Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there.
Speaker 1: And this is stuff you should know all about Mars.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, I mean it's all about board breaking, that's right,
Speaker 1: board breaking. I gotta keep them straight. Do you want
Speaker 1: to explain what you just said? Sure? So. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: when we pick our topics, one of us will send
Speaker 1: a topic, the other one will send a different topic.
Speaker 1: Then we go off and do our research, and then
Speaker 1: we come back together and record it. That's the stuff
Speaker 1: you should know, way right, that's the way. Um. I
Speaker 1: want to preface this by saying we have more than
Speaker 1: a thousand episodes that we've done. Okay, to bear that
Speaker 1: mind everybody, more than I say you, How Mars Works
Speaker 1: was my pick for this week, and uh, I went
Speaker 1: about and started studying. I think you did some studying
Speaker 1: as well. And then I got an email from you
Speaker 1: this morning, early this morning saying, um, we've already done
Speaker 1: how Mars Works. Hours of Mars research just totally wasted.
Speaker 1: I know so much. I know so much about Mars
Speaker 1: right now that it's never No one's ever going to
Speaker 1: hear it. I'm going to take it to my grave. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we swapped it out instead with how board breaking works,
Speaker 1: which is fascinating if you ask me. Yeah, man, good
Speaker 1: find Yeah I thought so too. I believe we covered
Speaker 1: cart before. Who knows, Chuck? Who has any idea? Well,
Speaker 1: Jill Hurley knows. Yes, Jill Hurley, our minister of status,
Speaker 1: usually keeps track of this stuff. But she does. We
Speaker 1: should just start emailing her every time we have an
Speaker 1: idea instead instead of looking at the spreadsheet that she
Speaker 1: sends us exactly like a couple of dopes. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: but board breaking I'm a sure we did not do before. No, uh,
Speaker 1: And we might as well go ahead and do a
Speaker 1: couple of things. First of all, c o A and say,
Speaker 1: do not try to break boards or anything with your
Speaker 1: hands and feet unless you were trained to do so. Yes,
Speaker 1: don't get inspired by this show. If you are inspired,
Speaker 1: be inspired to go take up martial arts because from all,
Speaker 1: from everything I can find, it's a really great um
Speaker 1: thing to get into martial arts. Yeah, it is. It
Speaker 1: teaches you focus and discipline and training and strength and
Speaker 1: self confidence and actually, like the injury rate is really
Speaker 1: really low, way lower than you would think. Um, so
Speaker 1: it's actually pretty good sport to get into. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: the other thing to point out early on is, uh,
Speaker 1: it is not just boards, but concrete blocks and glass
Speaker 1: and ice and what else. Glass I think is much
Speaker 1: more just for looks. Yeah. There's this one guy who
Speaker 1: who I found because I was kind of looking up
Speaker 1: records and things, and I'll get to that later, but
Speaker 1: I can't remember his name, but he seems to make
Speaker 1: a big show about chopping through a bunch of glass.
Speaker 1: If he could punch a hole clear through some glass
Speaker 1: without breaking the glass fish shape hole like a cartoon Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a bullet hole, but with a fist. Now, that
Speaker 1: would be super impressive breaking a bunch of glass. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's not hard, And we'll find out why it's
Speaker 1: not hard later on, because we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the physics of this chuck, which I'm a little psyched about. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And another thing that I didn't see in my research
Speaker 1: that I always heard, which maybe a wives tale, is
Speaker 1: that when they do the thing where they stack a
Speaker 1: bunch of boards, that like you're really just breaking the
Speaker 1: first board and then the other boards break the other boards.
Speaker 1: Is that true? Yeah? Yeah, so that was something that
Speaker 1: I came across this. So board breaking, at least in
Speaker 1: Japan is called tamashawari. And there's fake tami shiwari, which
Speaker 1: is probably of the tamashwari out there, and then there's
Speaker 1: actual real tamashwari, which you have to be basically insane
Speaker 1: to try, even as like a black belt um karate person.
Speaker 1: But what do you mean by fake if instead of fake,
Speaker 1: we'll call it physics assisted, Okay, Whereas with like that,
Speaker 1: that one percent of tamashawari, it's it is what it
Speaker 1: it appears to be. You're you're really punching through like
Speaker 1: a big thick piece of wood or something like that. Well,
Speaker 1: I think I would love to cover the very beginnings
Speaker 1: of this article though, because I thought I had never
Speaker 1: heard that story about the the legend of the origins
Speaker 1: of pin Jack's a lot take us the story Bill Chuck.
Speaker 1: So there's an island called uh bawean Uh in ancient Indonesia,
Speaker 1: and this is main mainly legend, but who knows it
Speaker 1: might have come down like this, But supposedly there was
Speaker 1: a lady there named Rama Sukana, who was washing her
Speaker 1: close in the river, looked up saw some monkeys fighting
Speaker 1: in the trees and really sort of got into studying
Speaker 1: them and how they fought each other. Started practicing that
Speaker 1: out by the river banks. Took so much time. She
Speaker 1: came home and her husband was ticked off and was like,
Speaker 1: where's my dinner? And because this is ancient times, it's
Speaker 1: fully okay for me to two abuse you because my
Speaker 1: dinner is not on the table. And she was like,
Speaker 1: oh no, no, no, I now know the way of
Speaker 1: the monkey. And she she fought him back and it worked,
Speaker 1: and it kept working. He kept coming at her and
Speaker 1: she kept just going kabat foot and oh ah, right,
Speaker 1: and she kept putting him on his butt so much
Speaker 1: so that he said, master trained me. Yeah. See that's
Speaker 1: where the story loses me, where he's just he gives
Speaker 1: up and says, you're pretty good at this. I gotta admit,
Speaker 1: what do you say you teach the old man? Right?
