Tips for Conditioning Your Hands for Board Breaking

Video Transcript

"Michael Lewis here with Christian Martial Arts on behalf of Expert Village. We're going over today how to break boards with your hands. Now, before you actually start breaking boards, you also want to be able to condition your hands in order to break those boards. Some people's hands are a little more sensitive than others and, also, the knuckles and everything else, they need to be a little bit conditioned. Some of the guys have been into board breaking for a long time. They have definitely conditioned their hands and they've also developed calcium deposits on top of their knuckles and, that way, they condition their hands in order to, actually, not even barely be able to feel the board when they punch. One way to start out is what we call Markoari board; it's a board that's been wrapped in twine or rope. And, so, you can actually just go to the hardware store, buy some rope and just start wrapping it around a board. Also, keep in mind that different types of rope will condition your hands different ways. A softer, thicker rope will have a little bit more padding and be a little bit softer on your hand. This is a thin twine so, therefore, you're actually almost pretty much striking the board, it's only been wrapped around twice and the twine itself is a rougher surface. So, now you're conditioning the skin and, also, the bone of your hand when you strike. When you're striking this here, you're actually not trying to strike through it, you're actually just mainly trying to condition your hand and get used to striking and conditioning the skin of it. So, you're not going to strike through the board, you're just going to actually strike on the surface of it to condition your hand. The other person, the person who's holding it for you, they can absorb the shock, that's fine because, again, you're not trying to break anything. But, also, you can take and nail one of these boards up to a wall or up to a tree and actually practice on that by punching because, if somebody's holding it, if you punch too hard, you might accidentally break the board itself. So, that's one way of being able to condition your hands is very very important. There's many many different methods. Different styles of Martial Arts use different methods, for instance, they'll actually take a bucket full of sand and pound the sand, or a bucket full of small beads and be able to push their fingers through the beads for breaking boards with their fingers. So, there's many different ways. So, first off, start out, probably the best way to start out is using the Markoari board before you actually break your very own board."