt a lot than quit doing it stupid.
If done properly all this will do is make your shins harder, it doesn't really deaden the nerve endings in your shin..the only thing that does that is a lot of training..i.e. kicking on the bags and/or thai pad rounds. I have had two doctors tell me about the shin being a natural honey comb and both of these doctors also said that the shin conditioning I just mentioned will "flatten" your shin but they tried to tell me it has no benifit.
On another note when i first started training and did shin conditioning I used thai liniment when doing it. There is other stuff out there besides thai liniment so use some common sense. I have never got any dents/fractures from doing shin conditioning but maybe that's because I was somewhat cautious about it. I have got "dents" from checking kicks in the past but who hasn't that's trained hard enough?

I haven't read about this method elsewhere... Do you have any more info about this? I didn't even know we have honey comb structure in our bones?

[silapathai]

honeycomb

I use the term "honeycomb" lightly...the shin through shin conditioning and/or enough training will get more flattened out/solid/hard over time. I have seen people that have shin conditioned going back and forth; the balls that I spoke of in my other post. I highly stress being cautious when shin conditioning and don't go overboard because I have known a few people that did this and had to take months off from kicking because of it. It's not necessary to shin condition though, I know many people that never did any shin conditioning and just trained and eventually got hard shins.
I used a old glass german coke bottle when I did my shin conditioning(bigger than the U.S. coke bottles). Some people out there will take sticks and beat there shins thinking this is a good way to shin condition, well I suppose if you're lucky enough not to get any stress fractures or "dents" on your shins than yeah, it would work. But I know that it could make stress factures; good times.

[gabbah]

Re: honeycomb

I see.. so how hard should you press?

Thanks for you answers, they're much appreciated.

[gabbah]

more on honeycomb and shin conditioning

"The bone lattice consists of two layers. The outer corticol bone and the inner trabecular bone, which is covered with a thin membrane, the periosteum, where pain can generate.

The corticol or compact bone is a hard, dense shell, comprised of columns of cells, each with a central hollow, known as a Haversion canal. These canals are important for the nutrition, growth and the repair of bone.

The trabecular or spongy bone is a mesh-like structure filled with collagen (protein), calcium salts and other minerals. The spaces of the honeycomb structure contain blood vessels and bone marrow, the fatty tissue in which blood cells are formed.

Corticol bone represents 75% of the bone in the body, trabecular the remaining 25%."

sources: http://www.50plushealth.co.uk/index.cfm?articleid=654

http://www.spineuniverse.com/displayarticle.php/article1224.html

image at http://www.engin.umich.edu/class/bme...s/bonephys.htm

My question after reading about the shin bone is: are you sure you can flatten the honeycomb structure of the bone? I mean since it's pretty deep in the bone? Wouldn't the harder outer part prevent that?
Interesting stuff