Speaker 1: I think that's uh, that's what they call when you
Speaker 1: can't beat them, join them. Yeah, but it's a good story.
Speaker 1: And as the origins of the Indonesian martial art, pent
Speaker 1: jacks a lot, yeah, which I thought that was very
Speaker 1: very odd that this was included in this article because
Speaker 1: I looked up pen jack, so pen Jack's a lot,
Speaker 1: and it looked like it was very much into fighting
Speaker 1: with knives and spears, way more than breaking boards are
Speaker 1: using open handed stuff, and that's no monkey stuff. No,
Speaker 1: but I think it is based on strikes in the
Speaker 1: animal kingdom, not just monkeys, but like cobra strikes and
Speaker 1: and using like those kind of like approaches, but rather
Speaker 1: than with your empty hand, it's you're using knives. So
Speaker 1: I don't know why that was included instead. Karate um
Speaker 1: is much more associated with board breaking. Again, there's a
Speaker 1: Japanese word for board breaking, tami shawari. Yeah, and did
Speaker 1: you know that cobra kai actually means knife wielding cobra?
Speaker 1: Does it really? Yeah? Well, I mean it could. It
Speaker 1: could be like cobra and knife, and you could just
Speaker 1: interpret it his knife wheeling cobra rather than a knife
Speaker 1: made out of a cobra. Could you imagine anything more
Speaker 1: terrifying than a cobra holding a knife? No? No, maybe
Speaker 1: a deranged karate monkey with the cobra wielding and knife,
Speaker 1: or an alligator with an assault rifle. Yeah, that's pretty scary,
Speaker 1: pretty scary. So karate is meant to be done with
Speaker 1: open hand. It actually means open hand, empty hand, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the two. Yeah, And the origins of karate
Speaker 1: apparently came from when the peasantry was stripped of their
Speaker 1: weapons in the sixteenth and seventeenth century because the Japanese government,
Speaker 1: feudal government, said, we're worried you guys don't don't really
Speaker 1: like our policies as much as you pretend to, and
Speaker 1: we're afraid you're gonna rebel, so we're gonna take all
Speaker 1: your weapons. So they developed a empty hand technique for fighting,
Speaker 1: which was karate, and again part of karate. Over the years,
Speaker 1: I'm not exactly sure where temi shawari originator when I
Speaker 1: should say, but over the years, the idea of breaking
Speaker 1: boards is a demonstration of skill and training and focus
Speaker 1: and strength um has developed to where now to me
Speaker 1: it's basically synonymous with martial arts. Yeah, breaking some boards,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, and they had in here. I'm not so
Speaker 1: sure this is right that they turned to breaking boards
Speaker 1: because hitting people wasn't a thing that you should do.
Speaker 1: But I don't think that's quite right, is it. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure, Man, I really am not sure that's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Like the origin of it, no idea. I
Speaker 1: did see that there's um, you know, it's been around
Speaker 1: for a little while, and there are some customary and
Speaker 1: traditional like um things with the board, like for example,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to use cedar specific type of cedar or
Speaker 1: drake um, and there's things like that. But no, I
Speaker 1: didn't see where it came from or exactly why other
Speaker 1: than somebody. Maybe somebody was punching through a door and
Speaker 1: that looked pretty cool, and so they started punching through doors,
Speaker 1: and then the doors got smaller, and then you have
Speaker 1: Tamashawari board breaking. Well, what we do know that there
Speaker 1: is a human instinct to not punch something uh with
Speaker 1: no give, Like there is an ingrained instinct to pull
Speaker 1: back when you go to hit a wall or to
Speaker 1: punch a board or something like that, or a person even. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk a little bit more about that in
Speaker 1: a few minutes. But I thought this is really interesting
Speaker 1: this other article you sent just about how strong bones
Speaker 1: are and kind of what happens when you hit another person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I mean, if you stop and think about it
Speaker 1: breaking through a board, it looks awesome because it is
Speaker 1: pretty impressive. But your your bone and your hand and
Speaker 1: your foot and your leg are actually way more impressive
Speaker 1: than would because they are capable of doing some amazing stuff.
Speaker 1: And if you stop and think about it, your bone
Speaker 1: is capable of withstanding tremendous amounts of pressure and force.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, you can use that bone
Speaker 1: to break another bone, which is kind of paradoxical, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's pretty neat. So yeah, there's there's if you
Speaker 1: look at bone, there's a lot of stress you can
Speaker 1: put it on before it's going to break. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: uh a cubic inch of bone. And they point out
Speaker 1: this article in principle, I'm sure there are, you know,
Speaker 1: people like Samuel Jackson an Unbreakable Mr Glass, Sure he
Speaker 1: had a physical condition. I think they're doing another movie
Speaker 1: of of him and the guy from uh, what was
Speaker 1: the most recent one that Split? Split. Yeah, they're doing
Speaker 1: like basically a sequel to Split featuring Mr Glass and
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis. It's all, oh, wow, that's gonna be good.
Speaker 1: It looks pretty good to me so far. I went
Speaker 1: back and rewatched Unbreakable, and I was like, this is
Speaker 1: much better than I thought it was the first time.
