Anyone who is training their iron palm method using mung beans, sand or pea gravel is really just wasting their valuable time and effort. The only, and I will say again "only" method to get absolute results is to use about 100 lbs of lead shot packed very carefully into a leather or lined "heavy" canvas bag. The 100 lb lead filled bag has a very specific reason. The lead shot packs in a certain way different from any other material and has a different feel than any other material when you "drop" your hand on it. The bag should be packed as tightly with shot as you can get it. No loose bb's rolling around in there. Make sure it stays in the carefully sealed Leather or "lined" canvas bag. make sure that the medicine has a large amount of resin in it to seal off the skin... it will feel sticky when it dries.
The training is mildly dangerous, in that if you do not watch how you hit this bag you will injure yourself.
The medicine must have a great deal of resins in it to seal off the skin from the slight potential of the lead coming through the bag " but it will not".
The training should be done 2 times per day for a total of 500 strikes per day after you have reached about the 40th day of training.
Strict attention must be used with this training, it is not for the knucklehead who cannot understand what a relaxed body is and hit's the bag with force.
YOU WILL BREAK YOUR HAND.
This is to be done every day without missing, you should not " cannot" break the training if you can help it within the first 100 days.
"The Mind leads the Chi. This has an association with the odor of the medicine. The odor of the medicine should trigger the movement of the chi. you will know this when you smell the finished medicine and your saliva glands start to produce.
This movement must then be controlled and channeled with specific mental "qi gong" exercises. before and throughout training.
This is the way things were done in the old school, prior to people selling their video's and iron palm programs. I had dinner with a very well known Northern Shaolin master some years back who was doing this mung bean and sand method with the video tapes and liniment sales angle. My feeling was that he felt this method was a safe way to introduce a person to this type of training, make money and not get tangled up with attorneys when someone hurts themselves.... but authentic, for true results, it would never fly in some places. and it has never flown with me.
About the Medicine------ The medicine should have several things it does, 1# is to medicate the hand and help keep the swelling down, this is best done if the medicine is very warm to hot and the hand is soaked in it for 5 min or so before training. Soaking the hand in the warm herbal mixture allows the pores to open up and the herbal compounds to pass through the skin into the layers of tissue below. #2 if the formula is a true Iron palm formula it will be rich with resins and gums. These will make the formula slightly sticky, as the medicine dries the gums will have coated the hand. when you start to hit the iron palm bag you will pound the resins into the pores of the skin and they will seal the hand from the metal. This type of training goes far back in Shaolin history, and shows up in many old manuscripts where, say a Practitioner would use a lead mallet on his body to condition soft places on his torso and they would coat the instrument with myrrh gum and other herbs to seal the lead off from the body. Lead was the preferred metal because of its dense nature and its heat hit. many of us like to use a large strand of copper cable these days, I'm sure you are familiar with this to condition parts of your arms . #3 is that a really good iron palm formula will when smelled have an effect on the body. It will have the effect of calming the mind and causing the... I hate to use these words... causing the chi to move. One of the things you would notice is your saliva glands start to produce. The back of your mouth will feel tight, like you would like to bite down on something.
Mike Biggie
7 Star praying mantis
Hung sing Choy li fut