WERE IS THE MAKIWARA: My hands Cry out for the punishment.

WERE IS THE MAKIWARA: My hands Cry out for the punishment.

This is not some macho post that will say how tough I am, actually it’s a post on the self-inflicted Silliness that I have become addicted to! When I was a kid starting out in Karate the idea of hitting a wooden block set in the ground was something that made me giggle, like “what kind of moron does that”! I started off in Karate and despite being in lots of brush ups the idea of punching someone in the face…without being mad at them…well it made me pause and wonder “who does that”.

Fast forwards to my late teens and I began using the Makiwara, even if Dingman Sensei did not really want us hitting it really hard. I began to do it because it was “cool” to wack the board and make it go “thump” when you hit it. I watched my seniors and copied them. Each punch was solid and more and more solid. I liked hitting the rubber mat that was tacked onto the Makiwara and it became second nature to me.

Then, in my mid to late 20’s one of my seniors brought back real Makiwara Rice stalk cover and we started all over again hitting a new surface. At first it BIT hard into the flesh and you felt like your hand was getting ripped up each time you struck it. But after a while My hands got used to it. I would do 200-500 strikes before the noon class, and probably about as many before the evening class. I started getting a big callas on my knuckles and while I thought it looked cool, I also just liked the act of working on my Gyaku zuki with a target.

Hitting things became an obsession for me. I would punch door frames, tiles at work, Concrete walls, never so hard that I would break my hand…but enough to test and punish my hands. I would hit a piece of wood I carried with me that had a rough side….so much that I dented the wood after a few months and had to get a new one.

When I was in school I broke Paraffin wax blocks…much harder to do than it sounds. I broke two by fours with my Gyaku zuki for fun…and even lit one on fire to have a bit more fun. It became a hobby and not something I did often in public. I remember moving into a new house with my mother when I was in university and the first thing I did was take out an auger and put in a new makiwara….one I used A LOT!

As I got older I moved into a small apartment and did not have a makiwara anymore and I missed it, but I always had the one at the club. Soon the club moved and we no longer had one to use. Its been about ten years since I really had a great Makiwara to use and to be honest I mess the punishing work outs that saw my knuckles bleed and lose flesh as well as the feeling of a elastic in the tendon after it had been beaten up a bit.

The reason I miss it however is not some pathological need to do damage to myself, its also not because “it looks cool” to hit something…..I often did most of my Makiwara work in back yards and after or before people got to the Dojo. It was more about the act of studying the techniques and forging my understanding. The reason I miss it…is because it represents a time in my life when I did not have the stresses of being a parent, husband, and adult. It represented a much free’r time in my life when I had the extra time to train and study Karate as a true student. I was not pushed to teach or to be a teacher.

My goals and aspirations revolved around getting into the club, doing Kata and wacking a makiwara. I studied how my hand had to land on someone safely and I loved just training with no pressure. I was a student of the art.

The makiwara will always represent those times to me and my hopes are that I get a new one that I can use in my home. My designs are in and I will hopefully get back to striking the Makiwara in the near future.