… Karate chopping boards is the one thing that is the most unsettling to MOST if not every other Martial Artist. It’s the fact that Chopping boards of wood on a stationary platform that befuddles me. I don’t want to start a Style war, but karate chopping a board will do nothing but hurt your hands. There is nothing to gain. Essentially, “martial arts” is the art defending yourself, either by hand or weapon.
With that said, the physics of hitting an object(boards or bodies) is not that difficult. ANYONE can break boards, ANYONE can fight. Try splitting a board or two yourself, you break your hands as long as you follow the grain, that a little bit of testosterone!
There are several reasons that board breaking is done in martial arts.
First, it really forces the student to have good technique. The whole ki/chi thing is really nothing more than focus - one has to really hit the boards exactly on target. In addition, the better the technique, the more power developed and the easier the break.
Second, it’s a confidence builder. A lot of students are hinky about hitting anything because they don’t believe they will do it right and they’ll get hurt. I always teach my students that it never hurts to break a board. It only hurts when you don’t break the board. And the grin on their face after their first break is really fantastic to see.
Third, it looks flashy at demonstrations. People have come to expect that sort of thing, so we try to oblige them. And it actually tends to make it more believable to them if they see a student miss a break, then set it up again, focus harder and succeed the second time.
Clothahump is correct on all four points. When I first broke boards, the instructors told us to concentrate on penetration – strike past the board.
Not all breaking techniques use pencils as spacers. The second time I broke, I did an axe kick through two boards without spacers, at shoulder height.
Then, for a change of technique, I did a speed break: I used a knife hand (a classic karate chop) through one free-floating board – the board was not braced by holders, blocks, or anything else.
Clothahump and Scuba_Ben are completely right. It’s about concentration, follow-through, speed, and hand-eye coordination. But it’s mostly about confidence. Once you get past the fear of breaking your hand or foot, breaking boards becomes a fun and exciting method of sharpening one’s skills.
When I first started Tae Kwon Do, I was petrified at the thought of breaking a board. It took me five tries to put my foot through one board using a simple front kick. By the time I was a black belt ten years later, however, the other black belts and I routinely did demonstrations in which we’d break six stacked and spaced boards that had been doused in lighter fluid and set on fire, boards that were falling through the air, unspaced stacks of five or six boards using more powerful techniques like side kicks and spin hook kicks, and also assorted other objects, like bricks, watermelons and sheetrock.
There were a couple of times when I lost concentration and hurt myself, but mostly it was all just a lot of fun. I miss it.
For the record… concrete patio blocks are much more impressive to break than pine boards and are just about as easy. I’ve had them break while just warming up, centering on my target. It’s embarrassingly anticlimatic when it happens during a demonstration.
You want to impress me? Remove the shims and then punch through 6" of concrete.
Not true at my Tang Soo Do club. We use a one-by-twelve, but it is cut so that board is twelve inches square. We also will break two or three boards at once without spacers.
Yes, breaking is about proper application of power using proper technique. It is impressive to spectators, but it does teach a martial artist the proper way of applying power.
There is still a gap, though mostly just the thinnest bearing surface of air, between layers (look at the 1x12s edgewise and you will see that they are not perfectly flat). Way impressive, even though I know how it works, but following the same principle.
(Dear Zog, I have spent too much of my life looking at lumber and now my wife works at a lumber yard!)
Ahhhh…Unca Cese, You didn’t happen to take photographs of your brick escapades, did you? (notice the capital “Y”). I mean you could disguise yourself and stuff like that like the Lone Ranger so no one could look upon you’re countenance.
