Them’s the Breaks
Me reenacting the poster from the Billy Zane comic book movie The Phantom. Or just showing my funky knuckle.
Something you see in a lot of martial arts is people breaking things. Boards mostly, but cinderblocks, bricks, pencils and other objects can also be used. It’s a flashy way to show off and often takes center stage at exhibitions.
My school required breaking boards to move up through the belt ranks. The higher you got, the harder the breaks became.
But to be honest, breaking a board is not particularly difficult. And also not particularly practical. To paraphrase Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid Part II, “I’ve never been attacked by a board.”
What it is, though, is a perfect example of mind, body and spirit working together. You need to think you can do, execute the punch or kick, and believe you can do it. It’s the last one that usually trips people up. The boards used are dry and soft and will snap with the barest of pressure. Physically it just takes a technique that aims past the board. So, with a proper basic punch or kick, anyone can physically do it.
Next you need to think through it, which ties into the physical side. Visualize the technique and trust your instructor. Then there’s belief. If you don’t believe you can do it, you probably won’t.
The great thing about a basic, single-board break is that you can get by without all three of these. You need proper form and either mental focus or belief. Once you break it, then the third aspect will join and the next time you will have no trouble.
Well, until it gets harder. How do you make it harder? Put the board higher so you need to use an advanced kick to break it. Use the side of your hand instead of your fist. Or add more boards.
Here’s the fun thing about adding boards: if you put a spacer between boards, it’s again relatively easy. You’re just breaking one board at a time. Technique and momentum become important because each break dissipates energy.
But if you stack the boards without spacers, now it gets really hard and you need to go through the “belief” battle again. The first time I had to break 2 boards I was not prepared for how much harder it would be and failed on the first punch. Which hurts, as you can imagine. I tried again and broke through, but also felt a “pop” in my knuckle. Not sure if it’s possible to break a knuckle but if it is, I’m pretty sure I did. It still looks a little funky 20-something years later.
The point of all this is, I think, this: the simple act of breaking a board, while not practical in terms of learning to fight, has everything to do with focusing mind, body and spirit together. The concentration needed to jump and spin in mid-air and kick a board nourishes the focus we all need to do challenging tasks in everyday life.
When mind, body and spirit work together, that is when we are at our best. Anything that can help train that is worthwhile.
