One of the techniques in many martial arts is a spear hand strikes, where you make your hand rigid and thrust into the opponent. There are a couple of different variations, e.g., in hapkido we have a flat-hand attack (palm down), inverted strike (palm up), and a spear thrust (palm perpendicular to ground) but the hand shape remains essentially the same in each. There are also a few variations in the exact shape of the hand depending on the source, but the gist of it is that the fingers are rigid and the thumb is pulled back.

A few different sources and some, er, practice indicate that this technique is very easy to jam or otherwise injure ones fingers with when practicing against a target, and many of the areas and objects that are safe to hit (i.e., soft targets) are not ideal for the strikes.

So the question is: How can one effectively practice for either conditioning or simply hand-training purposes spear-hand strikes with minimal risk of injury, while still knowing if you got the technique right?

One technique in many martial arts is a spear-hand strike, where you make your hand rigid and thrust into the opponent. There are a couple of different variations: in hapkido, we have a flat-hand attack (palm down); an inverted strike (palm up); and a spear thrust (palm perpendicular to ground). However, the hand shape remains essentially the same in each. There are also a few variations in the exact shape of the hand depending on the source, but the gist of it is that the fingers are rigid and the thumb is pulled back.

A few different sources and some, er, practice indicate that this technique is very easy to jam or otherwise injure one's fingers when practicing against a target; many of the areas and objects that are safe to hit (i.e. soft targets) are not ideal for the strikes.

So the question is: How can one effectively practice spear-hand strikes, for either conditioning or simply hand-training purposes, with minimal risk of injury, while still knowing if you got the technique right?

One of the techniques in many martial arts is a spear hand strikes, where you make your hand rigid and thrust into the opponent. There are a couple of different variations, e.g., in hapkido we have a flat-hand attack (palm down), inverted strike (palm up), and a spear thrust (palm perpendicular to ground) but the hand shape remains essentially the same in each. There are also a few variations in the exact shape of the hand depending on the source, but the gist of it is that the fingers are rigid and the thumb is pulled back.

A few different sources and some, er, practice indicate that this technique is very easy to jam or otherwise injure ones fingers with when practicing against a target, and many of the areas and objects that are safe to hit are not ideal for the strikes.

So the question is: How can one effectively practice for either conditioning or simply hand-training purposes spear-hand strikes with minimal risk of injury, while still knowing if you got the technique right?

One of the techniques in many martial arts is a spear hand strikes, where you make your hand rigid and thrust into the opponent. There are a couple of different variations, e.g., in hapkido we have a flat-hand attack (palm down), inverted strike (palm up), and a spear thrust (palm perpendicular to ground) but the hand shape remains essentially the same in each. There are also a few variations in the exact shape of the hand depending on the source, but the gist of it is that the fingers are rigid and the thumb is pulled back.

A few different sources and some, er, practice indicate that this technique is very easy to jam or otherwise injure ones fingers with when practicing against a target, and many of the areas and objects that are safe to hit (i.e., soft targets) are not ideal for the strikes.

So the question is: How can one effectively practice for either conditioning or simply hand-training purposes spear-hand strikes with minimal risk of injury, while still knowing if you got the technique right?