stronger bones for full contact karate.?

Question

Hello,
I am 15 years old and i've been practising shotokan karate since 8 years now.

In the dojo we do not use any kind of protection, only sparring gloves (we usually dont use those as well), and we are going to start full contact soon and i really need help.

I am probably the fastest/strongest one in my age group, but the thing is, i have allready broken/badly hurted both of my legs and my right arm in times of accidents such as knee to knee impact or if i fall on one hand.

I need to know how to get stronger bones as fast as possible because i do not want to skip full contact tournaments if we ever go to one, now i know that i need calcium to get those stronger bones, but i allready drink milk each and everyday and sometimes eggs, so what are the other ways to get stronger bones? and how do i check if i made a progress?

I hope you can help me, and please dont make stupid answers just to get points.

WonderSlug: exactly HOW do i get those:
1500 mg Calcium
600 IU Vitamin D
25 mg Iron
25 mg Zinc
i really dont get it, are there particular foods that contain these?

Andrew: Based on what you're saying every person that practises full contact and goes to full contact tournaments never had any broken bones.

Now that's wrong for sure.

bushido and the others i think you've misunderstood me, i've never actually broken a bone in full contact, i haven't even been in full contact yet, but i know am not supposed to get so much pain when it comes to knee to knee impact.

Is the bone supposed to be strong in order for it not to hurt so much or is it the muscle that sorrounds it?

Answer 1

I'm just going to let you know right up front that you are not going to like this answer. Frankly, since you are still growing and you have classmates that are also still growing, I find it completely irresponsible of your sensei to be allowing contact in his dojo that will injure any of his students, specifically his younger students. At that age, you should be learning how to really control your technique. To know when to stop and how much power to use when you are sparring. The easiest way to make a safer environment for that is to use pads, although they can get in the way of joint locks and other such extremely effective techniques.

OK, that being said, I do have the utmost respect for someone who is wanting to train harder and push themselves beyond their own limits. That is way to unheard of these days. So, you do need to make sure you get enough calcium and potassium and other such things that you can get with drinking lots of milk and eating bananas and taking a multivitamin. You also will want to increase your protein intake and hit the weights. One of the best ways to keep your bones from breaking is to have plenty of muscle surrounding your bones for protection. Don't go to heavy though. If you have too much muscle mass you will be considerably slower. I would recommend the book Dynamic Strength Training by Harry Wong. It has plenty of exercises in there that can really add muscle in a short ammount of time (when done correctly) and the protein will help your muscles heal. It also comes in DVD form, but the book is only like $10. This kind of program can safely add on the muscle in a very short ammount of time and help protect your bones. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

with all the previous breaks youve had all ready the best advice i can give you is to avoid these tournaments. No matter what you do now ot improve your bone density every previous break youve had created a weakness in that bone. If not competing isnt an option for you than you gonna need to be really good at evading stikes altogether. Im a Gracie Jiu Jitsu fighter and compete often in MMA tournaments. You might want to consider diversifying your game. If you were to work on your ground game you would most likely become a very effective fighter with the standup skills you already posses

Answer 3

You lessen the risk of getting broken bones by increasing your bone density.

You can increase your bone density by taking Calcium, Vitamin D, Iron (for the bone marrow), and ZInc.

I would recommend obtaining vitamin supplements, typically a multivitamin with your daily meals will give the additional supplements that will help proper development.

Since you are a very active teenager and still growing, you would need more than the 100% RDA amounts. At least the following amounts daily for proper bone density and growth:

1500 mg Calcium
600 IU Vitamin D
25 mg Iron
25 mg Zinc

Each of those amounts is 150% the RDA for an average adult.

A standard multivitamin (like Centrum), one tablet daily, combined with your normal meals should provide more than enough supply of vitamins and minerals for proper development.

Additional things to increase bone density is frequent exercise of your arms and legs, which you seem to already do with your martial arts. Some light weight training to stress your arm and leg bones enough to cause the body to increase bone development in response will also help.

Answer 4

First off, drink your milk, eat bananas and take a daily multi-vitamin. Second watch out for too much sodium in the diet, in the western world we eat waaaay too much sodium, in fact most people in America eat almost 400% of the daily recommended dose. The problem is too much sodium can leech calcium from the bones. So can eating too much protein so eat enough protein without over doing it. The average American eats more then the needed amount of protein as well, it's due to our "meat and potatoes" view on food. Really we should only eat meat once a day at most.

On top of that there are bone and hand hardening exercises you can do. In Shaolin they used a variety of methods to harden the hands. First they would take a large bowl, really large at least a foot across and a foot deep and fill it with sand which they would heat over a fire. Then they would stand at it with palms upwards and thrust their hands into the sand fingers first. They would repeat this for up to an hour at a time. The mixture of heat and hitting the sand strengthens the fingers and the skin on the hands.

The next tip comes from Qi Gong, often to strengthen fingers and hands for pressure point manipulation they will poke their fingers one at a time into the opposing palm. Combine this with finger stretches and your fingers will resist damage.

Back to Shaolin, take a large stack of paper, at least 100 sheets and pin it to a wall you don't care about. Wrap your hands in fist wraps and punch the paper over and over as long as you can stand it. Gradually, over several weeks and months of doing this you can remove the wraps and then sheets of paper until you are punching a few sheets of paper against a hard wall. This will help harden your fists and avoid broken wrists and hands.

Combine all three of these and you can avoid broken fingers, broken hands and broken wrists. With a proper diet you should be ok.

Answer 5

If you are your age and your bones are that weak it might be an area not to train in for you. I was first in martial arts at 15 and my sensei seemed to have an issue with putting me up against a cop.Not cool. But you might want to think of a different sport.

Answer 6

Exercising those broken areas will help a lot. Also, take many vitamins, and drink lots of milk and eat many dairy products for good calcium deposits into your body. Mostly, if the bone wasnt broken too bad, itll repair even stonger as to what ive heard.

May you be blessed and get better. Eat healthy and stay in shape, and have good motivation.

Peace.

Answer 7

fell bad sayin this to a 15 year old but if you really want stronger bones..... you can strengthen your bones by braking them 4 eg.... if u punch a concreet wall really hard(NOT hard enough to compleatly break your hand!!!) your knuckles will shatter at the point of contact when they recover theyll calcify ie. harden. if you repeat this you have stronger knuckles...thats why martial artists break bords and bricks(theyre usually jus showin off tho).... bt this principle is much harder to apply to ur legs n stuff...... in ur case tho jus start off easy and youll slowly build up injury resistance from fighting in full contact

Answer 8

i think you need to get your parents to have you checked over at a doctors,it seems that you are getting injured very easily.it's ok now but do you want to be crippled with arthritis in20 years?trust me it's not nice and makes life very difficult.and it is very painful,it affects your whole life.you should also make your school work a priority,hurted is not a word.it's good to see that you have stuck with it so long,but ma wont get you a good job.
PS>whether or not they were broken in sparring is besides the point from what youv'e said i still stand by my answer.

Answer 9

Calcium and iron supplements. But check to see what effect they might have on a body that hasn't reached its peak growth yet.

Answer 10

Wonder Bread. It builds strong bodies eight ways. Look for the red, yellow and blue balloons printed on the package.