Nov 08 Dennis Jones – Breaking objects

This interview was recorded in November 2004

Steve Rowe talks to Doorman and Shi Kon martial artist Dennis Jones..

SR  Hi Dennis, I thought that this month would be an excellent opportunity to talk about breaking other objects as opposed to human bodies, years ago everyone was into breaking all manner of objects and I can remember you being one of the best.  On the www.englishkarate.org website we have a picture of you breaking a baseball bat with your shin and I can remember stories of you doing two!  I also have pictures of you chopping the tops of beer bottles and so on, looking back, do you think that this was useful to you?

DJ  If you take part in Kyokushinkai knockdown tournaments then it’s essential, but to be honest, I don’t think that it’s that useful to karate training generally.  Oyama, the founder of the Kyokushinkai style said in his book ‘This is Karate’ that he broke objects to demonstrate the power in his techniques but that it was generally considered vulgar to do so by the old samurai.

When I was 19 years old I had read the stories of people like Oyama breaking huge stones and chopping the tops off beer bottles. Other people were doing the ice break and other apparently magical feats of strength and being young and naïve assumed that there was a strong correlation between breaking and fighting.  People still look at the ability to chop a brick in half and think “if he can do that to a brick, what would he be able to do to a human body!”  The truth is that the two skills just don’t relate. But it’s

nice propaganda…unless you get tested!

However, breaking is a skill in itself and I worked really hard at it!  By the time I was 21 I was able to do some of the most difficult breaks, including the dreaded ‘bottle cut’ (chopping the tops off Pils beer bottles).  What I didn’t know at the time was that some of my peers were using theatrical ‘sugar bottles’ whilst I was standing in my garden for hour after hour practising with ‘real’ beer bottles!

SR  I never tried that, I’m told that it’s a ‘speed’ break particularly with free standing bottles, is that true?

DJ  Apparently Japanese beer bottles are thinner glass and make for an easier break, of course I didn’t know that at the time.  I filled about a third of the bottle with water and would stand them on top of a pile of bricks and then ‘chop’ them at a certain angle.  I’ve got a picture of me chopping a Pils bottle that didn’t break, but the brick it’s standing on was dragged by the friction of the bottle moving; the half brick flipped over with the beer bottle!

SR  I understand the incredible difficulty of the break, what would your success rate be?

DJ  Hard to say really, at a guess looking back, I suppose about one in twenty.  But then I severed three tendons and an artery in my hand and had to undergo emergency treatment.

SR  From chopping the tops of bottles?

DJ  I won’t go into the story of what happened there as it’s not for a magazine, Steve, (laughter) but suffice to say that my ‘beer bottle chopping’ days were over.

SR  The baseball bat break was a big thing in those days though, tell the readers a bit more about that.

DJ  The first time I saw it was when a Japanese karateka (a senior Kyokushin Sensei) came over to England and broke a baseball bat with his shin in the mid ‘70’s. 

SR  I saw that event too!

DJ  I had also read that Goshi Yamaguchi had moved to the States and was able to break 2 or even 3 bats at the same time!  I was only about 18 years old at the time and had read about Thai boxers conditioning their shins by hitting them and rolling beer bottles on them.  So I spent at least 2 years hitting each leg for a minimum of 10 minutes each day with a beer bottle and then rolling it up and down on the shins and then repeatedly kicking a heavy sandbag with my shin using the typical Kyokushin low leg kick.  Then I started to break the bats.  By the time I was 30 years old I was able to break two at a time.

The hardest and most painful object that I ever broke with my shins, and I still feel the pain to this day, was a hickory pick axe handle.  I broke it and then flew over the top of it! It was probably the most painful break I ever made.

SR  What other breaks did you do?

DJ  When I was 21 I used to break 3 one inch pirana pine boards hanging on a piece of string and anything else I could (excuse the pun) turn my hand to.  But when I started working as a bouncer it all changed very quickly.

SR  Although some people say that breaking is good mental training, to pit yourself against an inanimate object and the physical pain of failure, is good for strengthening the mind and will…

DJ  I can understand that.  Top level breaking is painful, whether you are successful or not.  I remember successfully breaking 25 roofing tiles with shuto uchi and dislocating my arm at the same time! 

SR  We’ve got pictures of you, Mick Gooch and Roger Wilkes at the ‘World Tile Breaking Record’ at the Black Lion in Gillingham…

DJ  Blame Roger for that one!  (laughs)

SR   But in the ‘70’s you were performing all these incredible breaks, Mick Gooch his world record one finger push ups and Roger Wilkes breaking all and sundry, it was a big thing wasn’t it?  Remember Enoeda’s ‘Kung Phooey’ crisps advert on the television and even now there’s a martial artist breaking wood on the t.v. (ironically) for a pain relief tablet advert.

DJ    That’s right and don’t forget all the old television series like ‘the Avengers’ and the old ‘Kung Fu’ series where Emma Peel and Kwai Chang Caine always managed to break something in a programme with a martial arts technique…

SR  Tatsuo Suzuki would do his demonstration kata to music and dramatically break 2 pine boards with a mae geri at the end…  It seems that everyone was breaking something, including me, in those days and it hurt!

DJ  You’re right Steve, and I guess because of that it did fortify the spirit, but…  for breaking.

SR  I watched the television programme the other week where a Chi Kung expert pulled a lorry along with a rope tied to his penis!

DJ  Ouch!  I can’t really comment on that one. Is that Chi Kung Steve? Anyway I sure there’s a use for it… 

SR  Moving on from that (laughs) did you do any hand conditioning?

DJ  Hand conditioning was often done performing the breaking feats themselves! But I did do a lot of conditioning. The hardest break I ever did was to punch a coconut and break it.  I guess the difference now is that with 25 years of door experience I know that generally, I can knock a man out with one strike, in those days I didn’t know and therefore had to prove something. But breaking things doesn’t relate to knocking people out.

Martial arts are all about body positioning, alignment, technique and against a moving thinking target.  It’s better to use a hammer to break inanimate objects.

SR  As Bruce Lee said…  “boards don’t hit back”.

DJ  Exactly…and hammers are not nice when they’re angry!

SR …Interesting, we’ll save that subject for another article.

Steve Rowe

Steve Rowe is a highly successful Martial Arts instructor - an International Neigong, Qigong and Tai Chi Teacher and an 8th Dan Karate with many other senior dan grades in other martial disciplines.

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