True or not?

 

Boards can be dried or even baked to make them easier to break. The same can be done with cinder caps. ice often has to be scored to allow a fracture line to form, Ice can even be sawed in half and refrozen with salt on those surfaces. Watching you cannot determine what is real and what has been doctored. Stacks of boards or cinder cap's use the weight of the descending portions of the first break to make the subsequent breaks easier. Similar to the stunts magicians employ.

 

While a beginner I remember my seniors training for a demo where they would do breaking. Everything I saw was real at that time.

 

Years later while studying Tang Soo Do I found breaking was a requirement for testing. One board with a different break required for each test.  A year later, I won a green belt breaking division by performing a front kick through 3 boards and then a back side kick through 2 boards, none of which was fake.

 

One night when a red belt I was asked to come to the front of the class and attempt a cindercap break with my forehead. I was shown how to cover the cinder cap with a towel, then hold it myself. I then did it and it worked. Of course I had a gigantic headache the next day, swearing to myself I would never let myself be talked into any such thing again. And I kept that promise.

 

I have seen many breaks that were real, I have also seen many breaks of which I was suspicious about. You get what you get.

 

Among the more interesting breaks I have watched where the holder donned thick rubber gloves and then held a full whiskey bottle that when struck by the instructors knife hand broke the neck off of the bottle.

 

I don't know what happened to the remaining contents.

 

Ice Breaks  https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/search?q=ice