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How To construct your own Makiwara

Read these directions carefully all the way through before you even think about going out and

purchasing a board. If you don't, you'll screw up the whole thing, and then you will get mad at

me. When you email your complaint, I'll write back something like "Ha! Ha! Ha! Read the

directions all the way through before you begin, you idiot!"

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First, you need a 4x4 board 8 feet long. This will provide you with enough wood to producetwo makiwara punching boards. The board should not be made of pine. Pine is crappy wood.

Forget about pine. Pine is inflexible, sappy, and warps when wet. It makes a terrible outdoor

wood, so just get over pine right now. My experiments with pine were utter failures. I

recommend cedar. The Japanese prefer Japanese cedar (sugi), but since there aren't any of

those around here, I went with cedar.

You can also ask the nice man at the lumber yard what a good wood might be. You might find

that cherry, oak, or maple make more flexible, sturdy posts. I don't know. Email me if you

find out a better wood than cedar.

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Cut off one foot of the post length. Now you have a short board and a long one. The short one

is useless. Toss it. The other board is 7 feet long. Cut it lengthwise from one end to the other

so that you get two tapered boards 1 inch thick at the top and 3 inches thick at the base. Thehardware store may be willing to do this for you. Before you haul off and purchase wood, you

might want to show them these directions and see if they can help you with the sawing and

treatment.

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Treat the boards against water damage by painting them with a compound designed for

outdoor wood structures made of cedar or whatever wood you are using. Follow the directions

of the guy at the hardware store carefully, and read the directions on the can. Make as many

applications as possible. Be patient, and do this right. If you skip this step, or if you don't

follow the directions on the product you use to treat the post, it will rot underground and snap

off when you punch it. You'll think you're pretty cool when you punch it and it breaks in half,until you realize that you now do all of this over again. ARG!

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Dig a hole about 1.5 feet wide and about 3 feet deep. Be careful to put the dirt far enough

away from the hole that it doesn't spill back in as you dig it. Recommended tools: a post hole

digger to dig hole and a wheel barrel to hold dirt. A post hole digger looks like two shovels

swiveled together. A wheel barrel is a big wagon with one wheel in front. If you put the dirtyou dig up in it, you won't be standing in mud when you try out your new punching board.

Another good tool is a shovel that is long, sharp, and round. Make sure any shovel or hole

digger you purchase has very wide supports for you to put your feet when you step on it to dig

the hole. If the supports for your feet are narrow, then you will have really sore feet very fast.

And, Pete Rogers recommends that you also use a spirit level to ensure that the makiwara post

is vertical. A sanding plane won't hurt anything either, since you'll need it to adjust theflexibility of the board later... but not too much!

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Plant the makiwara in the hole fat end down. The flat side will be the place where you hit it,not the angled side. So, make sure it is facing where you prefer to stand. I like to put mineright next to a patio so I can stand on concrete when I hit it. Next to the driveway is cool, too,but your neighbors will wonder what the hell you are doing, and then you'll have to go

through all of the usual "Are you a black belt?" crap. Notice that in my example, I'll end upstanding in my dirt. I put my dirt on the concrete so I don't have to destroy my lawn to fillback in the hole. You should put yours in a wheel barrel if you can't put it next to concrete.

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In front of the base of the makiwara in the hole, place a thick board or a brick to prevent thepost from moving in the ground. When you fill in the hole, tamp the dirt down nice and tightevery time you fill it in with another 6 inch covering. At the top of the hole, plant a brick orsturdy board behind the makiwara post's tapered side. You will punch the flat side after it isfinished. This brick or board will keep the makiwara from moving in the hole.

Or, even better, you could fill the hole with cement, and the makiwara would be locked in.The problems with this include lots of hard work mixing cement in an $80.00 wheel barrow,which is now ruined by cement drying in it. The makiwara could dry in the cement crooked,resulting in an idiot with a useless makiwara. The makiwara might not be removable. If youdo it this way, pour the cement around the makiwara, and then pull the board out after itsettles just a little.

One of my friends, Timothy Dobbins, planted his own makiwara by his driveway. I must sayhe did a superior job of installing it, and I was quite impressed with his work. He made the


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hole loose enough for the makiwara to be removed at night. He stored the board in his garage.

When he wanted to hit it, he simple dropped the makiwara into the hole, placed a wooden

chock behind the board to keep it steady in the hole, and then punched away on it.

When he was done, he pulled up the chock, pull out the makiwara, and put it inside. He even

burned a Shotokan Tiger on the makiwara. It was a sweet setup. Tim is able to do this type ofthing because he is that kind of man who can pour his own slab and then build his own house.

He can even do the wiring. You might prefer my poor man's method of building your

makiwara. If you have the ability, though, definitely do it Tim's way, and tell your friends it is

a "Dobbins Makiwara."

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Use a planing tool to shave off wood and eliminate any over-stiffness in the play of themakiwara. After planing, treat the affected makiwara surfaces against water damage.

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Use duct tape to apply a pad, and cover the pad with leather.

