You have hosted many "Break Nights" where students, even white belts if I'm not mistaken, take part in the study and application of breaking bricks.
Would you please describe the technique involved, including weight, control, penetration, focus and the physics behind it all?
I am always amazed at what you pull out of your students and the results that follow.
SUN!
TcB
5 comments:
The "soft" or "KI" breaking technique is probably one of the coolest and most frightenly powerful things I've come across in the martial arts. I'd love to discuss this, but it will take me a few posts.
I/we initally learned this from Master Rudy Timmerman and Master Kevin Janisse who visited us several times about 10-12 years ago. They are Kuk Sool-Hapkido guys and very, very good at what they do.
I'm looking forward to reading more!
The initial technique is a downward palm strike, however, the hand and your entire body must remain completely relaxed...no tension.
I encourage my people to approach the break in a cat stance. With the forward hand raised overhead, you simply let it fall straight down - as you are dropping your weight deeper into the stance.... This seems to be the key, which is very interesting to me because of the amount of emphasis placed on dropping your weight in PSR. When you can combine the hand falling, the weight dropping and the relaxing, the hand will just fall through the concrete tile (s). You don't feel any stinging or pain, however, you can feel the "release" of energy when its done right and that is a very cool thing.
Like anything worthwhile, it does take alot of practice for most people and you can only fail a couple attempts before your hand begins to hurt bad....it does hurt if the brick doesn't break.
More to come....SUN!
What size and thickness brick is used and how is it mounted for the break?
Is the contact area the entire palm or the heel of the hand only?
SUN!
We generally use 2'' thick patio blocks. I think they are 8X12. These are the most readily available and the cheapest. When we stack them, we do not use any type of spacer between them. We have also tried (with varied success) using different types of ceramic tiles and other types of bricks etc. You can use wood boards as well.
We usually have them up between a couple of cinder blocks about 2 feet high, but you can do it at any height. Sometimes we would break the the tiles in half, then break the half, and then break the quarter.
The contact area is the entire palm. I like mine to be in a relaxed, almost cupped position.
The breaking materials should be evenly dried, and its ok to place a towel or magazine on top to protect your hand.
A good way to get started with this is to just set up a little station in the corner of your garage, get some tiles and once or twice a day, take a few swings at it. When you are consistantly breaking one tile, add another, and so on.
I'm told very few people can do more than 3, 2' tiles. You can also get to the point of control where you can break just ones off the bottom of the stack. I have done this once, but have not been able to repeat it.
We train with a set of palm striking techniques, so as I mentioned previously, taking the ability to generate the "Pop" to break through a few concrete tiles and putting it into a palm strike vs an attacker could be extremely effective, IMO.
The only drawback is that it's messy and you end up with alot of broken up bricks that you just can't throw in the garbage. At least the pine board make nice kindling for fires.
SUN!
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