Speaker 1: It's a good movie. I totally agree. I think people
Speaker 1: expected well, I think it it got it to do
Speaker 1: at the time, but it was a movie about the
Speaker 1: beginnings of a It was just an ultralong origin story, right,
Speaker 1: which you didn't realize until about two thirds of the
Speaker 1: way through, you know, and then you really got it
Speaker 1: at the end. But yeah, I think everybody was expecting,
Speaker 1: give me another sixth sense, baby, kind of need that jolt,
Speaker 1: and uh, he just never delivered like he did on
Speaker 1: the sixth sense. So he's kind of cursed by it,
Speaker 1: which is why you have to go back years later
Speaker 1: and see it again. You're like, oh, now that I'm
Speaker 1: out of like the six cents junkiness, I I can
Speaker 1: appreciate Unbreakable and the Village too. I saw that in
Speaker 1: le two and I'm like, this is better than I
Speaker 1: thought it was. Yeah. That was Manky's pick on movie Crush.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right, yeah, yeah, that was yes, totally kind
Speaker 1: of on the nose for Airmankey. Yeah. Um, all right,
Speaker 1: So Mr glass aside, though, in principle, a bone can
Speaker 1: bear a load of nineteen thousand pounds or more, and
Speaker 1: that makes it as your correct article said four times
Speaker 1: as strong as concrete, whereas R said forty times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: who cares, which is not correct. Right, So this this
Speaker 1: is I think a Live science article I found this in.
Speaker 1: But if you balanced five American pickup trucks, says standard
Speaker 1: pickup truck. So I'm just gonna go with a one fifty. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well I wasn't gonna say for it. I was just
Speaker 1: you know, if you were in the know, I was
Speaker 1: just going to leave it at that. But if you
Speaker 1: balance five Ford f one fifties nose to tail um
Speaker 1: on top of your armbone, theoretically it should be able
Speaker 1: to hold that up. You would wish that you were dead,
Speaker 1: but your armbone would just be like, oh god, this
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna break, and it might not break. But
Speaker 1: again the point is this. That is the amount of
Speaker 1: actual weight, but weight can actually be combined in other
Speaker 1: ways and delivered an other way. So if you delivered
Speaker 1: far far less than that with um a lot more
Speaker 1: velocity um, your your bone would just snap right in two.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of variables they're including not just
Speaker 1: how that amount of weight is delivered in what what
Speaker 1: kind of force, but also your age, your health. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff, but like you said, generally speaking,
Speaker 1: your bone, a cubic inch of bone could bear nine
Speaker 1: pounds or about eight thousand, six hundreds of weight. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And although this is gets away from board breaking, it
Speaker 1: was in the article sent and I thought it was
Speaker 1: super interesting. When it comes to getting in a fistfight
Speaker 1: or boxing. When someone gets knocked out by a punch,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily because they get hit so hard in
Speaker 1: the head. It's that there if you hit someone in
Speaker 1: the cheek, you know, right there, and the and the
Speaker 1: kisser and the jaw, it's the head spin that does it.
Speaker 1: So if your head spins around, uh from zero to
Speaker 1: forty three RPMs in a second, your your head stresses
Speaker 1: out and the brain shuts down as a protection. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had no idea of getting knocked out chance if
Speaker 1: it's up to RPMs. So that's why boxers built up
Speaker 1: their neck muscles so their head doesn't snap to the
Speaker 1: side as much. Yeah, totally had no idea about any
Speaker 1: of that, or getting hit in the stomach, Like when
Speaker 1: the wind is knocked out of you, that's a spasm
Speaker 1: of your diaphragm right right. And the reason why you
Speaker 1: can make somebody's head spin like that, or make or
Speaker 1: cause somebody's diaphragm to spas them is because you're concentrating
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of force in a fairly small area.
Speaker 1: Like if you look at the front if you make
Speaker 1: a fist and then look at the front of your
Speaker 1: fingers where the fist makes contact with whatever that's that's
Speaker 1: actually a relatively small area that you're putting a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of mass and velocity behind. And you combine those two,
Speaker 1: you multiply those two, and you have force. And humans
Speaker 1: can can concentrate a pretty pretty significant amount of force.
Speaker 1: This Life Science article found that a professional boxer could
Speaker 1: generate about five thousand Newton's of force, and a Newton,
Speaker 1: by the way, is the amount of force it takes
Speaker 1: to move one kilogram one meter, which makes me want
Speaker 1: to go move a kilogram a meter so bad just
Speaker 1: to be like, I just used a Newton. I just
Speaker 1: exerted a Newton right there? You know? Is that just
Speaker 1: me that you don't want to do that too? So um.
Speaker 1: A boxer can generate about five thousand Newton's of force
Speaker 1: with a punch, which is about half of a ton
Speaker 1: of um of force exerted on the Earth's surface. Okay,
Speaker 1: half a ton of force in your little your little
Speaker 1: fist right there. And because four sequels mass times velocity,
Speaker 1: if you can generate more um velocity and you and
Speaker 1: you can use more mass, you can generate more force.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk more about that later on with the physics.
Speaker 1: But that's just a little teaser. Yeah, And this is
Speaker 1: also the point, and I've pointed this out before, I
Speaker 1: believe where I would like to say that I am
Speaker 1: forty seven years old and I have never punched or
Speaker 1: hit anyone in my life. Nor been punched or hit.
