Tips for Holding a Board to Be Broken by Feet

Video Transcript

"Michael Lewis with Yeshua's Ryu Martial Arts on behalf of the Expert Village. We're going over today how to break boards with your feet. You must find somebody that is going to be comfortable holding a board and also that is able to do it correctly and pays attention to detail. For instance, a front kick, if he's going to hold the board for a front kick, typically you would angle the board down. Now, keep in mind, different strikes require different hand positions. If you were going to do an ax kick he would have to hold the board up so that the holder, the kicker rather, would be able to come down across the board. Let's say for a front kick, he's going to have his arms out. This arm is going to be almost locked out. This arm is going to be pretty much straight. His stance, he's going to have to get into a good, deep and solid stance so that if I were to kick the board, his body will not rock back. So it's another way of testing, if you actually strike the board a little bit and push on it you have to see if his body is going to push back and he has a very good stance so I feel comfortable now kicking the board. Another thing is his fingers. He's going to have to sort of curl up his fingers a little bit onto the board especially when you're doing kicks. Like I said before, kicks are not quite as accurate. It's easier to make a mistake. So if I'm going to kick the board I'm going to also have to make sure that I'm not kicking directly onto his fingers. Now a responsibility of the board holder is to make sure that he's holding the board correctly with the grain running horizontally to the break. Another thing is that he's going to also have to make sure that he's holding the board with the concave side as the striking surface. If you were to flip it over and hold it incorrectly it would make the board a whole lot harder to break and also it could cause injury to either the holder or to the kicker."