Conditioning the knuckles

I've been conditioning my shins, forearms, and knuckles since the first time that I was introduced to the concept. It made sense to me to work on conditioning those areas that I will be striking with so that they are used to impact.

I knew that the beginning stages of conditioning is sharply painful, but I equated it with the same type of discomfort that I had to suffer through when I wanted to learn how to play guitar. It took months of painful stubborn application of pressure to my delicate fingertips onto the metal strings of the instrument before I noticed that it just didn't hurt anymore.

I started conditioning my knuckles just by standing near a wall, and leaning some of my weight onto them. I'd do this everyday as I cooked meals for my family. There are moments when something is boiling, or frying when you need to be near the stove, but you have "nothing" to do. So I'd just go stand and put weight onto my knuckles for awhile. Just this light pressure caused me to whine, and shake my hands afterwards.

Soon I was able to hold my weight onto my knuckles in the push up position on the carpeted floor. For some reason, I found cement floors, wooden floors, and tiled floors too "hard". I kept asking myself if this was just something in my mind as the carpet was not very thick at all where I was successfully holding a "knuckle" push up.

So now, I'm trying to crawl across the floor on my "knuckles" and knees. I've noticed that the shifting weight, and position of my arms/wrists causes new sensations of discomfort as I move forwards, especially since I struggle on keeping all of my weight on the first two knuckles.

I really wish that I had a canvas bag filled with sand, a punching bag, or a makiwari board to work with.