# Breaking demo



## Dirty Dog (Apr 6, 2016)

We had a few beginners testing last night (3 testing for 9th geup, 1 for 8th geup, and one for 4th geup) so Master Valdez asked me to break some concrete as a demo for them. Nothing difficult, really. These were just the pavers we had left over from the last school demo.


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## Buka (Apr 6, 2016)

That was some real nice breaking, Dog.


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## Monkey Turned Wolf (Apr 6, 2016)

I liked the slow mo..It helped me see how you moved your generated your power


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## Flatfish (Apr 7, 2016)

I'm glad none of those landed on your feet


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## JR 137 (Apr 8, 2016)

Everything's so much cooler in slo mo.

What I like most about your video is you don't stand there for hours on end, winding up and visualizing the attack.  You just get up there and get it done.


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## Tames D (Apr 9, 2016)

Very nice!


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## Dirty Dog (Apr 9, 2016)

JR 137 said:


> Everything's so much cooler in slo mo.
> 
> What I like most about your video is you don't stand there for hours on end, winding up and visualizing the attack.  You just get up there and get it done.



Honestly, I've never understood why people do this other than maybe showmanship. I never do. Even if we're doing a demo at a local school (a couple of our students are teachers, so we do this fairly often) I just explain to the students what I'm breaking, why we practice breaking, and I usually will ask how many of them think I'm going to break my hand instead of the pavers. Then do the break.


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## Bill Mattocks (Apr 9, 2016)

We use the same pavers but do soft breaks. No spacers. I can only do two from the kneeling soft hand. Yours were very clean, nice!


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## JR 137 (Apr 13, 2016)

This is why A) I don't break bricks, and B) I wouldn't take too much time "visualizing the attack"






One of my goals in life is to NOT have a YouTube fail video.


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## Dirty Dog (Apr 13, 2016)

Bill Mattocks said:


> We use the same pavers but do soft breaks. No spacers. I can only do two from the kneeling soft hand. Yours were very clean, nice!



I've done "soft breaks" too. I can do one reliably. I've done two, but I've not tried three, and probably never will.
The techniques, however, are completely different.
With "soft breaks" and other "iron palm" type techniques, you strike the first brick and stop. There is no follow through. Using spaces would make this sort of break far more difficult, if not just flat out impossible.
I've seen this done with single bricks countless times, and pairs much less frequently. I can think of one person I've seen do 3. I've never seen more than that. If you can show me video of a soft break thicker than that, I would love to see it.
The sort of heavy power break I did requires follow through. When I have done lesser breaks (like 2 bricks), I've not noticed any real difference from spacers. But with the larger breaks, using the spacers allows follow through with less risk of destroying your hand. If you fail to break a big pile of unspaced bricks, your hand goes from 100 to 0 in no time at all. And breaks. Using spacers failure means that your hand will be slowed (relatively) gradually. And while it can be quite painful, it doesn't usually result in a trip to the OR.


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## Bill Mattocks (Apr 13, 2016)

Dirty Dog said:


> I've done "soft breaks" too. I can do one reliably. I've done two, but I've not tried three, and probably never will.
> The techniques, however, are completely different.
> With "soft breaks" and other "iron palm" type techniques, you strike the first brick and stop. There is no follow through. Using spaces would make this sort of break far more difficult, if not just flat out impossible.
> I've seen this done with single bricks countless times, and pairs much less frequently. I can think of one person I've seen do 3. I've never seen more than that. If you can show me video of a soft break thicker than that, I would love to see it.
> The sort of heavy power break I did requires follow through. When I have done lesser breaks (like 2 bricks), I've not noticed any real difference from spacers. But with the larger breaks, using the spacers allows follow through with less risk of destroying your hand. If you fail to break a big pile of unspaced bricks, your hand goes from 100 to 0 in no time at all. And breaks. Using spacers failure means that your hand will be slowed (relatively) gradually. And while it can be quite painful, it doesn't usually result in a trip to the OR.



Our soft breaks have follow through. I have seen my sensei do two with what appears to be a simple flip of his hand, he kneels and hits with the back of his hand in a flicking motion. Hs soft break I have seen him do 7, but I'm told he can do 9. As I said though, we do pass through, we don't stop on the top brick.

I've seen iron palm soft breaks. Ours are similar looking but not identical. Perhaps they should not be properly called soft breaks, but we are kneeling and use an open palm to strike, definitely not a muscle or power break.


