First board break

The end of the enrichment program (5 weeks....still a white belt) brought about a little "graduation ceremony". We got to demonstrate the stuff we had learned to the rest of our family. Because I was the one who had gone to the orientation and thus got suckered into the program, this was really a chance for my wife to see the kids and what they had learned.

The "climax" of the demo was a board break. I hate to ruin the mystique of breaking a board but it really wasn't all that hard. It's all cool to see splinters flying and hear boards cracking though. The technique we used was "hammer fist" which is basically just hitting the board with a closed fist like it was a hammer. On the way in to the dojang, my oldest daughter had slipped on the pavement (it was sleeting outside) and landed on her elbow. It was causing her a bit of pain. She was very tentative in breaking the board even though she had done fine in the lessons with the practice boards. Needless to say, she wasn't very successful. To help her save face, the instructor quickly taught her to do a stomp kick and she broke the board into 3 pieces. Turns out that my daughter chipped a bone in her elbow and had to wear a brace for 2 weeks.

The real "climax" of the night though was a little sell job on the "6 month introductory program". We walked out of the place with a lighter wallet.

Side note: the practice boards are these plastic boards with "teeth" in them to keep them together. Save the rain forest! They are actually harder to break than the real boards we use in the tests.