A Child's Hand

A CHILD'S HAND

 

With much stricter rules regarding health and safety in the work place or within any reputable martial art club, and people now having more legal safeguards and statutory rights, the new student can be assured of better treatment when attending a martial art club that upholds these guidelines, but for the instructor, this can be a problem at times when it comes to the way training within classes are carried out.

 

 

Back in the 1970's children, for example, were expected to perform press-ups on their fists along with the other adult members of the class but these days due to fear of any child injuring themselves and damaging their hands some clubs will not allow, or expect a child to perform, such hand conditioning and keep fit workouts. In some cases this is also applied to the female members of the class.

Although safety precautions' should always be practised there are some restrictions that have changed the way training in the martial arts are now done which has further weakened and watered down the effectiveness of the combat style or training methods in question.

 

With such restrictions the student, in some situations, is no longer learning a practical and effective martial art but, in some extreme cases, only play-acting at fighting which has no true value in a life or death street conflict situation.

 

During the 1970's when kung fu and karate clubs opened up all over the place because of the immense popularity of martial art films like Enter The Dragon with the late legendary Bruce Lee at the time, some of the traditional trained combat masters were still teaching full strength fighting and training techniques in the way it should be done in comparison with some of the soft watered down versions that are taught today.

 

It was during this period that many children who joined classes at that time, thinking it would be fun to copy what they had seen on the television, was finding it far to difficult to master the required fist press-ups which resulted in many of them leaving after only a short period of time.

 

Realising that the instructors were losing money from the children that had left over this problem some of these instructors set their own rule of not teaching fist press-ups to children under the age of 16 so that they was not losing money over this problem. Those instructors who were not prepared to compromise their teaching standards continued to teach in the same way but those instructors who were more concerned about money, and not teaching standards, changed the rules so that children only did press-ups on the palm of their hands.

 

When these instructors were questioned over this ruling they said it was to do with health and safety regulations regarding a child's developing bones in their hands. Over the years this myth became an established belief by those who were scared into thinking that this was now a legal requirement and was fearful of losing income or being fined by the government or some other legal group.

 

The belief that to do fist press-ups will damage a young child's soft developing bones in their hands is stupid to say the least. If this was truly the case then no child should legally be allowed to attend a martial art class until they reach adulthood based on the true fact that a child's bones 'from-head-to-toe' are still growing and developing just like the bones in the hand and therefore any form of physical contact, especially within the martial arts, would damage their developing bones throughout their body in the same way.

 

There are far more small developing bones in the feet than in the hands but this does not raise concerns over children running, jumping and kicking a hard football with their bare feet. In addition, many martial art clubs have their child members performing a wide variety of kicking and keep fit exercise routines in their bare feet.

 

There have been no reports to my knowledge of any child suffering from damaged hands through this training exercise and to my current knowledge there is no known legal ruling on this subject, or any known medical evidence, to backup this belief.

 

The Shaolin Monks of China train their young children, as young as 5, to do not only fist press-ups but also many advanced conditioning exercises with the approval of the monks own top doctors. I would argue that for a child to punch another person with the fist when doing kickboxing or to punch with the fist against a solid object like a pine or plastic board or heavy kick/punch bag is far more dangerous.

 

Punching with the fist is a far more intense and jolting impact on the fist in comparison with the regular controlled pressure of a fist press-up that is limited to the persons own body weight.

 

Children hit each other and strike things with their fists all the time when playing. Therefore I will continue to say that this ruling is no more than an urban myth based on instructors not wishing to lose income from child members or who are afraid of complaints from parents.

 

If there is such a legal rule in force then how can they police, monitor, enforce or check to stop a child from being made to do fist press-ups?