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>In short, this stuff is 90% magic trick.

I would say, kinda but not entirely. IME as a practitioner in my youth, I would say that breaking the mental barrier to throw a good punch is a thing that needs to be broken as part of the martial arts training. Another thing that a good training gives you and not many people understand is the preparation to receive a punch, not cower in fear and still keep a sound mind to try to recover and react.

Your board holders also have a significant input on your success. If they hold the board, but let their arms flex, then they absorb too much of the energy of the strike. They can make it easier for you as well, by flexing the board inwards towards them.

I've gone through boards with a one inch punch with barely any effort, and also failed several times, and it has always been down to the person or persons holding the board for me.

The only board breaks that are really impressive to me are speed breaks, where the board is either held one-handed (either by the person doing the break or an assistant) or is mid-air when struck.

That at least takes a measure of skill.

But shows you just how easily they do break. However because we think “board” we assume it’s cut grain wise like a normal person. They aren’t and are about as strong as a chopstick.

What's funny is that the illustration at the start of the article shows exactly the kind of plank you would not be able to break this way.

Totally agree. But a long time ago I saw a take kwon do guy break stones like you find in a river bed with his fist. I remember later on I saw his hands and they were almost crippled. They were huge and didn’t seem to have too much movement left. I think he broke them many times and would grow a lot of bone that way. Same way some muay Thai fighters have super solid shins.

we had a guy at our studio seriously into this. you have to train a lot: hit bags of rice, then beans, then sand, then steel shot. eventually yes it tends to cripple your hands though that can be somewhat mitigated by rigorous mobility exercises and basically PT. still do not advise.

note that almost any fighters knuckles will be more solid as the lattice structure of the bone gradually fills in. that doesn’t cause as many mobility issues, it’s when you get new growth on the outside that problems start.

This reminds me of a clip I saw of an older martial arts practitioner, like heavy-duty, far east, everything was translated. He had spent decades punching harder and harder things until he had to hit opponents at a small fraction of his strength, as his forearms on up were mineralized clubs on the inside. A full strike could kill.

I watched closely and his hands didn't seem to be much use for anything else.

I'm not a medic, but conditioning the shins presumably doesn't cost you mobility later in life, as it isn't a joint.

There are two shin bones and if they fuse there is a lack of mobility. A lot of muay Thai fighters have problems with their legs later on. That in addition to the obvious which is brain damage and a lot of scar tissue in the face.

Huh, I had never even thought of the tibia and fibula fusing, does this really happen often in Muay Thai? I coincidentally just got back from training at my Muay Thai gym just now. The first few weeks or months of training there’s definitely a lot of welting on the legs, but the shins adapt quickly. I hadn’t heard of the shin bones fusing.

Interesting, thanks.

Can you point to a solid source on this? Googling tibia fibula synostosis muay thai, and similar, doesn't turn up anything relevant to conditioning.

I knew some fighters. One of them was a low kick specialist and his shin felt like one solid piece of concrete. Not sure if it was fused but he couldn’t do certain movements , but he could kick with unbelievable force. I have no idea how his opponents could block this with their own shins. Many years later I still have some sensitive spots on my shins from trying to train with them. It was impossible.

I did Kyokushin karate to Shodan. The board we broke were solid pine boards. They are definitely not "cut". My technique was a little off, and I wrecked my knuckles for months. They ended up permanently moved.

So maybe all karate isn't equal.

Not cut as in pre-broken (though I’ve seen that too), but cut as in the original action which turned the log into a board. The boards are formed the “wrong” way if you wanted strength, like for building.

Take one of your boards and hold it with the grain horizontally instead of vertically. Try not to break your hand.

I think that most people just take a regular board and cut it into several lengths. Since the grain generally runs along the longer dimension of the board, that means that you break the board down the middle.

That's why laminates, with the layers running in different directions, are so strong.

You won't see a piece of plywood being broken this way.

> The key is the boards designed for breaking are cut in their weakest orientation.

So you're saying it's all for show, like some 10 kilo barbell weights being ridiculously oversized just to soothe the ego?

The oversized weights are bumper plates for deadlifting and snatching so that the bar is at a proper height when sitting on the floor.

Ego develops at higher mass.

No.

It's meant to develop confidence.

It is called "martial arts" for a reason. A lot of it is essentially dance and performance.

It's called "martial arts" because originally these were skills used in warfare. "Art" here does not mean "dance and performance"; that is a more modern definition. Sun Tzu's The Art of War is not a theatre guide.

On a semi-related note, "liberal arts" refers to the skills that would be required to participate in a free society, particularly to participate in informed discussions on social and political matters. That's why liberal arts includes subjects such as math, science, geology, and public speaking. It feels like many people are not aware of that, which ironically is due to a want of proper liberal arts education.

They really weren't beyond basic grappling. By the time The Art of War was written, everyone was using swords, knives, clubs, etc.

okinawan peasants caught with swords would be executed

It really depends on the style and the gym, and whether you're doing it for fun/fitness or competitively.

I've spent years doing no contact karate, and years more doing full contact (but not full force) sparring in Thai and Western kickboxing. For the latter, there's not really a performative aspect to it. Nobody is watching, there's no forms, no real room for fancy flourishes that waste time. I get punched in the face a lot (I'm not very good), and have had the wind knocked out of me many times. I've also spent significant time doing the song and dance (literally) kickboxing at the local YMCA, which was more like Zumba than traditional martial arts.

All of it is great fun and exercise. There's nothing wrong with any of those approaches as long as it fits what you're looking for. There are a LOT of gyms and styles and teachers out there!

