Advanced Iron Palm Training

This is the basic, yet very advanced, iron shirt form. It is short, yet very 'full.'

Students will need to make a rolling weight, a grab bag, and a roll bar.

For the rolling weight, they'll need a piece of 1 inch thick PCP pipe approximately 14 to 20 inches long, a 6' rope, and a weight. Weight can be a rock, a brick, or an actual weight. It should weigh about 5 pounds. Later on when students strengthen to using this they can up the weight to anywhere from 8 to 10 pounds. 

Secure the rope to the PCP pipe. Make sure it's on there good. You can wrap duct tape around it to make sure the rope does not come untied or move around. Tie the other end to your weight.

For the grab bag, students will need to make a bag approximately twice as wide as their palms. Weight on the bag should be anywhere from 5 to 10 pounds. Fill the bag with some sort of weight filling such as steel shot bb's, rice, beans, sand, dirt, or small rocks. Seal bag up. if you need to, you can make a "poor man's bag" out of plastic bags. Simply fill it and seal it and then REALLY duct tape it up. This will  make your bag a kind of "small rock." It will be OK to use. I've done this before and it works OK for the training purposes.

For the rolling bar, you will need a piece of PVC pipe anywhere from 3 to 4 feet in length and about 2 to 3 inches wide. Fill your pipe with steel shot bb's. Weight should be anywhere from 20 to 30 pounds. I recommend about 25 pounds. Seal both ends of the pipe. If you NEED to, you can actually seal the ends with duct tape. Use A LOT of duct tape. Otherwise, you can maybe obtain caps at your local hardware store.

This is a "soft" palm exercise that will help you move the chi through the body and bring the chi to your hands.

This is a yin-yang exercise. You will do one palm soft, and then do a second palm hard (tense). This exercise will help to bring the chi to the hands as well as strengthen the hands.

Keep your concentration in your hands and palms as you do this exercise.

This is a high level meditation that incorporates the 3 previous meditations you just learned. It has an advanced level standing meditation at the beginning that you do for 5 full minutes. There is a breathing pattern you will use during this meditation that will teach you how to tap into your chi and deepen your mental focus and concentration.

There are hand and body movements with this meditation. After standing and meditating for 5 minutes, you do the hand and body movements for 5 minutes. Move at a slow speed, about the speed of tai chi or slower. If you finish faster than your time, simply do the movements a second time in order to make your 5 minutes.

At the end of the meditation, return to a meditation posture and meditate for about a minute and try to feel as still and quite as possible.

This video teaches you some basic exercises you can do using the roller bar. In this video, I demonstrate how to use the roller bar to do the following:

• Overhead Military Presses

• "Poor Man's" Bench Press

• Sit-Up's (or crunches) -- you can do either full situps or crunches using the roller bar, it's your choice

• One-Arm Overhead Presses

These basic exercises will help you strengthen your body and develop good physical training. Start out with low rep's of about 3-5 rep's and work your way up to 40-50 rep's. Except for the one-arm overhead presses. Start with 1 or 2 of those and work your way up to doing 5-10 of them.