Breaking Boards

Mrs P. , my Tae Kwon Do (TKD) instructor, is an amazon. She’s tall and thick with muscles from years of being a professional rower. Her hair is always slicked back in an efficient pony tail and her uniform is impeccably white. She is pushy. I remember the first time I walked into the Dojang a little over a year ago. It was like walking through the markets in Senegal and accidentally making eye contact. She latched onto me and she wasn’t going to let me leave without making a commitment to try TKD, so I did and after the first month I was hooked.

It’s never easy. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes I get frustrated because I’m practicing all the time and it doesn’t feel like I’m getting better, even though I know I am. When I first started I had to unlearn the stances and style of punching I’d practiced during my brief stint as a boxer. Since then, I’ve leaned how to stand, block, punch, and kick. I’ve earned my Green belt, which is exactly in the middle between being a white belt who doesn’t even know what things are called and a black belt who can practically levitate while kicking and spinning at the same time. More than the basic techniques and sparring, I’ve learned a lot about self discipline, control, and faith. There have been moments when Mrs. P has looked at me and asked me to do things I either didn’t know how to do or was absolutely convinced that I would never be able to do. I felt that way the first time I did a hook kick, but I also knew that if she asked me to do it, I didn’t really have much choice but to comply.

So on Thursday when I showed up to class and Mrs. P said we’d be breaking boards, I knew I had to do it, moreover I had spent the whole day excited and looking forward to it…..but suddenly I realized that as cool as it sounded, I really didn’t want to do it. I felt this intense rush of fear course through me. Who was I kidding? I was about to break my hand. Yes, I am strong, but I am still so sloppy sometimes. I over rotate through my turning side kick, my fingers are never close enough together when I knife hand strike. Even when we were doing warm up punches I accidentally left my thumb sticking out too high on my fist so that I smashed it against the target, something I have never done before. I was mortified. This is stuff I work on everyday, but I’m not done working on it yet, so it occurred to me that I shouldn’t really be trying anything like board breaking.

Like I said, if Mrs. P. asks you to do something, you do it. Sometimes when she looks at me, I feel like she has these special BS goggles that see straight through my façade into my insecurities, which is why I wasn’t surprised that she picked me to go first. We had to do two hand techniques and two kicking techniques. I chose hammerfist and backfist. A hammer fist, as you can imagine, is when you use all your body weight and come down from above.

The Dojang got really quiet. One of my classmates held the board and Mrs. P explained what I was supposed to do, then everyone got really quiet again and I stared at the board. I took a deep breath and made a conscious decision to have faith in myself. My fist came down at the precise right angle and the board snapped in half. Everyone clapped. The second time I tried backfist. My fist hit the board and made a loud noise, but didn’t break. Thankfully neither did my hand. I came in at the wrong angle and didn’t follow through. It was embarrassing and kind of painful, but Mrs. P gave me that look and told me to do it again, so I did and this time I shattered it into three pieces that flew across the floor. It hurt, but I was okay. I broke two more boards, one with an axe kick and one with a side kick, both on the first time. When we had finished Mrs. P took the opportunity to dispel a myth. She said the reason we break boards isn’t about conquering a piece of wood, but rather it’s a very practical test of our ability to endure the impact of striking a solid object without padding. It’s seen as a type of conditioning. It made me think about all the other tests I’ve had in my life. Often I think about these challenges as something to conquer, when maybe it’s enough to be able to withstand their impact and get through them unscathed and with a little more faith in my own ability.