Yeah breaking sticks is normal (you're beating them on metal), but there's ways of prolonging the lifespan of your equiment. Don't lean into your playing. You can hit hard, just come off the instrument quick, (cymbal, head, rim.)
Also, someone mentioned something about a dude whos MO is to hit as hard as he can. You can actually distort the cymbal this way. The cymbal itself is trying to create more overtones than it's capable of. All musical instruments have some sort of natural compression when it's being pushed or saturated and sometimes it's at it's most musical form when it's working hardest.
jl
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