The Slaughter Of Innocent Boards

and more on topic, my students seem to refuse to learn proper execution just doing poomsae, but make them break a board with the technique a few times...

It's a test of proper execution, aim, and delivery. It's a test that cannot be cheated.

it definitely proves good technique. if you screw up, you know it immediately. last test that i took, i was going to do 4 boards with an elbow smash. however, my holders were shorter than me. so when i was practicing, i had a nice deep stance. when i actually went to do it, i hit too high, send once holder staggering backwards and had a huge bruise. 2nd try was the same thing. i thought i had broken my ulna. i finished the boards with a side kick and then went to go get x-rays!

Everything hat others have said are good points, however personally I am not a fan of board breaking. I simply think there are just as effective ways to develop precision and technique as well as power, which don't have require breaking solid objects.

Heavy bag work for instance can is a great way of testing power, and as long as you have proper supervision and are assessing your technique throughout then it cannot harm your technique either. For precision, there are plenty of paddles or shields which test accuracy.

I have seen breaking be very good for some students' confidence, and honestly I have nothing against those who practice breaking- no doubt it has many good points to it. But it is not something which is essential to TKD, nor is it something I chose to devote much time to.

Looks good at demos though!

http://www.taekwondo-metalac.hr/?id=34

This site shows the SAFETT devise that will test power.

Mike

Questions: is it just me or does anyone else oppose the use of power breaking? Hasn't anyone else seen the horrific injuries that can result, the almost certainty of an old age riddled with arthritis. I have never done this but seen many students come to our kung fu class with very limited movement in their hands, deformed elbow joints and so on.l A friend of mine who's husband runs a karate school says that at some tournaments almost none of the older instructors can form a fist properly after years of abuse.
What's it all for?? Surely martial arts should teach us to respect our bodys not smash them into hard objects repeatedly.

The ability to break a board or a brick doesn't equate to martial skill. The most powerful strike is useless if blocked or avoided. Even if it does strike and hit its target it is likely to do more damage than the practitioner intended.

Some points for discussion there I think.

those are extremes of board breaking. you don't have to injure yourself like that to break boards.

Maybe so but the long term effects of breaking are well known. It doesn't necessarily take extreme breaking just long term abuse to cause severe long term problems.

I think you are jumping to an extreme puffadder. For most breaks, very little conditioning is necessary until you star breaking above 2 inches of wood with the hand and maybe twice that for the feet. Most people breaking one-two inches of wood with a punch or a kick will not need any extra conditioning as long as their technique and commitment are correct. It is the job of the instructor to supervise breaking properly and make sure that injuries do not occur.

In my experience, I have seen the odd injury due to breaking, which puts me off doing it somewhat, but I still think it is a relatively safe practice. I just find other types of training to be more effective at developing the same qualities.

i agree with Andymcc. it's not a huge part of the curriculum. as for deformed hands, it depends what you call deformed . a bent finger or two for me doesn't constitute deformed. and that is even hard to do unless you want to break with your fingertips. i don't think anyone here is advocating the breaking of 12 blocks of concrete with the hands or anything. but if you do everything correctly, breaking less than 8 wooden boards or so won't leave you permanently scarred.

Agreed.

Board breaking is just a training tool used by many schools, as does mine, but we don't board break a lot. Training is done with pads and will the plastic re-usable boards. Real wood is only used for testing purposes but to be honest, if you can break the plastic you can break the wood as the plastic boards you have to be in the middle where as boards can be forgiving. However with boards I've come across many with knots in them that make it much more difficult and with our wood, some wood is very difficult especially when doubled up.

With board breaking you have to use proper technique and you must commit fully. Boards are not that big so you also have to be precise. I recall many years ago when my break was the back roundhouse and my Instructor stood right beside me and said I'd better not kick him. This made me more aware of my technique as previously I was swinging my foot and using momentum in instead of shooting it straight back and using my hips to torque my leg to make the break. I have personally found that board breaking has fine tuned many techniques I used including remember to pull the toes back when doing such kicks as snap front kicks and other kicks. Knowing is one thing but performing a kick on a board and not remembering is something you'll only do once if you injure your toes badly. Yes these techniques can be learned by other means however when using techniques like this sparring or in training I've found that both pads and the human body can be more forgiving when making a less then perfect technique ... boards you don't have that luxury.

If I was told that we would never do board breaks again I wouldn't complain however I do see the usefulness of this training tool. And under a qualified Instructor with proper training and time, I see no problems in injuries. Those people you see all gnarled up due to breaking ... this is because they were foolish and thought they could "condition" themselves by hitting inanimate objects repeatedly like seen in movies which is bunk. Those old training ways were stupid then and are stupid now and if you train that way then you got what you deserve.

I like breaking boards. I think it is useful. The rebreakable boards just won't break if your aim isn't spot on. I have seen people pound away at these things unable to break them not becasue of power but becuase of technique. You do get a sense of proper technique when you have to hit a board. I don't know about 8 or so boards but 2 to 4 seems reasonable once or twice a year with a good rest in between.

I agree that attempts at conditioning could lead to the issues discussed but that is a personal choice and it doesn't seem to me that there is enough information on conditioning. If your idea of conditioning is simply pounding a piece of concrete well what do you expect.

I have seen labourers, mechanics, etc with hand issues when older. I have seen many people who never touched a board and have very bad hands in thier sixties.

Now children should not break anything period. Children have undeveloped growth plates between bones and any damage to these can case the bones to grow to fast or too slow.

i'm gonna go for 5 board sidekick and 4 board elbow smash for my 2nd dan test.

I have heard that the medical profesion has said that repeated punching/striking of hard objects, like that which is done in conditioning can cause damage over time. I was once told that the conditioning of the hands was done when fighters toughened their bodies to become weapons. However, today, since people live longer, these types of disabilities surface. I think it is no different for a carpet installer, who gets bad knees from their work or a runner who develops bad knees from all the pounding. As far as breaking goes, I am not sure that if fits in the same boat as the repeated forging against hard surfaces. I would be more worried about the possible trauma from all the kicking, not the bord breaking.
Like Mr. Flynch says, no breaking for kids. No way

I did my first board break recently for my yellow belt test. It made me realize that I need to badly work on my targeting. I was glad I went to practice that morning because I'm friends with one of the black belts there and she offered to help prepare me for my test. That was when I first found out that I would have to break a board. Nobody told me before hand. At least she helped me mentally prepare for the board break. I can't wait to break my next board because I felt very proud of myself after completing the break.