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## Dirty Dog (Apr 13, 2016)

Bill Mattocks said:


> Our soft breaks have follow through. I have seen my sensei do two with what appears to be a simple flip of his hand, he kneels and hits with the back of his hand in a flicking motion. Hs soft break I have seen him do 7, but I'm told he can do 9. As I said though, we do pass through, we don't stop on the top brick.
> 
> I've seen iron palm soft breaks. Ours are similar looking but not identical. Perhaps they should not be properly called soft breaks, but we are kneeling and use an open palm to strike, definitely not a muscle or power break.



I would very much like to see a video of how you do these breaks.


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## Bill Mattocks (Apr 14, 2016)

Dirty Dog said:


> I would very much like to see a video of how you do these breaks.



I've love to provide one, but none such exist at the moment.  There was a nice one that one of our student's moms took of me breaking a single paver at a demo a couple years back, but her child no longer trains with us and she didn't share the video she made.

I will try to describe as best I can.

Pavers are arranged horizontally across two upended cinder blocks of the common size.  The cinder blocks look like yours in your avatar, but on end, so a bit higher.  We generally place a duct-taped phone book over the top cinder block.  We do not use spacers between the pavers, just one on top of the other.

Most, but not all, students begin from the standing position.  They address the pavers standing bolt upright, not in a fighting or deep stance.  They lift the hand they intend to use to strike with overhead and at the same time, they drop to one knee.  As they drop, the hand drops as well.  The moment of impact occurs as they reach the 'one knee' position, so the arm is stretched out nearly horizontally at impact.  The strike is with an open palm.  It could be described as looking like a slap, but it is not an actual slap; this would disperse the energy.  The energy of the strike should be traveling downwards through the pavers.  We are told to think about striking well through the pavers, rather than striking the surface.

When unsuccessful, there is a loud 'slapping' sound and the palm stings like crazy.  When successful, the sound is a deeper 'thud' and the hand passes through the pavers as they collapse. I generally end up with the broken pavers on top of my hand and I have to use some caution extricating it.

I have a bad knee which gives me trouble at times, so I begin from a kneeling position.  This forces me to use technique over power, since I cannot generate a lot of power from a kneeling position.  I raise my right hand overhead and bring it down sharply, but not with monster speed or power; I am concentrating on technique, on passing my arm through the pavers.

In either case, we are told to think of our striking hand as if it were an elephant's trunk.  Supple, flexible, coming down in sort of an S shaped movement.  It has been described as a hand holding a iron ball, or like a waterfall, but it's all mental visualization for the most part.  The physical part involves the shape and movement of the arm and the 'thud' of the impact, as the power is transmitted through the pavers.

We have noted many times that sometimes when a person is unable to break multiple pavers, despite a 'good' hit, the bottom paver is the one that breaks.  Occasionally it will be one or even two in the middle of the stack that breaks first.  Never the top paver.  Often when we attempt the break and only crack or break the bottom paver, a second strike finishes the stack.

It is a bit hard to not visualize what we do as a hard or power break, but rest assured we are not doing the traditional downward-facing power strike (as in your avatar).  But neither are we doing an 'iron palm' break as seen in many youtube videos.

For example, we set up the pavers as seen in this video:






But we don't break like that at all.  The break seen at 39 seconds is a power break from my point of view. 

We also do not break as seen in this video:






The above is the 'slapping' technique you described, where they do not pass through the pavers.  We are seated like that, our palm is in that position, but we raise the arm higher, drop it slower, and we move through the pavers, we don't 'bounce off' of them.

Much closer would be this fellow.  His arm moves just like ours does.  He bounces off the top, we don't, and we have the pavers set up lower, like the videos above, but the striking motion he uses (slow move, elephant-trunk shaped arm, and palm strike) are pretty much identical.  We just move through the pavers instead of bouncing off.






I hope that this helps instead of being confusing.  The one video that did exist of me breaking a single paver looked like the fellow above, except I was on my knees and my hand passed through the paver.

EDIT: I should also say that breaking pavers is not an integral part of our training.  It's something we do for fun maybe twice a year or so.  Builds confidence, more than anything else.


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## Dirty Dog (Apr 14, 2016)

Bill Mattocks said:


> I've love to provide one, but none such exist at the moment.  There was a nice one that one of our student's moms took of me breaking a single paver at a demo a couple years back, but her child no longer trains with us and she didn't share the video she made.



According to some here, if it's not on YouTube, it never happened... 



