Choose a Board to Break with your Hands

Video Transcript

"Micheal Lewis here, with Christian Martial Arts on behalf of Expert Village. We're going over today, how to break boards with your hands. OK, picking your board is super, super important. Number one, you want to start out with a soft wood. Don't go straight into the store and just grab, start grabbing any piece of wood. You definitely want to take a look at it. Things like white oak, mahogany; don't touch. Most people always start out with pine. And sometimes there's a little bit harder woods that they'll sort of progress up to, but as a beginner start out with pine wood. Now, also the grain is very, very important. I have two different boards here that were cut differently. This grain is running horizontal, this grain is running vertical. So if you're breaking the board at this angle you want to pick the board that the grain that's running horizontal. If you're trying to break it with it running vertical, you're going to break your hand before you break the board. So as a beginner, start out with pine, usually use probably about a three quarter inch pine. Also get, best recommendation is to get twelve inches width and probably cut it about six inches or twelve inches long rather, and cut it six inches wide. So that way the person whose holding it will have a good area to grip on, and you also have plenty of striking area. Just in case you make any mistakes. So again, make sure that you check out the grain of the wood and also the type of wood. And lastly, if you can take and zoom in on this, this is actually shows a little bit of the curvature of the wood. You do not want strike against a piece that's bowing outwards towards the, towards the striking surface. You want to actually strike on the side that's curving inward. There's the side that's concave. So if you strike on this side, it's going to be a little bit harder. Also make sure that you're checking for knots. Don't have any knots in the, in the striking surface. Because the knots definitely make the wood harder to break."