Injuries during partnered drills

When you do drills with partners, where one attacks and the other presents the hand/palm as a target, if your hand or part of your hand gets injured, how long does it usually take to heal?

For example, your partner kicks high (front kick) and the foot hits the palm, but goes past it and on the way down, hits the fingertips and bends the fingers backwards. It happened to me yesterday during training. I changed it to a fist then and pull back more to reduce the aggravation of the injury, but it still hurts now.

I'd just like to get an idea of how long sprained finger and hand joints take to heal. I'd also like to know if anyone here has taken part in full contact partnered training, with one kicking the hand of a partner with excessive force as if your hand (with all the tiny joints in it) were a heavy bag so that I'd know who to stay away from during drills and whether I should whine about it or just shut my mouth and volunteer my body as a striking surface.

If you treat it properly, it will only take a week or two to heal. If it seems to be longer than that, you have a tear or a fracture. That will take 6-8 weeks.

Why are you kicking/punching your partners hand?

JohnL

Our dojo has these things called focus pads that you can hit really hard? [IMG]http://www.fightingarts.com/forums/ubb/eek.gif[/IMG]

you shouldnt be hitting each others hands.
You can really do some damage.
Someone good can break all your fingers with a kick. or your ribs or a lot of other things also!
Word to focus pads, use them, and if youa re sparring then gloves helmet armour.
It takes years to condition your hands to withstand blows like that, and its definetely not done by someone hitting your bare body.
What is your teacher smoking?

I have been told by three Doctors that an injury takes a full 6 weeks to heel from start to finish. The biggest problem is that with proper treatment the injury will feel better in 2 to 3 weeks and it is easy to re-injure yourself. Focus pads and other pads are great aids to use for full power drills un protected body parts are not.
dan

A bruise should take 1-2 weeks to heal.
A sprain will take 4-6 weeks.
A tear or bone fracture is what will feel better in about 6 weeks, but will take up to 8 weeks to fully heal (longer if you're over 40).

I may not be an MD, but I do know this from very painful experience.

I'm wading in on this one too...

Focus mits or kicking targets will prevent injuries & (tell your instructor) loss of students.

We weren't supposed to be kicking too hard - our instructor told us so, and told my partner so several times. By the way, our teacher doesn't smoke or do drugs or anything like that - he is one of the country's national reps in karate, started in the early nineties before point-sparring took over full-contact sport karate, and still does contact karate with the other black belts in the country.

The drills were for accuracy in sport-fighting - to practice the "skin-touch/light-contact" required in WKF-style sparring. And I decided to be a "brave" STUPID young man and not show too much pain, and stood my ground until the drills were over and my hands hurt a lot.

The guy who was my partner is a bit hardcore - started with taekwondo, where you're allowed(required??) to hit your opponent hard (since they have more protection), until those classes stopped. He had even insisted that I kick his hand hard, which I wouldn't, and couldn't anyway since I have injured right and left big toes from December last year, which haven't completely healed yet. The left was probably stepped on accidentally by an opponent during a tournament last year, and the right I fractured from accidentally hitting a wooden board.

Thankfully, my hands were OK after a little over a week. So I guess my joints were only sprained when they got hyperextended. I think my toes will take a lot longer to heal than eight weeks, since they have often almost healed and then been injured again whenever I unwisely decide resume training, and I'm clumsy in the house and I tend to bump into things like furniture a lot, and there's the running I do once in a while to increase my stamina.... I'm thinking of sticking to kicking air instead of running - would that be advisable?

I'll inform my instructor about focus mitts and kicking targets.

Thanks for the input guys.