There is also physics involved. If you took a 2x4 and swung it and impacted a hard target with the very tip of it it will not break. Swing it and impact it in the middle or even closer to your hands the very end will literally continue the momentum and facilitate the break using the target as a lever. The smaller the target the easier the break. ...and since he is the hardest kicker the harder/faster the kick the easier the break too. Watch those roadshow tricks sometime where people break 2x4 on their body. The hitter has to be just as skilled as the taker. The hitter never impacts with the end. Granted it still takes a great amount of conditioning so do not try this at home thinking it is easy. But it is only possible because the person hitting knows how to hit so the person taking does not break any bones. Perfect techniques rely a lot on the laws of physics. ...and that's why the other two posters recommended kicking with the ball of the foot and that is also why education even in martial arts is so important. Mindless hitting without any knowledge how and why your techniques work or without any knowledge of your anatomy will get you hurt, just like that. That's why hard and committed techniques are actually easier to defeat than half @$$ed ones. They do end up in injury too to the person applying them and to the person receiving them they are very scary.

My muay thai instructor explained it:

Take a ruler. The front of the shin is the edge. Hold it across the part with the longest width at the ends with both hands. Try to bend it. You could probably break it, right? Now hold across the thin edge. This represents the front of their shin. Its impossible to break.

If you watch the video, silvas kick is diagonal. There are alot of kicks that are effective like that. Silva has some of the strongest shins in the UFC. But he hit with the side of his shin into wiedmans hard knee. That is why it broke.

Because anderson silva just might be the hardest kicker in mma and he connected the kick with his shin instead of his foot and it was a perfect check by weidman. Knee bone is stronger than shin bone and weidman is younger and stronger than silva.



So all those reasons is why. Let's hope Anderson Silva makes a comeback and wins the belt back, if not than I guess its really over. The weidman era is on I guess.

That is why I never recommend kicking with the shin. OK maybe if you hit a soft place. Obviously you can get hurt if you kick a hard place, as demonstrated by Silva.

Like Kokoro, I use, and recommend the ball of the foot for kicks. They are safer, reach farther, and create much greater impact.

Because he over trained it with out giving it a chance to heal, and build calcium over the bone. It was also noted that he kicked it the first round which may have caused a fracture. Then the second kick finished it off.

It happened because most Western fighters "cross-train" in Western, "watered-down" Muay Thai as opposed to actually training in authentic Muay Thai. The Thai boxers in Thailand train their shins with repetitive kicks to banana trees which are soft on the outside and hard on the inside. They kick over and over again until they can't feel strikes to their shins. In most training centers in the Western world, this kind of training is viewed as barbaric, archaic, and unhealthy, so most Western fighters' shins are not able to take the same amount of punishment as most authentic Thai boxers' shins can.

Hes possibly the hardest kicker In MMA, and to be fair to Weidman it was a perfect check

that is always a possibility when kicking with the shin, which is why the ball of the foot is better, if you screw up and break a toe that is no big deal, you can still limp, you break your shin and your done.





and shin breaks are more common then you people think

Because like most mma they can't kick worth of ****

Bones are not that strong, especially if you try to gain muscle and weight down.

I noticed in the video that the way anderson silva broke his leg during the ufc match was too easy. He's recognized as one of the best mma fighters ever, then how can such a simple block from his opponent snap his leg like a toothpick just like that.