Now, I don’t put much faith in the “official” explanations regarding “focusing of chi” and the like. Assuming it isn’t all just a big scam (pre-drilled perforations and such), how do those karate guys manage to chop through a stack of boards or a concrete block without breaking their hands in the process? Can the human hand really be toughened to withstand that sort of force? Or is it really all just about the speed with which the blow is delivered?
It’s not a scam. And, as I can say from personal experience, it’s not easy. But there is a hidden secret to it, in a way. The items normally broken are ones with very low tensile strength, and are presented to the karateka in a way that exploits that leck of tensile strength.
Notice that boards broken by a karate strick are “simply supported” at the ends with the grain running parallek to the supports. You almost never see the boards with the grain running perpendicular to the supports – which is the way you’d lay it if you were building a bridge, or something. Similarly, concrete blocks are also “simply supported” by placing them across two supports. Nobody builds buildings that way – they’d fall apart under their own weight. Ditto for blocks of ice that some folks break.
If you look at breaks under strobe or high-speed photography, you can see the break start at the center of the block, at the underside, where the tensile stress (i.e.-- the forces pulling apart, rather than pushing together) are greatest. Once begun, they propagate rapidly upwards. As I stated, bricks and concrete blocks and ice and boards with the grain “the wrong way” don’t have a lot of tensile strength. They do have a lot on compressive strength (resistance to being pushed together), so when people build things out of these things they tend to pile them up. If you build a window or doorway, you either use something stronger for the top, or you buoild an arch, where all the stresses are compressive.
So is the karate strike a scam? No – because it still relies on proper technique and careful striking. And, when you come down to it, bone doesn’t as great a tensile strength as compressive strength, either. And coupling the energy into the target is no piece of cake (you have to take a very massive and heavy piece of cement or ice from zero to breaking speed in milliseconds. Wood, being lighter, is a lot easier to break.).
I researched this as an undergrad. You can read the results in my articles on The Physics of Karate. One is in Scientific American, April 1979, pp. 140+. The other (with all the equations) is in American Journal of Physics in 1982. It’s all published underr my real name.
So… It has nothing to do with “focusing your chi” (as I assumed) and instead is a matter of proper technique. Does it actually make you a better fighter? Does it have anything to do with strength and speed? Does it make you able to inflict greater damage and defend yourself? Does it help you learn to withstand pain?
I guess what I’m really asking is whether learning to break boards this way has any valid purpose other than to make it look like the performer has special powers.
Thanks for the cites to your articles, BTW. It’s always nice to know my questions are being answred by a legitimate expert on the subject!
No… no… no… no. Well, maybe that last one a bit, since if you get it wrong you’re really, really motivated to get it right or at least suffer through it.
Well, it’s good at teaching you focus from the perspective of “must hit here in this manner to be effective,” and the physics of board-breaking can easily be applied to bone-breaking (where and how to hit an opponent), but in the end we do it because it looks really cool.
In my experience, board breaking is a bit more difficult than block breaking, simply because the majority of people I’ve encountered “doctor” their blocks to make them easier to break (this includes arranging them in certain ways, or baking them to make them more brittle). I myself have an extremely impressive-looking “fire and ice” break (sheets of ice set on fire with lighter fluid just prior to the break), but as Cal so abley pointed out, it’s all in how the ice is arranged (and how long I let the ice melt before breaking it). However, the boards typically come straight from Home Depot to the dojo/competition, with no way to doctor them first, so you have to know what you’re doing.
Scam… not really. But it looks waaaaaay more impressive than it is.
Well, it does prove that you can deliver a large amount of force in a short time, something required for effective use of martial arts. It does not make you a better fighter, but it can prove that your strikes are properly performed (technique in other areas required to be a better fighter are not tested). Strength and speed play a role, but less than you might think. Both are required, but a properly trained child can break a board with ease that you would have some difficulty with without prior experience.
Breaking boards is a type of test, if it has any value. Form can be tested with specific linked chains of moves, which (surprise) happen to be commonly called “forms”. Reaction and specific fighting technique can be practiced with sparring, in which you are padded. Breaking boards is just a trial-run of breaking a person; imagine the board as their kneecap. The huge stacks I tend to think are just for show; you are never going to have to break 15 knees in one strike. But it sure is cool!
I just want to point out that you really should get proper training if you want to do this sort of thing. I have a big file of articles I found in medical journals of injuries people have sustained by not striking boards and blocks properly.
Well, by focusing your chi (ie concentrating hard) you are more easily able to hit the board/ice/concrete EXACTLY where it will do the most damage. Not unlike a professional baseball player hitting homers because he hits the ball perfectly. No super-strength or special powers required.
Yeah… I’m going to have to go ahead and… disagree… with bobkitty there.
I’d say it does make you a better fighter, because proper technique is everything in martial arts, not to mention speed and mental focus as well, which are all requirements to successfully breaking the wood. If you do it wrong, it hurts and the wood doesn’t break. If you do it right, the wood breaks and you usually don’t hurt yourself. It also builds confidence in your abilities. When you’re at the point where you can break 4 or 5 boards every time, then you know you’ve got it down, and the person teaching you knows you’ve got it down. That’s also why it’s usually used as a test. This leads to being able to do more damage with your strikes, and it also can help to learn to withstand pain, because when you fail, you try again, even if your hand hurts.
Did I mention that it looks cool too? Although once you do it yourself, breaking regular boards and bricks doesn’t seem as impressive. But breaking baseball bats or roofing shingles, and poking your finger into the side of an unopened soda can is always impressive.
This seems a bit contradictory: it demonstrates that you can properly perform a strike, but this doesn’t make you a better fighter? I assume you mean that the practice leading up to breaking a board is beneficial but the act of breaking a board itself is not. Is that a correct interpretation?
I have never broken a board, but I’d punched a lot of things that wouldn’t break, and it made me a better fighter. I’ve done chi gong iron palm and iron fist training where I punched or palmstriked (palmstruck?) a sandbag or iron sheet very hard, very fast, for a large number of repetitions. This training alone won’t make you a decent fighter just like almost any technique trained in isolation wouldn’t make you a fighter. It’s part of an overall training plan and is definitely beneficial when done correctly.
Several of the people I trained with would break stacks of bricks in demonstrations doing exactly what we did on the sandbags and iron plates. This was strictly for PR use, but that’s a valid reason too. Most of our public demos were tailored toward demonstrating things non-martial artists would find interesting or impressive since most of the things that actually work in a fight are fairly mundane. If it piques the audiences’ interest enough to get them in the kwoon to see the real stuff, everybody wins.
As one who has busted boards, an important thing that it teaches you is proper follow-through and hand technique.
e.g./ If you aim at the board you tend to just hit the surface and hurt your knuckles’ cause the board doesn’t break. If you aim a few inches past it (or at the chest of the person holding it) the board will break in the manner describe by CalMeacham. Learning proper follow-through helps you maximize your striking efficiency.
Hand technique is important too. If you hit the board improperly you can break bones in your hand because all that kinetic energy goes through all the wrong parts. You don’t practice hand technique on boards, but busting through something without breaking your paw means you are doing it correctly.
We’ve had four-year-old snap right through a 1" x 8" (of pine, a more forgiving lumber) – a lot has to do with speed and accuracy (proper techinque). It’s not something done regularly in martial arts classes, it’s more or less reserved for “testing” and public demonstrations.
One thing everyone comment on in my class – the first time you break a board, you tend to really overdo it. Most people end up using enough force to snap two or three.
I think it’s also used in training as a way of breaking down mental barriers, which is a big part of martial arts as well as other sports. It’s like, “Hey, I can break a board … I can also take on someone bigger than I am.” But that’s just one small aspect in addition to what the others have already thrown out there.
Well, no, it doesn’t make you a better fighter. Or, more properly, the ability to break even large numbers of boards or bricks relates only marginally to fighting ability.
Breaking one pine board is fairly trivial. I often had my students do it rather early in their training, and most people (these were college students for the most part) could bring it off on the first or second try.
Boards are flat, stationary, well-supported, motionless, and those who break them have lots of time to wind up and aim exactly. People are none of the above. And bone is much stronger than wood - if it wasn’t, your hand would break instead of the boards.
“Speed” breaking, where you break a board that is unsupported except at one point, is a slightly better test of striking ability, because you have to hit fast enough to snap the board before the energy of your strike moves the board. But the board is still motionless relative to you, so you have lots of time to get your distancing perfect.
Breaking stuff is fun, impressive to watch, draws in students, and builds self-confidence. But it is mostly a sideshow.
The reason for the practice that I heard was that back in Okinawa, the samurai who conquered the region wore wooden armor, because metal armor was too expensive. The peasants who developed karate conditioned their hands and broke boards so as to develop the ability to break thru that armor.
I agree on idea that board breaking is part of the training of proper form and follow up.
People tend to hit on the surface. A good strike should “aim” at a target a bit “behind” the surface of the target.
