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 skills honed in his or her 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, although the art of breaking objects was known as tameshiwari.
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 an impromptu or choreographed sequence of breaks for an audience. Martial arts schools sometimes demonstrate challenging breaks in order to gain publicity and inspire enrollment or attendance.
During promotion testing, many styles of martial arts require that students demonstrate their skills by executing breaks; the difficulty of a required break depends on the rank for which the student is testing. 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. In some dojangs the student must train for another six months before he/she may test again.
Wooden boards are the most common breaking item in taekwondo and related art forms. Individual boards used may range from nominal sizes as small as 6"x12"x1" to as large as 12"x12"x1" (a board with a nominal width of 1" has an actual width of 3/4"). The typical adult testing board is approximately 9"x12"x1".[citation needed] 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. There is 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. Sometimes a board to be broken is held lightly between two fingers by a person; an advanced dan test may involve an attempt to break a board as it falls through the air. 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, or 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, such as concrete blocks, that are placed on the ground. Most, if not all, color belt (belts before black belt) promotion testing breaks are power breaks -- it is substantially easier for an inexperience person to muster sufficient energy to break a wooden board with a power break (Note, this is not true for all breaks). The vast majority of these employ human board holders. 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.
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.
Both the speed and power breaks deliver the energy required to overcome the tensor and flexion forces of the board through mass displacement, where the kinetic energy is given by .5 m*v2. That is, either the speed of the striking implement (hand/foot/etc) has to be high enough, or the striker must be strong enough to increase effective mass brought into the break (i.e. his or her body weight) to exceed the brick/board's threshold. For single boards, it is generally easy (as in the casual person has a sufficient reserve of mass) to reach this threshold through a power break.
Though fundamentally different, the third kind of break -- the impulse break -- is often confused with a speed break, because the striking implement can (but need not) reach a high speed. But that is where the similarity ends. The energy transmission from an impulse break derives not from mass displacement, but from wave transmission. (As an ocean wave hits a beach) The mass of the hand/foot/etc does not travel much further than necessary to deliver the wave -- this results in an extremely brief contact with the brick or board face (as opposed to going "through it"), and the wave itself causes the striking surface to flex and buckle. The less flexible the striking surface, the more likely to break.
[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 6-7 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 the potential for injury. 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 spacing items (often referred to as 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 greater degree of difficulty than that of pegged bricks.
This is due to the way in which the two materials break. Wood, which is a natural fibrous matrix, 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 intact. 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 ceramic, 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 with each additional brick (which 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 bottom of a stack). To break 2 bricks that are unpegged uses the same power that you would use to break 6-7 bricks with gaps, because when bricks have spacers it only takes 100 pounds of pressure for each brick after the first one being around 700 pounds of pressure for the first brick.[citation needed]
[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. 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, Iron Head, and other types of training which center around conditioning various parts of the body so they could withstand or give blows such as what is seen today in martial arts breaking. Many Chinese systems also are of the school of thought that "internal energy" or Qi/Chi is used when breaking, which is not dependent upon muscle strength and body weight.
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 (calluses), 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 takes a period of rest to heal and allow 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]