Speaker 1: That's great, man, never been in a fight. I kind
Speaker 1: of feel like I should get in a fight. I
Speaker 1: don't think so. I think you should feel the opposite
Speaker 1: of that. You should be proud of it. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: be like, I've never been in a fight. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: die having never been in a fist fight. You definitely
Speaker 1: don't need to. Don't listen to fight Club. It was
Speaker 1: made up, by the way. All right, should we take
Speaker 1: a break, Yeah, all right, We'll take a break and
Speaker 1: we'll talk more about board board breaking right after this,
Speaker 1: all right, Chuck so um when you actually break aboard,
Speaker 1: we can tell you how to do that. But again
Speaker 1: I want to preface it with like, just don't don't
Speaker 1: go do this, don't listen to us and do this. Like,
Speaker 1: if you want to do this, go check out martial arts,
Speaker 1: go to your nearest O Joe and see what's going down.
Speaker 1: That's right, But just for the sake of sharing information,
Speaker 1: that's what we're doing here. Okay. Yes, So if you
Speaker 1: if you watch somebody break aboard, you're gonna see that
Speaker 1: there's actually like a fairly uniform shape to them. They're
Speaker 1: usually about a foot wide, they're usually kind of squarish,
Speaker 1: and there's something like about three quarters of an inch thick.
Speaker 1: And again, like I said, traditionally, um, the wood is
Speaker 1: supposed to be cedar, but I think these days most people,
Speaker 1: uh say pine. They use pine because it's a soft
Speaker 1: wood and it breaks easier than a hardwood like oak
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, And they also suggest to
Speaker 1: not have like a big not right in the center
Speaker 1: of this board or hopefully anywhere on the board, but
Speaker 1: definitely not where you're punching, because the center is where
Speaker 1: you want to be punching. And this is usually either
Speaker 1: held by somebody or you see them set up sometimes
Speaker 1: with on on stands and stuff being held. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you watch Karate Kid too, when daniels Son breaks through
Speaker 1: those six sheets of ice, I don't remember that at all.
Speaker 1: They have It was like in a bar. He took
Speaker 1: a bet Actually, Mr Miyagi kind of forced him to
Speaker 1: take the bet um because he was being betted against
Speaker 1: by Mr Miyagi's rivals. Nephew, Okay, he's got to see it,
Speaker 1: but he got a good memory of Karate Kid too.
Speaker 1: I just watched it like an hour ago, okay, but yeah,
Speaker 1: they had like a stand that they put these sheets
Speaker 1: of ice in. It was pretty awesome, pretty cool little gizmo.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any reason to make it unless
Speaker 1: you do kind of have a bar where people break
Speaker 1: ice and stuff. But it's uh, I just thought it
Speaker 1: was pretty cool. But for the most part, you see
Speaker 1: somebody just standing there holding it like it's like a
Speaker 1: punching target or something. Yeah, and there's I mean, it
Speaker 1: kind of depends, that's if you're punching straight through with
Speaker 1: your knuckles. You've also seen things stacked like spread between
Speaker 1: two bricks, a bunch of wood stacked and you can
Speaker 1: use a few techniques here at the hammer fist, which
Speaker 1: is like if you were just pounding on a you know,
Speaker 1: on a table with your with your hand like hulk smash, yeah,
Speaker 1: hulk smash or what's known as palm heel. And that's
Speaker 1: when you yeah, with with your palm. Yeah. If I
Speaker 1: saw somebody break a board like that, I would be
Speaker 1: truly impressed that I have not seen. Have you seen
Speaker 1: somebody break a board in real life? No? Not not
Speaker 1: in person? No I haven't either. Uh. And then the
Speaker 1: old knife hand, which is the classic karate chop. The
Speaker 1: reason why you want to hit the center of the
Speaker 1: board is myriad number one. That's where the least amount
Speaker 1: of strength is in the board. It's not around the edges,
Speaker 1: it's more in the center. And depending on how you're hitting,
Speaker 1: let's let's just go with the good old fashioned karate chop.
Speaker 1: What's that one called the knife hand? Yeah, and when
Speaker 1: you can all so do this these these uh with
Speaker 1: kicks you can which to me it just seems terribly scary.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but like I don't want
Speaker 1: anything to happen to my ankle or my heel or
Speaker 1: my achilles heel. Or any my toes. Nothing like that.
Speaker 1: Like the the punching breaking with your hands or fists,
Speaker 1: that's that's cool enough, But like your foot, I'd be
Speaker 1: very It would take a tremendous amount of training for
Speaker 1: me to get to that point. All right. So we're
Speaker 1: going with the standard karate chop, right, And when you're
Speaker 1: doing the standardkarate chop, so the board is going to
Speaker 1: be flat relative to the earth, and you are going
Speaker 1: to bring your fist down or your your karate chop
Speaker 1: down going with the grain, you will have a tremendously
Speaker 1: difficult time breaking the board against the grain. You want
Speaker 1: to go bring the line of your hand parallel with
Speaker 1: the grain. Yeah, I didn't fully get that, Okay. So
Speaker 1: if you have a flat board in front of you,
Speaker 1: you're you're on your knees and you're like about to
Speaker 1: chop it, and you hold your hold your fist up
Speaker 1: like that, or hold your karate chop up like this
Speaker 1: right in front of you, and you start to bring
Speaker 1: it down. The grain of the wood should be going
Speaker 1: the same direction as your hand. But what I mean
Speaker 1: that makes sense if your hand is in karate chop
Speaker 1: mode because there's a clear line. But what about when
Speaker 1: it's a fist. I don't know. Maybe it matters less
Speaker 1: because it's a fist. I could see it mattering more
Speaker 1: because there's so much less surface area that's making contact
Speaker 1: with the karate chop than like with the whole fist.
Speaker 1: So I would guess the grain definitely would matter more
Speaker 1: with that, al Right, But regardless supposedly they say going
Speaker 1: with the grain is easier, Yeah, it's just easier in life.
Speaker 1: That's a life note. Go with the grain, go with
Speaker 1: the flow. Actually I don't necessarily I don't necessarily espouse that, agreed. Okay. So, um,
Speaker 1: one of the other things you're gonna learn is um focus.
Speaker 1: And you kind of touched on this earlier, but you
Speaker 1: were kind of talking about how you you want to
Speaker 1: stop You like, if you if you go to hit
Speaker 1: a board or a piece of wood or a piece
Speaker 1: of concrete or something like that, your brain's gonna scream
Speaker 1: stop dummy. Yeah, So how do you get over that
Speaker 1: when you go into training where you're trained to break boards? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean you you focus. You try to focus as
Speaker 1: if the the board that you were breaking as several
Speaker 1: inches behind the actual board. To participitate or encourage that
Speaker 1: follow through. But they also make a very good point
Speaker 1: about breathing. And if you saw Karate Kid, what does
Speaker 1: he say with all everything, remember, breathe then breathe out. Well,
Speaker 1: they actually do that to prepare for the ice breaking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's breathing is very important and then you know
Speaker 1: if you hear that, yeah, I mean that's just not
Speaker 1: for showboating and flair. Uh, the same way as a
Speaker 1: tennis player might grunt when they hit, like Steffi Graph, No,
Speaker 1: she had, she had one of the best. Yea or no,
Speaker 1: who's sell Us? Didn't she have a really good grunt?
Speaker 1: I thought it was Steffi graph I don't remember. I
Speaker 1: definitely remember sell Us had a Yeah. Is that your impression? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That was my Monica sell Us. Okay man. Remember she
Speaker 1: got stabbed on the court. Wasn't that crazy? No, I
Speaker 1: don't remember that at all. Yeah, he had. She had.
Speaker 1: She was attacked and stabbed a tennis match by a
Speaker 1: crazed fan. Yeah, and it really derailed her career, I
Speaker 1: would imagine. So, I mean, like if you if you're
Speaker 1: not safe on like the tennis court doing your thing,
Speaker 1: it takes a lot of concentration to play tennis. You
Speaker 1: don't want to think about what's like coming up behind you,
Speaker 1: you know, while you're hitting a return. Good God, And
Speaker 1: I think most people take up tennis because you have
Speaker 1: a near chance of not being stabbed. Yes, it is
Speaker 1: a pretty stabbed free pursuit. Uh So, anyway, where were
Speaker 1: we were talking about how um breathing in the kia
Speaker 1: That is all to do with the focus, like bringing
Speaker 1: that whole routine together with the breaths and the exclamation
Speaker 1: as you punch supposedly a few inches behind where the
Speaker 1: board is. Yeah, and I actually looked that up where
Speaker 1: he came from or what the point is, and there's
Speaker 1: that's supposedly a kind of an embellishment or a flourish
Speaker 1: or on the actual breathing. You don't actually have to
Speaker 1: make a sound or say a word or say something
Speaker 1: that sounds that sounds like a word that you you're
Speaker 1: actually expelling breath very quickly. And the reason why you're
Speaker 1: doing this because you're meant to be focusing on your
Speaker 1: breath so that when you actually punch or bring your
Speaker 1: hand down or kick or whatever, what your what your
Speaker 1: brain is pretending it's doing is breathing, and your your
Speaker 1: hand or your foot motion is just kind of a byproduct,
Speaker 1: and it distracts you from worrying or thinking about pulling
Speaker 1: your punch, because there's a real problem with pulling your punch.
Speaker 1: If you stop, if you if you pull your punch,
Speaker 1: if you try to ease off on the speed right
Speaker 1: before you hit, you're still gonna hit. But rather than
Speaker 1: driving through the board or the concrete or whatever it
Speaker 1: is you're the force of that is actually going to
Speaker 1: bounce off the board, won't break, and it will reverberate
Speaker 1: through the board and then back up into your hand,
Speaker 1: and it's going to hurt terribly impossibly even break one
Speaker 1: of your bones. So that natural instinct to pull up
Speaker 1: is what ends up causing the injury. Ironically, yes, so
Speaker 1: your brain is trying to make itself safe, but your
Speaker 1: brain hasn't really thought things through. But if you follow through,
Speaker 1: like you said, if you focus on hitting a place
Speaker 1: that's actually on the other side, beyond the board, you're
Speaker 1: you're more likely to keep going through to follow through.
Speaker 1: And another reason why this is a good idea is
Speaker 1: because I think somebody, some physicists figured out that the
Speaker 1: peak of a blow or a strike or something like
Speaker 1: that occurs at about a mark of the arc or
Speaker 1: of the downward motion or of the motion. Right, So
Speaker 1: it's not like when you punch through or something that's
Speaker 1: when you hit. It's actually happening right before possibly you
Speaker 1: hit the board. So if you're if your brain is
Speaker 1: saying don't punch that it's gonna hurt, and you already
Speaker 1: just naturally aren't delivering of the blow right then anyway,
Speaker 1: you're really gonna have your hand bounce off and it's
Speaker 1: going to be a problem. Should we take another break?
Speaker 1: Hey man? Why not? All right, we'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about that physics, uh in a in a
Speaker 1: very special astronaut right after this. Alright, Chuck, we're back,
Speaker 1: and I think I speak for all of the world,
Speaker 1: and I say, what do astronauts have to do with this?