Yes and no. There is a lot of performance in demonstrations and movies, still it is quite effective for a very well trained practician. But the most effective techniques don't look impressive on screen.

It depends on the particular martial art. A lot of very famous martial art styles are purely performative, and are basically no use in any fight with a non-cooperative opponent or at least one not practicing the same restricted move set. Some of this was quickly demonstrated when a few famed practitioners made the mistake of participating in MMA tournaments. Some examples of such purely artisitic/ritualistic/sporty arts are sumo, aikido, capoeira, Krav Maga, and quite a few others.

Often it comes down to how someone uses the art.

Lyoto Machida uses Sumo as part of his MMA. At our school we've found it's pushing techniques useful once your get an opponent off balance.

The locks in Aikido are useful as pain compliance techniques used by people like law enforcement or bouncers. Compared to an art like Judo, the "throws" in Aikido generally don't throw your opponent to the ground and do damage. Instead they tend to cause your opponent to stumble away from you. Therefore, they aren't very useful in competition but they are useful in self defense where they can create an opening to get a weapon or escape.

Dance and performance has been part of almost every warrior tradition that I'm aware of. The Spartans had Gymnopaedia, Europe (along with many other areas) has numerous sword dances, the Maori have haka, Muay Thai has wai kru, modern militaries have drill, etc.

Dance appears to be a very natural and primal form of human ritual, so it's not surprising that most cultures have utilized it as a way for warriors to build confidence and demonstrate their attributes & skills.

>A lot of it is essentially dance and performance.

While it may look like a dance when a single practitioner is doing a kata or “form”, it’s anything but a performance or a dance. There’s full contact, pit, octagon, Bellator, K1, and various other avenues to “practice” your martial art on someone’s face.

> A lot of it is essentially dance and performance.

The "dance and performance" (kata?) is essentially slow-motion practice of moves and responses. You are muscle-memorizing moves that you would deploy at full speed in a non-pratice scenario. It certainly looks like dance, and it feels a bit like dance too.

Because it's slowed-down continuous motion, you have to concentrate on keeping your balance. When that's translated to a non-practice scenario, it results in greater precision both in terms of motion and of force-delivery. Performing katas also develops strength; I gave up tai-chi because after every class, my whole body would ache.

That tends to be a translation of Japanese "bugei", where the latter part also translates as craft or technique. "War(rior)craft" or "warrior techniques" would be valid translations too; generally modern society wants to de-emphasize the war part. And Japanese society historically saw poetry in death..

Hell, that's why instead of saying "warrior" or "war", the English term is a euphemistic reference to an old god -- god of war, sure, but an indirect reference, suitable for polite society.

Your hand might not break, but it still really painful. Breaking a stack of 6 with a knife hand, my wrist would usually be sore and bruised up the next day. It would take a week or so for full mobility.

I still think most people in the world wouldn't be able to break 2 pavers with no spacers. :)

Interesting. I was doing this kind of stuff in high school, never had such problems and I don't know personally anyone that did (and I used to know a few dozen people practicing various styles of karate). In any case wrist pain suggests a very bad strike technique or weak wrist muscles.

It sounds like 90% grit and 10% magic trick, but you were an instructor so I’ll take your word for it.

I still wish to believe that the crème de la crème, or the top 0.1% of the karate world, can muster enough force to break concrete regardless of any tricks.

I didn't magic trick in a pejorative sense. Just pointing out that there's a specific technique to being successful at it.

Breaking a board with some techniques is easier than others. The front-leg hook (also known as "whip") kick I personally found quite hard to break with, particularly when jumping. Two boards, no spacer, palm strike was much easier for me.

We just got regular boards from the hardware store. Part of the technique is hitting them with the grain rather than across it.

What's the trick behind the practitioners who break large blocks of ice?

Ice is very similar to concrete pavers; it's both rigid (i.e. requires a lot of force to deflect), but brittle (i.e. takes very little deflection to break).

Understandable.

Still, nothing will detract from the visceral wonder that I could never forget after seeing, in person, an extremely high ranked karateka (i.e. second in the world, in his style) chop a seemingly solid block of ice over a foot thick.

I suspect that, while there might be "a trick" behind these things, extreme achievements in that field are still rare and accomplished acts, as they are in any. The wonderment need not be fully extinguished.

Oh, it's absolutely hard, but like many things the apparent difficulty and actual difficulty are only loosely related, and good showmanship (perhaps a more polite term for "trick") will involve maximizing the apparent difficulty while keeping the actual difficulty manageable.

You see similar things with e.g. juggling where entertainers will do a lot of things that make it look harder. This doesn't mean that it's not difficult to juggle 7 objects.

I think that people might be using "trick" in two different senses.

There's a "trick" to legitimate breaking in that the practitioner is choosing materials and techniques that lend themselves to breaking, but that doesn't mean that the actual break is faked.

On the other hand, it's also possible to fake a break. For example, you can cut a piece of ice in half, put some water on each end of the cut, and stick them back together in the freezer so that the ice appears to be solid but actually has a weak spot.

There can also be an element of showmanship. Even if a martial artist has done a break dozens of times, during a demo they might make a show of having to hype themselves up for the break, tensing their muscles with a dramatic hiss of their breath, etc.

I heard that they sometimes the ice is broken with a hammer and refrozen, so that it has an invisible weakness.

Sometimes wooden boards are baked to make them weaker.

Only sometimes though.

Thank you! I saw that article and i was like "wait, what?? are they not aware that this is mostly a parlor trick???" I thought everyone was aware... No science needed, it's a trick.