Eli5: if I get into a martial art and every time I suffer the same beating and over the time ir hurts less. Am I becoming more hardened or losing pain receptor?

Question

Eli5: if I get into a martial art and every time I suffer the same beating and over the time ir hurts less. Am I becoming more hardened or losing pain receptor?

In: 8

Answer 1

This question is a bit too vague to give a single answer. There are martial arts in which repetitive injuries are used to harden specific body parts, and in those cases what you get is a retreat/deadening of the nerves, scarring on the bone (which provides more strength), scar tissue and so on. Famously some versions of Kung Fu would punch sand or something similar, and it does work, you can turn your fist into a club for beating the tar out of people. You will also end up with crippling arthritis in your thirties, but presumably that was a fair price to pay in a time before firearms.

These days outside of some exceptions (Senshusei course in Yoshinkan aikido in Japan for example) people tend to frown on the prospect of losing mobility and sensation just so their body becomes a weapon. Realistically martial arts these days are about basic self defense, competition, or a desire for sport/discipline/spirituality. I’m sure some people still get into martial arts with dreams of street fighting, but those people end up shot or stabbed.

So in 2023 people are training in ways that don’t radically alter the anatomy, but the experience of training still has a psychological and physiological impact. There’s the sensation of pain, and then there’s the experience of pain: suffering. A 3 year old who stubs their toe experiences similar pain to an adult, but their suffering is MUCH greater. They don’t know what the pain means, when it will stop or if it will stop; it’s not just painful, it’s painful and unfamiliar and scary.

With experience you don’t cry or sob over that kind of pain, you just curse and wait for it to pass. Well… same with a sport like a marital art. You’re changing your reaction to pain, what it means, when it means damage and when it’s just a sensation you can teach yourself to ignore. It’s not just martial arts though, anyone who completes a marathon knows what I’m talking about, anyone in a really physically demanding endurance sport, any wrestler or boxer… has to change their relationship to pain that arises from the sport.