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Your makiwara is now ready for use! You built it yourself, so no matter the imperfections in

it, you have accomplished something. If you made the kind of makiwara that is removable,

you genius you, then only bring it outside when you want to hit it, and then bring it back

inside. That kind of makiwara will last a very long time. If your makiwara is permanently

fixed outdoors, you can find some sort of long, plastic container to place on it upside down so

that the pad and the top of the board never get wet when it rains.

Makiwara Training TipsFailure to heed my advice about training on your makiwara is tantamount to treason. I just

taught you how to build your very own and even how to read the Japanese characters for

makiwara. And now you think I don't know it all when it comes to training advice? Wrong!

You will carefully think about each and every one of the following recommendations because

you know you should.

Don't ever hit pure concrete with your hands. Although this is detailed in C.W. Nicol'sMoving Zen as a training method, it is dangerous and probably will cause extensive

damage. It is not useful for training. The purpose of the makiwara is not to condition

the knuckles. The purpose of the device is to condition the muscles in the armpit area,the legs, and the hips. C.W. Nicol is wrong, and I'm right. Ignore his bad conditioning

advice and maniacal ideas about punching concrete.

When you punch the makiwara, make a feeling as if you are straightening your elbowin order to strike it. This will create correct muscle usage. Of course, your elbow

should never become perfectly straight. Stand close enough to the makiwara that you

can stop extending your arm before your elbow becomes straight and still get full

penetration into the board.

The makiwara has certain advantages over the hanging heavy bag. The makiwaraincreases in resistance as your knuckles burrow into it. That means that when you

strike it, rather than having a single resistance weight, it is scalable and always

provides you with more resistance no matter how hard you strike it.

If you are able to punch the makiwara and then hold that position against it'sresistance, it means your punch was controlled and weak. The makiwara only pushes

back as hard as you hit it. Do not tense any antagonist muscles on impact with the

makiwara. Only tense those muscles that are pushing the fist into the board. You

should not be able to resist the reaction force of the board.

Try to think about how you can make your legs do the punching. Stand in a frontstance and punch with the hips straight forward. Connect your rear foot to the

makiwara by lifting the front foot. Lifting the front foot even 1/4 inch off of the

ground will move nearly 40% of your weight from that limb to the punching hand and

rear foot. The increase in force is so dramatic that you may injure yourself. Be careful.

The makiwara prepares you to punch someone in the chest simultaneously when theypunch you, and to resist that force strongly and not give in. The makiwara is an


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excellent tool for exploring punching techniques useful when standing your ground.

Stepping punches don't work very well against a makiwara. Use the reverse punch.

Don't kick your punching makiwara. It will break if it is the right consistency forpunching.

Use the makiwara at least two days per week, no more than 6 days per week. Punch itusing the basic reverse punch at least 30 times on one side before resting and movingto the other side.

You can use the makiwara to learn control by snap punching it lightly (just touch it -barely) with extremely fast repetitions of 10-30 times on each side without hip

rotation. Once you can control, try this on a concrete wall. Then a human. The goal is

not conditioning, but control. Be careful.

Don't bother punching the makiwara from horse riding stance. This stance wasdesigned to be used from the SIDE. It will not support forward techniques, even

though this is a training method of great importance for other technical reasons.

After learning to reduce surface area, reduce it further to increase damage by usingonly the index finger knuckle.

Check to make sure that you never strike with the upper surface of the index fingeritself, only the knuckle.

Do not raise the back foot's outer edge off of the floor to punch. This indicates insidetension in your stance, not outside as the front stance requires. Move the hips LEFT-

RIGHT in order to correct this alignment error. You should feel your rear foot pushing

backward behind you as your fist pushes forward into the makiwara on every punch. If

you don't feel this, you are punching only with your arm.

Check, or have someone check, to make sure that you never lean forward or leanbackward during the draw or the punch.

Without some form of resistance training, such as a makiwara, your techniques will beweak and you will be conditioned to only focus your blows, never to punch without

control full force.

Don't punch the makiwara when you have scabs on your knuckles. Hell, you mightcatch AIDS if someone else is sharing the makiwara with you. Bleeding on a public or

shared makiwara is irresponsible and rude. If you start to bleed, stop punching the

board. Scabs protect us from infections. If you open yours up, then you might get

something like a flesh-eating bacteria in your hand. Let yourself heal.

A foam rubber beer can cozy is a great way to keep beer cold and your hands warm.Just slide the beer down into the cozy, and you can enjoy a cold one without freezing

your fingers off. That cozy also makes a great makiwara pad. Tear off the bottom, tear

it lengthwise, and tape it on with duct tape on each end. That foam rubber has just the

right resistance. Don't waste your time striking with techniques other than punching. Punching is the

only motion that truly uses the full body and benefits from the makiwara.

Those calluses mean that you are either hitting your makiwara wrong or have built abad one. Make sure the pad is not rough, and make sure that your board has enoughflexibility.

The makiwara does not build speed. It does build some strength, but not much. Mostlywhat it does is teach joint alignment. It also teaches you drive your hand into the target

with your legs. And, if you experiment, it will teach you how to unweight your front

foot in order to increase the weight you are using to punch with.

Conditioning the hands is for losers.

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