shaolin head breaking

[Justa Man]

wassup shaolin's finest.

i'm looking for a pic or a clip of a monk breaking things with his dome.
i know i don't study shaolin myself, but shaolin IS the father of martial arts, and by golly you guys are super!

so can anyone help me out? anything? bueller? fry?

[stimulant]

a lot of it is conditoning and tricks (when you see them break the iron bars on their heads)

aint never seen any head stuff yet that really impressed me, though have read some good stuff years ago.

[MasterKiller]

http://exn.ca/Stories/2003/06/09/51.asp

[ninja]

you're just jealous that they don't teach breaking the iron bar at your shaolin school. well they do but you have to be in the inner circle of the school which you'll never get into because you have a un-politically correct sense of humour

[stimulant]

I'm not sure who that was addressed to Ninja!

Anyway...Breaking an Iron bar on your head is cool....but I have never seen it done well.

I've seen the 'shaolin monks' several times (in more) than one country breaking iron bars on their heads. It is indeed impressive, requiring good qi and skill, but also a large part of school boy physics to.

Before the iron bar is broken on their heads they always do a fairly medium hit first then straight away go to the hard hit to break the bar. The medium hit causes resonance in the bar making it far more easy to break on the second hit. The second hit is done very quickly after the first one so the resonance is not lost. They also hit their heads with the middle of the bar...less power (less chance of damageing themselves), but also more chance of breaking the bar. It is also hit in the middle incase it breaks into three pieces as no one wants Iron in the eyes, so hit in the middle and broken pieces fly over they heads.

I'm very sure some of the 'shaolin monks' can do it with one hit, but I've yet to see it.

To be honest....why train it? it is farily impractical, they take anything from 20 seconds to 3 mins to be ready to break the iron bar on their heads. If someone swings an iron bar, baseball bat its gonna take 1 and half seconds if you are very lucky, quicker if you are not. No time to 'prepare'.

If I want to learn it, its no problem my shifu will teach me (though he'll ask what for!!), but I'd rather learn immobility.....which I hope to start learning later this year with some luck.

Speaking of breaking things on your head, about 15 years ago i read an article about a famous master (cant rememebr his name or the magazines name now) who practised qi gong and would head butt a wall outside his house for 300 times everynight with his forehead. He never cut himself, he never got concussion, he never hurt himself. now this skill would be far more useful.