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Chinese martial arts has some training called "iron body" or a variation called "golden bell".

Part of the ritual is beating yourself with a "metal flogger" (for lack of better words) for 108 days, to desensitize nerves and increase bone density.

The metal flogger is a group of small metal wires straightened. The ones I've seen were about an inch in diameter and about 16 - 18 inches in length. Many are home made, but one of my buddies knew someone who had a machining shop and he made me a really nice one.

I'm hoping to know the name of this tool, so that I can do some googling to see if anyone sells these online. If you know the name that would be awesome. If you know some where online that sells them, that'd be even better.

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  • @Zen_Hydra, I think informed decisions are important. I think these exercises should only be done by adults too, as it might have bad affects on bodies that are still growing. I was in my early 20s when I went through this exercise and found that my instructor's guidance was good. This ritual did not do much wear on joints, or conditioning of the joints from what I could tell, however I did find body was desensitized and my bones were thicker (or at least it seemed that way to my sparing buddies when we clashed shins/forearms). I found this training less brutal than other conditioning options.
    – VenomFangs
    Commented Dec 20, 2016 at 22:32
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    On a side note, I consider increasing bone density as a result of pounding on bones bogus (it's a myth, doesn't actually happen). I talk about iron body training here: martialarts.stackexchange.com/questions/3056/… And here.. martialarts.stackexchange.com/questions/5728/…
    – Steve Weigand
    Commented Dec 21, 2016 at 6:01

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Searched google images for "kung fu iron body" and found an image that looked like what I was looking for.

Looks like Iron Body is also known as Iron Shirt. Clicking on the image and fast forwarding to the part of the video that had the tool, I found the name of the tool is called Steel Brush. In case you want to see, fast forward to 14:07.

Doing some more googling, I found one on amazon.It seems a bit expensive... I'll probably do some more googling to find a cheaper version.

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