Also you need to learn how to hold your hand right or get your toes pulled back right if hitting with balls of the feet (usually the first board you break at lower levels is with feet). This is essential for kicking styles like TKD. You have to pull your toes back to kick with the ball of your feet or else…ouch!! Also, it is good for self-confidence of students. I mean, you can’t go around breaking other studen’t knee caps, can you? A board is a nice test and confidence boost. The amount of force may not be great, but it really doesn’t take much force to break an attackers knee cap or the arch of their foot. Even a small child (say 10) can be taught to kick hard enough to break a knee and run from an attacker.
Regarding “chi”, the word is much abused. Think of it as balance, timing and grace. Imagine tossing a frisbee without moving any part of your body buy the tossing hand. Now toss by winding up and really getting your hips and torso into the throw. Make your body whip and snap. You’ll toss it much, much farther as you are transferring more energy to it. If that’s chi, I have no problem with it. If people think chi is some kinda of spirtual force you zap the board with, then they are full of bunk.
Final thought, people can kick VERY hard. Look at the size of the muscles in your legs compared to the rest of your body (assuming you don’t have an out-of-whack development). The amount of force in a front or back kick is very impressive and in styles that use the feet a lot (Tae Kwon Do and Shotokan), students can break boards that way very early on (under a year of training if trained well and 2-3 times a week). Thus, people might think it more impressive than it is (not to under rate it!) since they are unaware of how strong legs can be. A small woman or child can kick much harder than s mugger’s evern been punched, even by “built” guys.
That said, stuff beyond training use is for show. Schools like to recruit students and it’s part of the performance pay off that any sport has as a side benefit. Who doesn’t like applause? Does a basketball player who can hang from the rim have to?
Most martial arts schools that use breaking (in my experience, anyway), stick with breaking a small number of pine boards at the lower belts. As Shodan said, it’s not going to make you into that much of a better fighter, technique wise. Hitting a stationary target is pretty much the basic step, it doesn’t make you a good MA.
I do think there’s a lot of psychological benefit, though, to breaking. It boosts confidence. First time I had to break (1 inch of pine, front snap kick, for my yellow belt), I was scared, because everyone knows wood is sturdy and hard. Broke it on my first try and - whoa! That’s easy! Maybe I’ve learned something! It’s an ego booster, and it gets people used to hitting things that aren’t soft (useful).
There’s really not that much ‘mystery’ to how people do it: once you know the technique, and have the strength to properly execute it, it’s just like hitting a punching bag.
Agreed. My point was that all the things that go into breaking board do make you a better fighter and, all other things being equal, the student who has trained to break boards is probably a better fighter than the one who did everything else the first student did except the breaking. This is coming from someone who never bothered to break a board, but the a blanket statement like “breaking boards doesn’t make you a better fighter” (which I’m not attributing to anyone in particular) seems naive in the same way as martial artists who say “kata are pointless and won’t make you a better fighter”. I can point to almost anything martial artists do and say that thing, taken in isolation, doesn’t make you a better fighter. But that’s a straw man. Martial arts is about using specific training exercises to develop a collection of well-rounded skills and if something helps hone even one small aspect of a physical or mental skill, it contributes to making you a better fighter.
It turns out that when you do a dynamic analysis of it a “free” board assumes a slightly different shape than a simply-supported one, and requires more effort to break than a simply-supported one.
Just for the record, the easiest type of support for easy breaking is the case of rigidly supported at one end. Imagine the board rigidly clamped at one end (or set in concrete) while you hit the other end.
I’m not sure I get that. What do you mean “free”? If free means free on one end … don’t your two paragraphs contradict? Sorry, if I am just being a block head…get it? karate bricks, block head…I kill myself…
Also, is article(s) you wrote on-line? Links? : )
White pine isn’t really much of a wood. right above balsa in my book. However, I had a friend in high school who was a tai boxer. Man those guys are tough. He could break baseball bats with his shin. We worked at a grocery store and he’d routinely break industrial mop handles with his shin for our entertainment. Let’s see those board breakers do that!
He also introduced me to a very fragile nerve running down the outside of my thigh. Don’t know what’s called, but I sure remember it’s there.
Breaking boards doesn’t make a you a better fighter. It does provide some instant feedback as to your technique though.
Freefalling boards are interesting to break as well. Here, the focus is of course on speed. Lots of slow force just pushes the boards away. I’ve never seen anyone break more than two freefalling boards at a time. Course, i’ve not seen very many people try either.
The upside is that you’re less likely to break you hand/wrist if you screw up the punch than if you’re punching stationary boards.
However, the boards typically come straight from Home Depot to the dojo/competition, with no way to doctor them first, so you have to know what you’re doing.