Speaker 1: So this was pretty interesting to me. And apparently in
Speaker 1: the seventies a couple of physicists uh dudes that were
Speaker 1: also martial artists I decided to sort of look into
Speaker 1: the physics of board breaking and do that research. In
Speaker 1: what they came up with was speed is the is
Speaker 1: the overriding factor when it comes to board breaking, right,
Speaker 1: Because you mentioned earlier, you know, the more you increase
Speaker 1: that velocity or that force, or the more you increase
Speaker 1: the velocity, the more you're going to increase the force. Right,
Speaker 1: And you can increase your velocity just by doing something
Speaker 1: as simple as pulling your fists back further before you
Speaker 1: bring it down, give you more room, more more of
Speaker 1: a head start, or something like that. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is aim. And like it's the same with anything, whether
Speaker 1: you're cutting a chopping a tree, or hitting a baseball.
Speaker 1: You do you hear about bat speed and baseball. You know,
Speaker 1: you want your punch to be as fast as possible,
Speaker 1: not just to catch your opponent off guard, but because
Speaker 1: you generate more force in the end, right, And you
Speaker 1: can also recruit more mass from different parts of your body.
Speaker 1: And it's you can recruit mass more easily with a
Speaker 1: kick than with a punch, which is why you generate
Speaker 1: more Newton's of force with a kick them with a punch,
Speaker 1: because you have more muscle mass that you can draw
Speaker 1: from to direct out through your foot in a kick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you always to hear about with kicks, punches, golf swings,
Speaker 1: baseball bats. It's like they say, it's in in the hips. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what Actually, that's what um Daniel Son said. Really,
Speaker 1: there's a real lesson here in Hollywood history. Uh So apparently,
Speaker 1: if you are a typical beginner in kata te, you
Speaker 1: can get up to about twenty per second with with
Speaker 1: your hand speed, which uh, in terms of math or maths,
Speaker 1: is enough to break a one inch pine board. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I looked it up at I saw that something
Speaker 1: about like Newton's to break a pine board. Okay, so
Speaker 1: good and from what I saw, and basically any beginner
Speaker 1: can walk up after about five ten minutes of instruction
Speaker 1: and break through a single pine board typically if they
Speaker 1: do it right right. So, if you're out there saying
Speaker 1: Chuck still hasn't talked about the special astronaut one of
Speaker 1: these physicists in the seventies, his name was Ronald Ron
Speaker 1: McNair and he was also an astronaut, and he was
Speaker 1: also played the saxomaphone, and he was all set to
Speaker 1: record the very first recorded piece of music in space
Speaker 1: in history when he boarded the A Shuttle Challenger and
Speaker 1: as a black belt and saxomaphone player, and sadly we
Speaker 1: all know how that ended. So he was the physicist
Speaker 1: who did this research on board breaking as it turns out.
Speaker 1: Have you have you ever been to Kennedy Space Center,
Speaker 1: Which one's Kennedy, the one on Cape Canaveral. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so they have is they have a museum there, um,
Speaker 1: just fantastic museum. And in part of it they have
Speaker 1: like personal effects of some of the uh of all
Speaker 1: of actually the Challenger and the Columbia astronauts who were lost,
Speaker 1: and one of them is Ronald McNair's like karate uniform. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty it's really amazing to see the way they
Speaker 1: have this kind of memorial set up. It's it's it'll
Speaker 1: bring it tear to your eye. Yeah. I mean if
Speaker 1: I went it was before that even happened, I would
Speaker 1: have been very young. Oh yeah yeah. And I think
Speaker 1: that the memorials even fairly newish. So yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: definitely worth a visits for for just that even but
Speaker 1: the whole the whole museum is really great. Yeah. We
Speaker 1: should do an episode about the space shuttle disaster at
Speaker 1: some point. I think you're right. It would be a good,
Speaker 1: a good somber one because we did one on the
Speaker 1: I S S, so maybe we could do one on
Speaker 1: space shuttles in general. Yeah, all right. Uh so Ron McNair,
Speaker 1: long story short, he was so good he could get
Speaker 1: his karate chop up to forty six ft per second,
Speaker 1: which equates to about twenty eight hundred Newton's of force,
Speaker 1: which is about a quarter ton. Yeah that's a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they say it takes nineteen hundred tons I'm sorry
Speaker 1: Newton's to break a one and a half inch concrete slab,
Speaker 1: and he he could put forth Newton's right. So there
Speaker 1: you have it. It's really just physics. So it's like
Speaker 1: at this point Chuck in in research where I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, it's just physics. Is this just like
Speaker 1: like um circus stuff? Is this the circus arts? Really? Is?
Speaker 1: It's just fake? And did Chuck dupe me somehow weird
Speaker 1: into doing another circus article? So the the the thing
Speaker 1: is is, I know it's not like there are physics involved,
Speaker 1: and you have to know what you're doing, and there's
Speaker 1: definitely a wrong way, and you can injure yourself, especially
Speaker 1: if you pull your punch. The more boards there are,
Speaker 1: the easier it would be to hurt yourself, depending on
Speaker 1: how they're stacked. But it would be wrong to say
Speaker 1: that it is that physics does not very much aid
Speaker 1: in this. It's not a trick. It's not a trick,
Speaker 1: and it is very well thought through. And the more
Speaker 1: boards you add, or the different materials you add, obviously
Speaker 1: the more skill you're demonstrating. But the reason why physics
Speaker 1: plays a part is things like the grain, Like breaking
Speaker 1: along the grain. That means that the break is going
Speaker 1: to occur along the grain. It's gonna be a lot
Speaker 1: easier for that break to propagate. Um things like if
Speaker 1: you look at a board. The reason why you're using
Speaker 1: something like pine rather than a hard would it's not
Speaker 1: because hardwoods are like harder, they're more resilient. The pine
Speaker 1: is going to be more brittle. So when you hit something,
Speaker 1: you're creating a resonance in it. And I think this
Speaker 1: is in the Bridges episode where if you get something
Speaker 1: into its natural resonance and the natural resonance is overwhelmed,
Speaker 1: it will break apart. That's what you're doing when you
Speaker 1: break a border, where you break concrete or something like that,
Speaker 1: you're transferring force from your body into this this inanimate object,
Speaker 1: and you're in doing so, you're creating a resonance in
Speaker 1: it that is hopefully enough to overcome the objects natural
Speaker 1: resonance and break it apart. And it's you know, when
Speaker 1: you say it like that, it seems like a slow process,
Speaker 1: but this happens very quickly. With oak or something like that.
