Thursday, May 29, 2008

For the sake of the trees

Our board break this go around is the back kick. The technique is to basically get into a kicking position lined up with one edge of the board, rotate toward your back shoulder and kick like donkey. You should strike with the heel like doing a side kick. Your kicking knee should brush past your standing knee, then you rotate your hip and extend into a side kick.

Because of the size of the class, we students take turns holding the boards for each other. When holding for the back kick because of its power, there are two students holding the board shoulder to shoulder on the top edge of the board, smaller person in front with the person in back straddling the person in front's rear leg.

We use practice boards like these. The boards are colored like the belts and correspondingly get harder to break as the color goes "up" the belt rank. If you look at them closely, you'll see how they have plastic teeth holding them together. The teeth are longer the harder the board.

If the holder isn't pulling the boards slightly apart during the kick, the teeth can scrape your feet. And you bleed. A lot. Over the floor. Down the hall. Into the bathroom. Through a couple of band aids. Onto your clean white socks at the end of class.

Not that I would actually know this from first hand experience. Really. Didn't happen to me. It was a "friend."

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