If you knew you were going to be caned you could spend a couple of minutes warming your hands up by rubbing them together or on the material of your shorts or trousers if you were not instructed to wait for your punishment with your hands perched on your head. Other methods to dull the pain were rubbing dirt on your hands on your way to the office or putting a feather on your hands, however these methods of reducing the sting apparently had no effect on how sore you were after your punishment.
You could be caned on the palms of your hands or on your fingertips and receiving the cane on your fingertips hurt a great deal more. It was worse if you received all of the strokes on one hand and that happened to me for my two secondary school canings and my fingertips were caned on both occasions and my hand was quite swollen after both punishments. For my two primary school canings I received my punishment on both hands (three strokes on each hand).