Speaker 1: It's it's much more resilient, it's much more elastic, and
Speaker 1: so it's going to resonate more than break it's compared
Speaker 1: to say like pine. So there's another example of how
Speaker 1: physics um comes in. And then also if you look
Speaker 1: at things like five stacked boards that somebody's punching through,
Speaker 1: they're not five stacked boards one right on top of
Speaker 1: each other. Even the most battle hardened sense a in
Speaker 1: the universe would think two or three times before trying
Speaker 1: that and would probably be like, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: do that today. You'd be a moron to do that
Speaker 1: because most people would not be able to break through that.
Speaker 1: But if you have space between them, that changes everything. Yes,
Speaker 1: So is that true? Is it is it the boards
Speaker 1: that are breaking the other boards? Yes? And are you
Speaker 1: really just breaking that first boarder? Is it the first few? No?
Speaker 1: Because if you think about it, if you stop right,
Speaker 1: if like you if you're the place where you're going
Speaker 1: to break through stops like say, right before the third board,
Speaker 1: you're you're going to break your hand on that third board.
Speaker 1: So it does take discipline and focus and thought to
Speaker 1: where you're punching beyond that fifth board. Right, Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: when you break through that first one, you're punching through
Speaker 1: to the next one and punching through the next one.
Speaker 1: So as each board gives way, it's helping break the
Speaker 1: next one. But really it's getting out of the way
Speaker 1: and you're just punching through another board, and then that
Speaker 1: one gets out of the way, and there's another one
Speaker 1: you're punching through. But it's all in just one smooth
Speaker 1: motion as you punch beyond that say, fifth board. But
Speaker 1: if they're all stacked up right next to each other,
Speaker 1: you're not punching through five five boards. You're punching through
Speaker 1: one board five boards thick, and then that does not
Speaker 1: have that same effect because you're trying to punch the
Speaker 1: whole thing all at once and your hands is going
Speaker 1: to turn to mush. So in theory, uh, you would
Speaker 1: only be able to punch through as many boards as
Speaker 1: your arm punch length. Yes, right, Well, so here's the deal.
Speaker 1: Is board breaking just for show? Is that an act?
Speaker 1: Is there any merit to it whatsoever? And the answer
Speaker 1: is sort of back and forth depending on who you
Speaker 1: talk to. I think there are some martial arts purists, Well,
Speaker 1: it depends. There's probably purists on both sides that say
Speaker 1: this is an ancient tradition that we still like to practice. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's good for obviously recruiting people to your dojo if
Speaker 1: you are a master board breaker in your town, But
Speaker 1: then other people say, no, you know it's it is
Speaker 1: only for show. Bruce leeve And said, supposedly boards don't
Speaker 1: hit back, Like what you should be doing is training
Speaker 1: and focusing on things and not sort of like a
Speaker 1: side show trick, even though it's not a trick trick. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then it doesn't do anything to further martial arts.
Speaker 1: It's just sort of a thing to get attention. And
Speaker 1: I liked how this article kind of put it. It It
Speaker 1: was saying, like you actually teach kids that they can
Speaker 1: get praised for doing unimportant things like breaking through some boards,
Speaker 1: where really they should be being praised or being trained
Speaker 1: to do stuff that's actually useful, right, Like it it's
Speaker 1: it's definitely not a true gauge of your progress as
Speaker 1: a martial artist. No, But like I was reading about
Speaker 1: the ninety six Tokyo Karate Open, I think, and it
Speaker 1: um if you wanted to progress to the next round,
Speaker 1: you had to fight, and then you had to break
Speaker 1: some boards and you had to break like X number
Speaker 1: of boards and then you can move on the next round,
Speaker 1: fight break some more boards. So it's not like there's
Speaker 1: it's just totally useless in the martial arts world. And
Speaker 1: the whole reason it's there is strictly to attract new students.
Speaker 1: Although I think it really works for that, like it
Speaker 1: does have practical use, But outside of the martial arts
Speaker 1: like competition world, does it I think is the larger point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd like to hear from martial artists and get a
Speaker 1: true insider's take on what they think about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: same here. Would you ever take any martial arts? I
Speaker 1: took taekwondo as a youngster, and I was like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, wait a minute, We're just like kicking the air.
Speaker 1: I want to like, what are we doing here? And
Speaker 1: it became very clear that there was a long path
Speaker 1: I had to me to wherever I wanted to be,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I'm not doing this. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go home and eat some twigs. Peanut butter or caramel
Speaker 1: peanut butter. I eat caramel if it was around, but
Speaker 1: peanut butter is always my favorite. Yeah. Did they still
Speaker 1: make those peanut butter twigs? Yes, they do so good.
