For years, women in India were largely discouraged from participating in high-level sports - and, unless the women were wealthy, good facilities were hard to come by, anyway.

'Power breaking,' also called Hanmadang - which means something like celebration or festival in Korean - involves breaking large amounts of wood, concrete, granite, and the like with specific hand and foot techniques. Practitioners rely on repeated resistance training and the idea that, over time, the body can adapt to stress.

When most people think of Tae Kwon Do - which, in the United States, is not all that often - they think of sparring, a form of competition that both men and women perform at the Olympics.

Mary Pilon Quotes