Ways to Practice Board Breaking!

Breaking a board is hard! Everyone thinks that breaking a board is such a cool thing that black belts do, but it can be super difficult. You will, at some point in your martial arts career, want to (or need to) practice your board break. How do you do that?

Note: Board breaking, and the practice thereof, can be dangerous. It is important to practice under the supervision of a trained professional. Practice at your own risk.

Practice Boards

You’ve probably seen these already. Most instructors either have them personally or have them in the dojang. Sometimes both! These boards are plastic and designed to be broken and then brought back together, simulating the amount of force needed to break a typical wooden board. Of course, different schools use different types of wood, different thicknesses, and different dimensions. These, naturally, change the difficulty in the board break. These practice boards come with levels of difficulty, indicated by the color of the board. While they do seem relatively expensive, they are far cheaper than trying to buy 50 wood boards!

In the Air

This one is pretty obvious. The truth is, it’s pretty hard to break a board if the technique isn’t done correctly. Often instructors will have students practice in the air over, and over, and over again. Some instructors even have their black belts practice for hours on the same technique. This is because knowing how to do the technique correctly is critical to getting the result you want from it (i.e. breaking the board). Getting the angle or the technique wrong can be risky, so it's important to practice. A lot. Ever tried to break a board with a tornado back hook kick that you didn’t practice? Wouldn’t recommend it.

Target Practice

Ok, this one is probably obvious. If you’ve been practicing Tae Kwon Do very long, you’ve probably hit a hand target or kicking target quite a few times. When practicing board breaks, targets are a great way to practicing applying how much power to apply. Typically, the harder you hit them the louder they are. That can make it quite easy to determine how much power you have applied to the target.

Targets also, of course, help with learning to aim. As any instructor will tell you, it hurts when a student hits your fingers on the board. It hurts a lot. If you practice with a target, you also practice aiming the technique so that you hit the target, and not the instructors fingers. So using targets to practice aiming and technique is not only good for you, it’s good for the person who holds your board!

Stretches and Muscle Exercises

In my experience, the importance of stretches and muscles exercises is under appreciated. Significantly under appreciated. What do you need to be able to break a board? Flexibility and muscle strength! Don’t get me wrong; technique is very important too, but you can’t really apply force to break a board if you don’t have the muscle to do so. So, what exercises should you do? Well, that is something you should ask your instructor. Every technique is different and uses different muscles. If you have a specific technique to practice, it’s probably best to also practice doing the necessary muscle exercises and stretches!

So there you go! I hope this article has helped abate some of your anxieties about practicing that board break. Good luck and be safe!

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Disclaimer: This blog post is for informational and entertainment purposes only. All martial arts techniques and exercises should be supervised by a trained martial arts instructor in order to prevent injuries and to ensure the proper technique is utilized. The information on these pages and videos is meant only to reinforce and supplement the instruction given at your martial arts classes and for entertainment. To properly understand these techniques, you need to learn them from a martial arts instructor who can provide you with an in-depth explanation of the technique, help correct your mistakes, answer your questions and detail how the technique should be utilized. In addition, all martial arts techniques and training should be used safely and responsibly. Practicing board breaking in particular can lead to injury of the self or objects, and so should be practiced at your own risk.