For the internal Guys, real?
 

watch this tell me what u think

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFjEqjhKiXo

Re: For the internal Guys, real?
 

That was pretty funny. I kept imagining the guy in a bar going through all that buildup while someone broke beer bottle after beer bottle on his head. :D

Go see if you can find a piece of concrete about the size of the ones he had stacked up. Obviously, those slabs had no re-bar in them so you've got to find some pretty strange slabs. I suspect those slabs were poured just for that demo.

However, if you can find some slabs like that, try to lay it down over some supports that are 2 feet apart, just like he did. Be careful... you're liable to break it just laying it across the supports.

Notice, BTW, that each one of the slabs in the demo had a spacer between it and the slab on either side of it. Why do you think they did that... for aesthetic appeal? No, they did it so that each breaking slab can deform and do most of the work in breaking the slab below it.

The hardest part of that demo would be to stack the slabs without breaking one or all of them. ;) Anytime you see spacers in a breaking demo, bet that you're watching humdrum physics.

FWIW

Mike

Re: For the internal Guys, real?
 

Oh, brother. :rolleyes:
I've seen more than a few demos like that back in my kuhrotty daze, and even did some of them. But at least I used actual store-bought concrete slabs from Home Despot. You know -- the ones that break if you even so much as accidentally shuffle them when you load them into your truck. :D Once, I had to shuto a watermelon because my boss made me do it at the company annual meeting. :(

Seriously, I agree with Mike. Those slabs were probably made for the demo, and I'm guessing they are mostly Portland cement or Quickcrete prepared so it was nice and crumbly. The dude didn't use spacers, which is a common trick that allows the "breaker" to individually break each stacked slab as his hand passes through. But there may have been a crack or score pre-made in the center of each slab before the demo.

Though this was an obvious fraud (BTW, the flames are just lighter fluid, not hot or intense enough to do more than scorch any hairs on the guy's hand.), legitimate (i.e. not using rigged items) external-skills breaking is just a demo of the person's ability to use good form -- a solid path through his bones to the ground so the power is passed through without interruption; directing his force through the smallest possible surface area of his hand (usually a point on the palm-heel, but sometimes a shuto/knife-edge); and his ability to accelerate and to strike the objects at the peak of acceleration, and to follow through.

That's really it. A tornado can drive a thin straw through a tree trunk without breaking the straw. It doesn't take that much acceleration and velocity for a human to accelerate through a stack of concrete slabs.

And if you have nice stack of kiln-dried pine wood, with a nice horizontal grain, all the better. :D

Re: For the internal Guys, real?
 

I thought it looked fake too, but I hate to judge without experience in it. I did notice a great amount of dust when they broke! hard concrete slabs or even cinder block slabs wouldn't cause that I don't think

Matt

Re: For the internal Guys, real?
 

'Bricks don't hit back'

I wouldn't care if he could break 100 genuinely strong bricks.

Re: For the internal Guys, real?
 

Justin why are you so confident, if I had to face somebody who could break a 100 real bricks I would be concerned.

stan

Re: For the internal Guys, real?
 

I'd be concerned he'd pick it one up and throw it at me, or hit me upside the head with it.

I used to do those demos back in the day...they were fun, but I never really took them too serious or understood what it was that I was demonstrating. Sometimes it also hurt like hell when the shock came back through your body when they didn't break!

Re: For the internal Guys, real?
 

Because in all of these demos they are controlling the parameters. They may be able to do so in combat.

If you stack 100 of these slabs, they probably would be easier to break than a few because they'd start to buckle under their own weight. (I hypothesize)

Justin

Re: For the internal Guys, real?
 

Justin,
It's not the weight of the bricks, nor a chain reaction during a "legitimate" (real brick) demo, but the force generated by the striker, traveling down through the stack.

If the strike doesn't continue to accelerate throughout the process, the breaking will stop at the last brick to be accelerated through (and maybe break the strikers hand, too, if he slows down and hits the rest of the bricks with less-than-adequated power).

Been there, done that. :( But I got better. :) That was many, many moons ago in my foolish youth.

If the striker uses spacers between each brick, then he is breaking only one brick at a time; with no spacers, his acceleration is penetrating the stacked bricks almost simultaneously.

The whole breaking demo thing at its worst is a laughable sideshow trick with all the silly crap -- flaming lighter fluid, fancy costume, drummers. At best, it is a simple way for a person to test the elements of his punching/striking form -- proper bone alignment, proper power generation and proper acceleration throughout. The fist must continue to accelerate throughout the entire strike, or you get disaster.

Re: For the internal Guys, real?
 

Ah, come on...gimme a break (no pun intended). Breaking demos can be highly entertaining! LOL!

Seriously, though - I'm sure lots of folks went to their very first martial arts classes because of some breaking demo somewhere. Once there, lots of otherwise timid souls got their first hint that maybe they had a little bit of power hiding in them somewhere because they learned how to put their hand through a pine board. Certainly anyone, with the rarest exception, can break a pine board, so, arguably it's not a big deal. But until they do - I dunno, for a lot of folks who have never actual HIT anything before in their lives - it seems like they experience an "aha" moment. A women with whom I co-taught women's self defense at the Houston Women's Center (long ago) liked to have folks do a break occasionally, just to get them to commit to hitting something.

My own favorite breaking story was during a demo in college where I tried a multi-board break - and the boards were supported between two chairs. The chairs broke...the boards didn't. There's an engineering lesson there somewhere.

Re: For the internal Guys, real?
 

Was he allergic to the bricks?

He kept sneezing on them whenever he went close... :rolleyes: