bone-breaking

**Jenfucius** · Posted On: 7/10/2003 7:46am

ok, here's a thought triggered by the ISKA thread...

i never understood breaking stone, boards, bricks, or whatever. and yes, i saw that thread on it from a while back, so instead of asking about breaking, i am going to ask you all a question. has anyone ever purchased cow bones or the bones of any other large animal from a butcher or slaughterhouse and tried to break them? i would find that much more impressive than smashing boards.

my old kendo teacher bought an ox bone once and tested a sword on it. it cut clean through. i thought he was nuts to risk damaging a Japanese sword worth six figures, but that's what gave me the idea of bone-breaking practice.

**Balloonknot** · Posted On: 7/10/2003 7:59am

IMHO, board, stone, and brickbreaking is what is wrong with the MA today. All I can say on the issue is..... IDIOT MARITAL ART!

Quote (Bruce Lee):
Boards don't hit back!

**Mercurius** · Posted On: 7/10/2003 8:15am

Breaking, I think, has more use in a cultivating art than an art intended and trained directly for fighting use. If you can break a rock, it means your iron palm is good, and by extension your technique and coordination are sound. However, you'll never be able to do it on the head of a person who's trying to fight you since they're not going to sit as still as a rock.

Granted, fighting artists want the same coordination and technique as cultivating artists, but breaking practice, due to its stillness, goes counter to the live-fire environment in which they must apply their techniques. I wonder, though, what would happen if mitt practice were replaced with rapidly moving and replacing boards as targets. Surely, a study to be undertaken one day.

Getting back to the original topic, of breaking bone, I think bones would be harder to standardize and judge (in competition and practice) than stone and wood. What type of bone would be used? If it's longer than a wood plank, it might be easier to break, then again, it might not because it would be thinner, or this conjecture could all change in light of different techniques (chops, kicks, elbow strikes). If the bone is brittle, it could snap with the slightest provocation, if it's supple, it could absorb the energy of a strike better than a real bone might. I think there are too many variables to deal with for it to be of much use.

**Halogen** · Posted On: 7/10/2003 8:28am

Bones, once they're outside a living body lose quite a lot of strength and become quite brittle. The strength of 'wet' bone (bone inside the body) is many times greater than 'dry' bone. So while breaking bones might look impressive in a demo, its not really any indication of power, I'm pretty sure most kinds of wood and brick would be stronger.

**Fighty McGee** · Posted On: 7/10/2003 9:25am

This is the kind of idea that gets martial artists a bad rap. Some of the early (various style) masters were known (according to legend) to have used corpses to test breaking techniques on. Some were supposed to have used live prisoners even. These kinds of stories lead to the idea that martial artists are murderous, ghoulish freaks (ala Kungfoolss news-follies). Even when I think of the great Mas Oyama, I immediately recall his experiments on the bulls, and I can't help but think "What a freakish asshole." Is this the kind of image you want?

**Nihilanthic** · Posted On: 7/10/2003 3:14pm

The problem with bone breaking on a person is what you hit is typically mobile. You can't smash a skull unless its up against a wall or the floor- its on the neck and will just swing back. Go smack up some drunk dude and see what I mean. (Please don't, I'm not serious or responsible for your stupidity)

So, the best you could do is **** up joints or go after easy bones. And stomp.

&lt;Me&gt; John, what do you know about Zen Buddhism? &lt;John&gt; *smacks me*
&lt;John&gt; I'd have to smack you sometime...

**IndoChinese** · Posted On: 7/10/2003 10:19pm

"So, the best you could do is **** up joints"

that is pretty much what 'bone breaking' attacks do, damage the joints, not the bones, per se.

some smaller bones might break, but it is usually the connectives that are attacked.

peace.

<marquee>REDANTKUNTAO</marquee>
<marquee> INDONESIAN GUNG FU</marquee>

**Jenfucius** · Posted On: 7/10/2003 10:31pm

i think some of the responses are not really getting at what i meant. i didn't mean bone-breaking for competition. what i meant was something along the lines of buying the ribs of a sheep or something fresh from slaughter and seeing if you could crack them with punches.

i guess it would be a better idea to BBQ them anyway!

**Phoenix** · Posted On: 7/10/2003 10:33pm

Jenn...

I think the Koppojutsu guys do that kind of thing. After all, Koppo is almost exclusively bone breaking anyway.

"Everybody knows...if the police have to chase you down, they're brining an ass kicking with them". - Chris Rock

**Choke** · Posted On: 7/10/2003 11:52pm

"IMHO, board, stone, and brickbreaking is what is wrong with the MA today. All I can say on the issue is..... IDIOT MARITAL ART!"

Mas Oyama was a huge advocate of breaking. The guy just loved to break **** with his hands. Breaking remains to be a cornerstone of Kyoukushin. We all love KK here, right?

_______________________________________
Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising
I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.
To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!