Speaker 1: I think that's it. Huh. Yeah. I looked up some
Speaker 1: records just quickly here, like world records, to see what
Speaker 1: was out there, and don't bother unless you have hours
Speaker 1: to sort through this, because there are literally dozens and
Speaker 1: dozens and dozens of variations of world records. Apparently you
Speaker 1: can just make anything up, and if you're the first
Speaker 1: person to do that, like there are records like a
Speaker 1: couple that punched through this much glass and this much time,
Speaker 1: or a man who who punched through a lot of
Speaker 1: them are time based, like this many pieces of glass
Speaker 1: while humming the theme from mash uh like, it seems
Speaker 1: like can just make anything up and and get I mean,
Speaker 1: there's glass breaking ice boards, there's kicks, there's head stuff,
Speaker 1: hand stuff, concrete. It's just all over the place. And
Speaker 1: I finally gave up when I saw a record for
Speaker 1: a guy breaking boards in free fall. So he skydived
Speaker 1: and was surrounded by skydivers that would float up to
Speaker 1: him and hold boards in front of his face. It
Speaker 1: was very intimidating, looking like just shoving these boards in
Speaker 1: his face while he's floating, and he would gather himself
Speaker 1: up enough to punch through the board. And that's when
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm out. I think I'm done. That
Speaker 1: guy's the world record holder for awesome. That's pretty great.
Speaker 1: I don't even think about that. I want to combine
Speaker 1: my passion for skydiving with my passion for karate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was pretty dumb. Last thing I had was there's
Speaker 1: a legend that if you are in the UFC, the
Speaker 1: Ultimate Fighting Championship or whatever, and there's a rule against
Speaker 1: downward elbow strikes because it's it's thought that they're possibly lethal,
Speaker 1: so they're an illegal move and they The legend is
Speaker 1: is that the reason is because the UFC commissioner was
Speaker 1: at a board breaking competition and saw somebody break a
Speaker 1: bunch of like boards or concrete with their elbow and
Speaker 1: did not realize that there's a lot of physics involved
Speaker 1: and went back and like immediately made this rule no
Speaker 1: downward elbow strikes. It's obviously you can kill a man
Speaker 1: like that because I saw some dude breaks and boards
Speaker 1: with his elbow. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, I don't watch
Speaker 1: uh you need that stuff, So I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: just so brutal. Man. Yeah, I can watch boxing all
Speaker 1: day long, but ultimate fighting it's, oh my god, it's brutal.
Speaker 1: I used to love boxing growing up. It's it holds up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Just I think when when the heavyweight division sort of
Speaker 1: got less interesting post Tyson. Oh yeah, yeah, I just
Speaker 1: I was into a girl going up with like the
Speaker 1: legends like Marvin Hagler and Roberto Duran and Sugarade Leonard
Speaker 1: and Tyson and Spinks and Homes. It just ali. Of
Speaker 1: course it was. It was one of the premier sports.
Speaker 1: And it's just I don't know. When you when I'm
Speaker 1: trying to figure out which clich Ko brother is who,
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of done. So yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: anything about it. I guess post Tyson, now that I
Speaker 1: think about, I don't know anybody's name post Tyson. To
Speaker 1: tell you the truth, as far as heavyweights are concerned,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of clitch cos that's all. Okay, Well
Speaker 1: that explain to it. Clitch cos Well, if you want
Speaker 1: to know more about board breaking, go get into martial arts.
Speaker 1: I strongly recommend it, even though I didn't. Don't make
Speaker 1: the same mistake I did. Ah, And since I said
Speaker 1: that it's time for listener mail, alright, I'm gonna call
Speaker 1: this pin setters. We heard from quite a few people
Speaker 1: who were pin setters or had relatives that were pin setters,
Speaker 1: and this one I thought was very sweet. Just enjoy
Speaker 1: jobs of bygone eras guys. And I remembered that my
Speaker 1: dad once worked as a pin setter and his ute.
Speaker 1: I called him and talked to him about his experiences
Speaker 1: after your show, and here a few highlights the nine
Speaker 1: sixty and he was twelve. This is Cleveland, Ohio, and
Speaker 1: he remembered that this particular bowling alley was the last one,
Speaker 1: I guess in Cleveland to convert to automatic setting. He
Speaker 1: was paid two cents of frame or twenty cents per game. Uh.
Speaker 1: Bowlers would slide nickels, dimes, and quarters down the lane
Speaker 1: as a tip. Oh that's pretty cool. Yeah, And you
Speaker 1: had to be quick to snatch up your tip because
Speaker 1: sometimes they would try to snipe you with a ball.
Speaker 1: I guess awful setters were responsible for three to four
Speaker 1: lanes at a time, and he worked on a slightly
Speaker 1: elevated catwalk. My dad was hit several times with pins
Speaker 1: and he said it was just part of the job,
Speaker 1: and the bowlers made him mad. He would offset one
Speaker 1: of the rear pins to decrease the chance of a
Speaker 1: strike for him sticking into the man. This is from
Speaker 1: Ray Hovorka, and he says, thanks a lot. My dad
Speaker 1: is seventy now and always lights up when he gets
Speaker 1: a chance to regale in his youth. So thank you
Speaker 1: Ray Hovorka and Mr Hovorka for your work as a
Speaker 1: pin setter. Captain Doc Havorca Esquire. That's raised dad's name. Now, Okay,
Speaker 1: So if you want to tell us some cool story
Speaker 1: your dad told you, we love those. You can get
Speaker 1: in touch with us through social media. Just go to
Speaker 1: our website Stuff you Should Know dot com uh and
Speaker 1: you can also send us an email. Just send it
Speaker 1: off to Stuff podcast How Stuff Works dot com for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
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