I'm sure that a good portion of people will remember the Kung Fu TV show with David Carradine and have heard of the Shaolin Monks from many different sources. Perhaps some of use have seen one of the TV Programs where they are tested by scientists to see why they can do what they do. There are even many videos on YouTube of Shaolin Monks demonstrating their mythical skills. Things like breaking solid steel bars over their heads or being suspended by six sharpened spear points. Just do an internet search and you can find all sorts of things that they have demonstrated. Now we have seen that they do it, and we have seen programs show that they can and tell a reason as to why. I think that the Mythbusters should do an episode not on if the Shaolin Monks can do these amazing feats but on what should happen to the human body when someone trys one of these feats.

saw a sword swallower lay on two steel steaks before, but the thing about shaolin monks is most of them trained since child hood twice a day every day well into old age to achieve those feats. something that is almost impossible to test on a show such as the mythbusters

The bars they break on their head are CAST iron, not steel.

Anyone with experience in the area will tell you, while a cast iron bar in that shape would normaly leave a sizable dent in a human head, it will snap or shatter as infact they do, MUCH more easily than steel. Infact properly worked steel would crush a shaolin skull with little difficulty, as it would crush anyones.

The shaolin are remarkable, and train very hard to thicken and increase the density of their bones. To tighten, strengthen and improve muscle density. To learn individual muscle control to provide tension in the perfect place at the perfect moment. And to thicken and toughen there skin.


In most cases what the shaolin do would instantly kill someone with no training. However there are alot of misconceptions and little malformations of the truth wandering around. Like the snapping a steel bar idea.

Most all of the stuff shown on Carradine's old show is fanciful nonsense, as is a great deal of the "demonstration" techniques popularly shown.

I read a couple of scholarly articles on the Shaolin temple. Actually, temples, as there have been 6 or 7 of them.
Dating back to the importation of Buddhism from India, these temples started out as religious institutions, but rapidly became hotbeds of political intrigue and plotting. It was fairly common for political activists and revolutionaries to "drop out" of Chinese society by taking up life as a monk.
Of course, once behind the walls of the monastery, they could continue plotting in private...
The reason there were so many Shaolin temples is that they would be razed or burned by displeased governments when the plot or revolution failed...

I watched the "Shaolin" demonstrations given at the Olympics; they were far removed from anything martial, and appeared to be almost entirely the highly acrobatic "wushu". (National Art)

Connected to bikewers post;

It would be to the monks advantage to propagate myths about what they could really do. If they were seen as having superhuman abilities there was a very good chance that people would think twice before bothering them in anyway.

In a similar way the Japanese Ninja seem to have either created myths, or allowed myths, about themselves, to flourish in order to make themselves seem far more powerful/dangerous than they really were. In both cases it was a simple and easy way to further their aims. Either by convincing people not to mess with them, or convincing people they really wanted them on their side.

The principals of psychological warfare were not unknown to our ancestors!

According to the historian Stephen Turnbull, many of the myths associated with the ninja didn't even come into existence until they were effectively gone.
After the Meiji Restoration, much about the "old days" (the Samurai period) was glorified in literature, poetry, and plays.
Not unlike our own "dime novels" about the old West.

The steel steaks they laid on, were they T-bones or rib eyes? I should think you meant stakes.

If you guys watch "human weapon", in the Sanda / China episode, the hosts visited the Shaolin Temple and watched two monks demonstrated the iron bar over head, and the resting on spear points. It was live on TV.