This may sound just plain ignorant, but I'd much appreciate a mature answer and no blatant flaming. The knuckles are underneath tendons.. so, you hit your tendon padding the knuckle? A brick in a leather jacket will still hurt like all hell, but then why all the knuckle training? Again, I apologize if this is a well-known and commonplace piece of information.

- Op. Skinny Ninja

Hello,

No flame intended..

Used for maximum power, is all.. some use, or try to, just the first two knuckles to hit with.. Common sense says to condition the whole hand. Actually, all your 'tools' should be sharp and 'hold an edge'.

You can not transfer power completely with your body, arm, hand being tense.. With the right conditioning, you are able to 'hit' relaxed, and be able to be much faster, and much more power transfer, all without damaging yourself.

So would not be just knuckles... but whole hand, wrist, arms, etc.

What type of knuckle training?

Frank

Just knuckle hardening of a general nature. Knuckle push ups, heavy bag work with wrapped hands, etc.

My question is more, what does all this condition do to the tendons over the knuckle? Do they themselves become stronger? Can you damage them?

And thanks for the sole response Creosman, I was giving up hope, ha.

- Op. Skinny Ninja

Your conditioning your skin as well, forming calcium deposit undernieth that first layer of skin and fat. Your knuckles in reality don't ever change, it's just what gets built up on top of them that does.

Sorry wait a minute we have flood control, make that 300 seconds.

http://www.bartleby.com/107/illus334.html
The purpose of knuckle conditioning is to increase the density of the bone underneath the tendon, but the size of the bone will increase slightly as a result, the inside of your bones are made up of calcium deposits in a structure simular looking to an aero chocolate bar, as your training porgresses it would look like the bubbles of the choclate bar become smaller, not sure if you call the choclate aero where you are though.

http://www.bartleby.com/107/illus336.html

That is a picture of the structure of the inside of the bones i was trying to describe.

also here is another picture youl probably want to see.

http://www.bartleby.com/107/illus418.html

From what I've read there are two kinds of knuckle conditioning. One swells up the muscles, giving a lot of padding to your punches, which doesn't really help in hurting opponents, although you will be able to punch more without hurting your knuckles.

Another is said to be better, and it remakes the knuckles, moving all the nerves to the side and minimizing the tendons on the area, so that all you're really hitting with is skin and bone. Since there's nothing to get enflamed, they don't get large and waterfilled, and are better for combat, though they look weird as hell and you need proper technique, and it could possible cause damage (imagine typing on a computer like that).

I just wish I could remember which was best.

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor or physiologist. In the "old days", knuckle push-ups, makiwara & big bag training to toughen my knuckles resulted in a couple of things. 1) The skin on the 1st 2 knuckles became thicker & tougher - almost like calouses forming on the hand. 2) The knuckles became accustomed to what was previously painful. I've seen & met those who go to extremes & their knuckles became oversized & (quite frankly) ugly. I never wanted that effect - just wanted my skin to remain intact if I ever hit someone.