Wing Chun and Iron Palm

[Yoshiyahu]

Is it useful to Practice Iron Palm. My Sifu once said that His Sihing could leave hand prints on peoples chest that he fought because of his Iron Palm skills. My Sihing who was also the student of My Uncle or My sifus big brother also attested to this fact. My Sifu often refer to Wing Chun as the gun, and Iron Palm and Iron Fingers as the Bullets. Many people say that you need to practice Iron Palm today. But what if your in a fight for you life. What if your attackers have knives or bats? Wouldn't Iron palm kinda make things a little easier for you?

Here are somethings I read about concerning Yuen Kay San Wing Chun: Yuen Kay-San was born in 1889 and at a young age, his father arranged for him and his elder brother, Yuen Chai-Wan to study under the Foshan constable Fok Bo-Chuen (a disciple of Red Junk Opera martial lead actor Wong Wah-Bo and Painted Face Kam). From Fok, they learned the fist forms siu lien tao, chum kiu, (sinking bridge), and biu jee (darting fingers), as well as the wooden and bamboo dummy (juk jong), six-and-a-half point pole (luk dim boon gwun), and the double clamping yang slaying knives (yee jee kim yeung dit ming do), iron sand palm (tiet sa jeung) and other skills.

Another Interesting thing concerning Bil Gee with iron conditioning:
In the beginning of Yuen Kay-San's training, he started to spear rice with his palms, then he progressed onto coarse sands and continued until he could spear iron sands without hurting his skin. Finally, the achievement of his palms was so enormous that he could spear into a bag of rice with one blow to retrieve a previously placed copper coin.

So what do you think?

Are these skills Useful or Useless?

Wing Chun History Link:
http://www.wing-chun.cz/en/wch_description.html

See Yuen Kay San

 

[mook jong man]

If you can do that sort of training without deforming your hands i suppose it is okay , but i think my hands get enough conditioning just pounding on the wall bag .

Human hands are a wonderous thing they can form a fist and smash somebody's face in and also have the ability to hit the keys with great dexterity in a piano concerto .

You just have to be careful about going overboard with the hand conditioning so that you don't end up with problems years later down the track .

 

[Yoshiyahu]

Do you think its a problem with putting steel shots in your wall bag eventually. To make your punches and palm strikes that much harder?

 

[mook jong man]

Not at all , i think i read some where that the great Wong Shun Leung punched the wall bag in his school and and actually split it open with the power of his punch and it was full of ball bearings .

 

[Yoshiyahu]

Okay. Because My Sifu told me first to start off with Canvas bag filled with beans. Then go up to sand. An after about a year of hitting the sand move up to gravel then go to steel shots. This is how you are to build iron palm from hitting a canvas bag with your palm and side of hand. Great for practicing Jum Sau and Gum Sau I think! But alls you do is drop down force.