Yep Tim, the good ol' makiwara. Our long-departed Wado sensei, who arrived in Europe in the early 1970s, was a great advocate of it. So I installed one in my garden too. Sensei had told us that one should only use the makiwara as resistance to initiate a strike mainly from the hip and the 'tanden' region; thus I had tailor-made the resistance of my makiwara for my personal body strength. With each strike, I kept the backwards sprung makiwara at its furthest position for about a second. I thus trained on it for many hours until one day it broke due to rot in the ground and from then on I went over to the heavy training bag. I don't really know if I got major benefits from it but the makiwara was still advantageous in my view for training the elementary junzuki and gyaku azuki. Then again, the bag was more advantageous for more dynamic punches with displacement to the side. Anyway, and without ever practising with handguards, to this day I have not suffered any ill effects for it in the joints and tendons of hands and joints...although it must be said that I did not develop any deformities (osteophytes) at the knuckles as some of my sempai did....
Another senior Wado Sensei I know is also a teacher of classical Spanish guitar, he refused to do even knuckle press ups, because of the risk of damage to his tendons. But ironically, an acupuncturist I worked with had to give up learning the guitar because it reduced the sensitivity of his finger tips which he needed to feel pulses!
Yep Tim, the good ol' makiwara. Our long-departed Wado sensei, who arrived in Europe in the early 1970s, was a great advocate of it. So I installed one in my garden too. Sensei had told us that one should only use the makiwara as resistance to initiate a strike mainly from the hip and the 'tanden' region; thus I had tailor-made the resistance of my makiwara for my personal body strength. With each strike, I kept the backwards sprung makiwara at its furthest position for about a second. I thus trained on it for many hours until one day it broke due to rot in the ground and from then on I went over to the heavy training bag. I don't really know if I got major benefits from it but the makiwara was still advantageous in my view for training the elementary junzuki and gyaku azuki. Then again, the bag was more advantageous for more dynamic punches with displacement to the side. Anyway, and without ever practising with handguards, to this day I have not suffered any ill effects for it in the joints and tendons of hands and joints...although it must be said that I did not develop any deformities (osteophytes) at the knuckles as some of my sempai did....
Thank you Jan,
Another senior Wado Sensei I know is also a teacher of classical Spanish guitar, he refused to do even knuckle press ups, because of the risk of damage to his tendons. But ironically, an acupuncturist I worked with had to give up learning the guitar because it reduced the sensitivity of his finger tips which he needed to feel pulses!
It is indeed a strange world.