Bill Mattocks said:


> Pavers are arranged horizontally across two upended cinder blocks of the common size.  The cinder blocks look like yours in your avatar, but on end, so a bit higher.  We generally place a duct-taped phone book over the top cinder block.  We do not use spacers between the pavers, just one on top of the other.



The ones in my avatar are flat because of the height of the pile of bricks. That was 10 bricks, though I only broke 9 of them. It's kind of awkward to do that break if the top of the pile is shoulder high. 



Bill Mattocks said:


> We have noted many times that sometimes when a person is unable to break multiple pavers, despite a 'good' hit, the bottom paver is the one that breaks.  Occasionally it will be one or even two in the middle of the stack that breaks first.  Never the top paver.  Often when we attempt the break and only crack or break the bottom paver, a second strike finishes the stack.



Sure, of course. Because before anything breaks, it bends, and the bottom brick in an unspaced stack MUST break before those above it. If it's a middle brick breaking first, it's going to be because there was grit between the bricks, or a slight curvature, providing space between the bricks for the break.



Bill Mattocks said:


> I hope that this helps instead of being confusing.  The one video that did exist of me breaking a single paver looked like the fellow above, except I was on my knees and my hand passed through the paver.



I also start from my knees. Partly because I am a Worn Out Tired Old Fat Man, and partly because for this type of break I am specifically trying to prevent the use of the body to generate power. Dropping to the knee definitely counts as using the body to generate force, to my mind.



Bill Mattocks said:


> EDIT: I should also say that breaking pavers is not an integral part of our training.  It's something we do for fun maybe twice a year or so.  Builds confidence, more than anything else.



Breaking is not integral to our training, either. We do board breaking as part of our promotion process, but it's not something we practice in class very often. I'm the only one that does the real heavy power breaking and the only one that does bricks. I do it because it shows students the levels of power possible, and because it's just plain fun. I prefer bricks because they're more consistent than boards.


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## Bill Mattocks (Apr 14, 2016)

Dirty Dog said:


> Breaking is not integral to our training, either. We do board breaking as part of our promotion process, but it's not something we practice in class very often. I'm the only one that does the real heavy power breaking and the only one that does bricks. I do it because it shows students the levels of power possible, and because it's just plain fun. I prefer bricks because they're more consistent than boards.









This is not me; it's a person I know on Facebook, who studies the same style I do, in a dojo near me.  His body posture is precisely what mine looks like at the moment of impact.  I don't know if it will be visible here or not, hope so.

Although as I mentioned, many of our students do start from a standing position and then drop to one knee, the pavers are set up just as seen here, and their final body position is similar, just one knee down and one knee up.  Since I have the old man knees, (and yes, fat man), I start as seen above.

We have never broken anything but the pavers in my dojo.  Not needed for promotions or anything else.  We use standard 2x8x16 pavers that you can buy for a buck at the local Home Depot.  Some have accused those who break pavers of 'doctoring' them somehow, like baking them in ovens, etc.  We don't do anything to them.  We've given demos where audience members are invited to try to do the break.  Some do, most don't.  The ones that do seem to either have good power or good technique naturally.  As you know, there's no magic to it.  If it's a 'technique' break, then you just have to get the technique right.  Even power breaks depend on good body mechanics.


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## Dirty Dog (Apr 14, 2016)

Thanks for the picture. It does help.



Bill Mattocks said:


> We have never broken anything but the pavers in my dojo.  Not needed for promotions or anything else.  We use standard 2x8x16 pavers that you can buy for a buck at the local Home Depot.  Some have accused those who break pavers of 'doctoring' them somehow, like baking them in ovens, etc.  We don't do anything to them.  We've given demos where audience members are invited to try to do the break.  Some do, most don't.  The ones that do seem to either have good power or good technique naturally.  As you know, there's no magic to it.  If it's a 'technique' break, then you just have to get the technique right.  Even power breaks depend on good body mechanics.



Baking boards is known to make them more brittle, since the amount of water in the wood has a huge impact on flexibility. I don't see how baking a concrete paver would have any affect whatsoever. That's one of the reasons I prefer them. I once left 50 pavers in the back of my truck the night before a demo at a local elementary school. It rained pretty heavily. Soaking wet boards would have been REALLY springy, but I can't say there was any difference at all for the pavers.
We buy 1x12 planks at a local hardware store and chop them up. I buy bricks at a local place that specializes in building blocks (it's like Legos for adults!). 
Breaking is all about technique and commitment. You have to use the proper body mechanics to generate the power, and you have to commit to the break to deliver it.


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