‘Boards don’t hit back’.

It’s fifty years since Bruce Lee said those words in the cult movie, ‘Enter the Dragon’. Maybe it’s time to explore this theme.

Travel back to the early 1980’s, at a summer village fete somewhere in the South of England. A karate Sensei was lining himself up to break a stack of boards with his head.

Quite a crowd had formed in the summer sunshine and this was to be the finale of his club demonstration, intended to entertain the potential punters or the just plain curious.

The Sensei was a young man, very much a product of his time, a Tom Selleck moustache and a proud hairy chest, over which hung a silver crucifix on a chain.

With appropriate build-up, deep breathing and an intense look, he positioned himself up over the boards and steadily made four or five slow downwards moves to gain the correct trajectory and distance. Observers noted that each time he dipped down, the crucifix swung forward; this didn’t seem to be too much of a distraction to him, but…

With a huge kiai he rapidly propelled himself downwards. However, by a chance of fate, the crucifix lined itself up perfectly and the sharp end of it was hammered, like a nail from a nail-gun, into his forehead.

He survived, but my thoughts are that he should have at least received a badge of honour from the people who present the Darwin Awards.¹

Did I ever indulge? Maybe,.. but, like Bill Clinton, I didn’t inhale.²

Forty or fifty years ago breaking boards was what the general public thought karate people did; and, I have to admit, it was definitely a thing at my original home Dojo when I was a kyu grade, but weirdly we never practised or rehearsed it, it was only a thing we did on demos, like the above-mentioned village fete. I think we all thought it was a bit of a lark, something to puff our chests out about, nobody really took it seriously. Over time it all seemed a bit facile and I was glad to leave it behind. Although I know that some styles of martial art have turned it into their forte. Each to their own, I suppose.

How did this all come about?

I reckon that this is as old as time and was not a thing that was uniquely Japanese (or Korean). It’s just another version of strongman feats and the fakir’s bed of nails.

There has always been this thing about ‘testing’ and ‘forging’ in oriental martial arts. In the 19^th century (and before) the streets of Beijing (Peking) were cluttered with ‘martial artists’ performing feats of strength or endurance; breaking stuff being one of the standard ways of showing how strong you are.

And it’s still around; whether it’s Shaolin monks or Yogis, there’s always somebody bending their bodies into impossible shapes. Now this stuff has found a new home on Instagram and other social media showing ‘reels’. More opportunities to just show off.

Over time people fell for this it became more than a karate trade mark, it was almost expected. Spectacular breaks were the big thing, huge stacks of tiles, and then tiles on fire, or massive blocks of ice and then baseball bats became the target. But there was mischief a plenty…

In the movie ‘The Karate Kid’, Mr Miyagi performed an impromptu breaking stunt, when he karate-chopped the top off beer bottles as a warning to a bully. ‘Was that even possible?’ Joe public asked, ‘Yes’ said elements of the karate world.

Some used sugar glass, others revealed that they had deliberately created a fault line in the bottle, by half filling it with water, floating a flammable liquid on the top, setting it on fire before quickly extinguishing it and then rinsing it out. That might be an urban myth – I have no intention of trying it. But there were those who thought they could do it without artificial interference and ended up slicing through their little finger. Ouch.

If you want to relive that Miyagi moment here it is at 2:35.

The trick with the ice seemed to involve several factors; one being how the ice was stacked (with boards and tiles spacers enhance to efficiency of the breaking) the other is that ice is brittle without the extreme sharpness of glass. But also, it is said that the ice is sawn through ahead of time, given a coating of water, refrozen so that nobody can see the join. Again, it might be an urban myth.

I can’t see it going away any time soon and certainly I have no compulsion to put a dent in my knuckles on a stack of lumber. Of all the things karate has to offer, turning pine boards into matchwood does nothing to help our image.

I reckon when Bruce Lee uttered those words back in 1973 the first nail was already in the coffin. But some people will no doubt continue to break stuff to pronounce their power and proficiency in their karate skills.

I will leave you with this video, which might perhaps give you a flavour of how things were done in the UK back in the day.

1. For anybody who does not know about the Darwin Awards, follow this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Awards

2. To explain; ex-president Bill Clinton was once asked if he had ever taken marijuana? His reply, “When I was in England I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t inhale it and never tried again”.