Breaking (martial arts)
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Breaking is a martial arts skill that is used in competition, demonstration and testing. Breaking is an action where a martial artist uses a striking surface to break one or more objects using the skill honed in his art form. The striking surface is usually a hand or a foot, but may also be a fingertip, toe, head, elbow, knuckle, or knee. The most common object is a piece of wood. However, it is also common to break bricks or cinder blocks. It is less common to break other objects which include items like blocks of ice. Not all styles of martial arts place equal emphasis on breaking. Many styles where striking and kicking is less important deemphasize it. Grappling, throwing, weaponry and ground fighting styles, of course, place less emphasis on breaking. Traditional Japanese martial art schools place little, if any, emphasis on board-breaking.
Competition can be based on artistic impression, number of items broken in a given amount of time, number of items broken with a single strike, or time to break a number of items. There are several certified breaking categories in various journals of world records such as the Guinness Book.
In a demonstration, a martial artist exhibits his or her skill by executing impromptu or choreographed sequence of breaks for an audience. Often martial arts schools publicizing their school or a school event will include challenging board breaks to inspire enrollment or attendance.
During promotion testing, many styles of martial arts require that student document their attainment of the skills for promotion by executing a break of the requisite difficulty for the belt they are testing for. Failure to execute a required break is often sufficient grounds for failure of a promotion test. Failure requires repeated study of the curriculum for that belt for several additional weeks often until the next cycle of testing for that school.
Wooden boards are the most common breaking item in Tae Kwon Do and related art forms. The typical adult testing board is approximately 9"x12"x1". Children may use narrower and thinner boards with pee wees (4 and 5 year olds) sometimes breaking boards as small as 4"x12"x.5".
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[edit] Speed vs. Power vs. Impulse
There are generally two common classifications of breaks: speed breaks and power breaks, and a third lesser known classification known as the impulse break.
Speed breaks are breaks where the striking object is not held in place. The only way to break the object is to strike the surface with sufficient speed at a focused point of impact. For example, a very common advanced dan test to attempt to break a board as it falls through the air. Sometimes the board is held lightly by a holder between two fingers. Regardless of the strength of the striker the board will only break if it is struck with sufficient velocity.
Power breaks are breaks where the striking object is supported. Either the break will employ human holders for horizontal, angular, and upward vertical strikes or the break will require that the objects be stacked for downward vertical strikes. For a stacked break the object is placed on sturdy supporting objects that are placed on the ground. Most, if not all, color belt (belts before black belt) promotion testing breaks are power breaks. The vast majority of these employ human board holders. Power breaks are more forgiving of technique. Often a stronger or more powerful striker may substitute some strength for technique and successfully accomplish the break. Most, if not all, records that are catalogued are for power breaks. It is very common for black belt tests to use bricks or several boards stacked on top of supporting objects for challenging downward strikes.
Impulse breaks are breaks unlike the two common speed and power breaks. Both speed and power breaks deliver destructive force in a constant manner through the target board (velocity for speed, and constant force for power). Impulse break practitioners however, deliver their energy upon a properly timed wave. Neither particularly forceful or fast moving, the striker's hand generally stops at the target after delivering all of its energy, and the board, brick, or stone cannot sufficiently flex at the point of contact to avoid breaking. This type of break is extremely difficult, but looks almost magical when executed properly.
Taped boards are sometimes used to lessen the amount of human influence from the holders for a break. It is very difficult to hold a stack of boards more than 4 inches steadily enough for challenging break. Therefore, some strikers will tape a stack of boards together to make a "brick" for their holders to hold. Usually however, test breaks at promotions and events are done without taped boards.
[edit] Pegged vs. Unpegged
There are two types of multiple stacked board settings: pegged and unpegged. Unpegged stacks are stacks where multiple items are stacked directly on top of each other. Typically, whether stacked or human held and whether taped or untaped, approximately 4-5 unpegged boards is equivalent to brick in terms of degree of difficulty (the required force and form to successfully execute the break). However, a single brick is more dangerous in terms of injury propensity. Therefore, many schools for liability reasons substitute a stack of boards for a single brick.
Pegged stacks are stacks where multiple items are stacked with spacers between them. Common spacing items are pegs, nuts, coins, and pencils. Most records involved stacked boards because these are more forgiving and cause fewer injuries to strikers who are pushing themselves to their physical limits. A given number of pegged boards is equated in difficulty with a larger number of unpegged boards. For example, depending upon the spacers used, some consider approximately 3 pegged boards equivalent in difficulty to 5 unpegged boards. Just the opposite is true of bricks; unpegged bricks pose a greatter degree of difficulty than that of pegged bricks.
This is due to the nature of how the two media break. Wood, which is organic in nature, flexes to a certain degree before it snaps at the target point. When unpegged, this allows for an entire stack of wood to flex upon impact, resulting in the break occurring in the order of furthest board from impact to the closest board (albeit a fraction of a second difference separates each board, making it appear instantaneous). This can be witnessed in many novice demonstrations where the rear board will break, but the remaining top boards are untouched. When pegged, the gap between the boards necessitates each individual board to flex and snap before the next board is reached in succession; the person performing the break must physically touch every board in a pegged stack of wood.
Bricks, on the other hand, are non-organic in nature, and snap (or shatter) upon impact, with no flex action. When a stack of bricks is unpegged, the amount of force required to break all of the bricks increases exponentially with each additional brick (this is why security barricades are made of SOLID, not gapped concrete). When bricks are pegged, the gap created actually allows for the bricks to break each other; the force of the first brick shattering downward through the gap will break the second brick, and so on. The larger the gap, the easier the following bricks will break. In essence, the person breaking the bricks does not have to touch every single brick on the way through the stack (again, as witnessed in many demonstrations, a persons hand or foot will not reach the botom of a stack).
[edit] Technique
In general, breaking is used as a method of measuring force of strikes for martial artists, as there was no other way to do this and only recently have devices such as Accelerometers been used in martial arts.
Generally, a martial artist engaged in breaking practices hitting something hard. A famous breaker Masutatsu Oyama, who was known for breaking the horns off bulls would use trees (which is what is Muay Thai fighters used to train on as well). In karate a device called a makiwara is used, this device has found more popular use by practitioners of other martial arts today. In the past, Shaolin and other earlier martial artists would use many different types of devices in order to condition themselves, not always for simply breaking, but using the same concepts used today. For instance, there is Iron Palm, Iron Shin, Iron Shirt, and other types of schools which centered around conditioning various parts of the body so they could withstand or give blows such as what is seen today in martial arts breaking.
The general principles used in martial arts breaking training is similar to the same principles used for most athletics. The body adapts to stress. There are generally three areas a martial arts breaker wishes to force their body to adapt to: the bones, the skin (callouses), and muscles (for both mass and speed).
The general principle here -- for instance, for the bones -- is found in Wolff's law, which states that the skeletal system will, after healing, be stronger if injury is put to it. In this manner the breaking practitioner operates not unlike a bodybuilder who works out with weights, then allows for a time to healing for the muscles to come back stronger.
This kind of training is called "progressive resistance training", see Weight training for more information.
Mike Reeves, a champion breaker advocates in his book the usage of a makiwara and knuckle push-ups. With knuckle push-ups he recommends starting on softer floor material and working your way up to concrete.[1]
There are safety concerns with martial arts breaking, so you should seek out an instructor. The Knee and Elbows, for instance, have weak and small, but essential bones on them. There are many small bones of the foot and hand which need to be very carefully and slowly conditioned for safety. The tendons run over the knuckles on the fist and many damages can result from being overeager and impatient. [2]
[edit] Criticism
Breaking is regarded by some as a less-important practice in martial arts (see McDojo). There are also questions about the legitimacy of breaking events due to the ability to treat the materials to be more easily broken. For breaks involving wooden boards, such boards can be baked in an oven to become more brittle (and thus easy to break). In the case of ice, ice can be allowed to partially melt and make the break easier. For bricks, the bricks could be formed with a particularly high content of sand, making them easier to break. A tell-tale sign of this latter possibility is a fine cloud of dust resulting from broken bricks.
The employment of spacers also gives a false impression of how difficult a break is. Due to physics, employing spacers allows for the contestant to break materials as if they were doing it one at a time, as opposed to performing a break without spacers, which would increase the difficulty of such a break.
In the film Enter the Dragon, the main character (played by Bruce Lee), in response to a board-breaking demonstration, suggests that "boards don't hit back", implying that breaking inanimate objects is not a substitute for live sparring.
(However, it should be noted while Bruce Lee did not advocate breaking for demonstration of power he did practice the same conditioning techniques. For instance, in "Bruce Lee's Fighting Method Basic Training" by Bruce Lee and M Uyehara says on page 74, "He usually had three bags hanging on the wall. One was filled with sand, another with gravel or beans, and the third with steel sawdust." Further, it may be noted that Chapter VII of this book shows many photographs of him training in these manners and delivers many quotes of his explaining his reasonings why. Through at least his earlier years he also practiced on the hard wooden Wing Chun dummy.)
[edit] Injury
Many martial artists have been injured during power breaking efforts. It is very common to be injured in an unsuccessful break and very uncommon to be injured during a successful break. Thus, in order to stay healthy a martial artist should concentrate at properly executing breaks within his range of ability. Each object requires a certain amount of force to break. If one exceeds that force the object absorbs that force and breaks. If one does not exceed that force, not only does the object not break, but the force used generally rebounds back to the striking surface and causes injury to the striker. Thus the breaker who is not confident will pull back so that less force injures him. However, pulling back also reduces the likelihood of putting forth the required amount of force. Thus, fear of injury leads to injury. The fact that people are more fearful of a brick than the equivalently difficult stack of boards is what causes a higher injury propensity in brick breaks than wooden board breaks. [3]
[edit] Trivia
It is noteworthy that a common complaint about breaking is "it causes arthritis". Scientifically, if you are overeager and actually break a bone while practicing you might jam a piece of bone into the cartilage causing arthritis. [4]
While an inexperienced breaker using an untrained striking surface faces greater risk of injury than an experienced breaker using a trained striking surface, there are many dangers involved to all who don't strike with the proper caution. Tendons may be damaged, nerve damage may occur, loss of movement of fingers may result from building excessive callouses. It is important to condition and allow one's self time to heal after conditioning as in any progressive resistance athletic activity. [5]
A The Far Side cartoon depicted a room of martial arts trainers, observing a flying saucer landing outside and two aliens made of brick and wood emerging. The caption read "The class abruptly stopped practicing. Here was an opportunity to not only employ their skills, but also to save the entire town." The punch line, obviously, being that they would use their breaking skills to destroy the aliens.[citation needed]
