KFMA Board Breaking Tips!

KFMA Board Breaking Tips help our high-rank students to understand the finer points of breaking boards, and to help them to prepare for their future rank testings.  Every couple of months, KFMA offers a board-breaking clinic to our students to allow them to measure the quality and the power of their techniques.

KFMA Board Breaking Tips Require Practice

“Repetitio est mater studiorum.” This latin proverb essentially means that ‘repetition is the mother of learning.’ That is especially true when what you are learning must be used in a stressful situation like real-life self-defense, and that is mimicked by the stress generated in a high-rank testing. To successfully break a board requires a number of elements, including:

Proper technique

Proper technique allows you to use your body in the most efficient and powerful way possible for striking or kicking. This also ensures that you are striking with proper joint alignment to keep the hands and feet safe while breaking, and includes using proper rotation and reaction force when executing a technique.

Speed

The speed element required in board breaking is rooted in the formula for kinetic energy, or what we generally refer to as ‘power’. Most of us are familiar with the formula…  ½ mass times speed (velocity) squared = power (kinetic energy). This is incredibly important in the martial arts like Taekwondo, as it allows a smaller practitioner to generate more power than someone much larger if they have more speed in their technique.

While there are specific drills we work on in our KFMA family classes that enhance speed, repetition with quality techniques builds muscle memory, requiring less thought and allowing for faster execution. Stretching will also improve speed within one’s range of motion.

Accuracy

Accuracy is crucial in board breaking, as it is in self-defense. A strike to a heavily-muscled part of the body will frequently have less effect than a strike to a vital part of the body (solar plexus, throat, knee, etc.). One of the benefits of using the rebreakable boards that we use at KFMA is because you must hit the center of the board in order to break it. With traditional wooden boards, if you hit with enough power, you can still break the boards closer to the top or bottom if you miss the center. The rebreakable boards are designed so that the striking force must be across the center line.

KFMA Board Breaking Tips Require Instructor Guidance

Learning how to properly set-up a board break is important for safety, as well as for success. How the holders stand to safely hold the boards, how the board is aligned, and how to practice the breaks to avoid injury are all various aspect of board breaking.

Once a student learns the basics of proper technique, the first step is to put in enough practice striking/kicking on targets. The large body shields are ideal for practicing with power, and for allowing students to strike with full intensity. Focus paddles and the smaller hand targets are excellent choices for practicing accuracy.  Perhaps the most important part of all is to have a certified instructor teach you how to practice, and then to provide feedback and adjustments on a regular basis to help you improve your performance. While you can practice at home, it’s very difficult to know if you are doing everything the right way. An experienced instructor can quickly determine the quality of the technique being used, and watch for such details as pivoting, hip rotation, joint alignment and proper distance.

Once a student has developed a solid technique, then it’s time to ‘test’ the quality, speed and accuracy of the technique with an actual board. And that’s why we hold regular board breaking clinics for our high-rank students.

Breaking Boards Builds Confidence

Just like passing an exam in school with an A gives you confidence in your studies, successfully breaking boards gives you confidence in your martial arts techniques. There is a certain, quiet confidence in knowing that your strikes and kicks are strong enough to fend off a physical attack. Board breaks also allow students to challenge themselves with more advanced techniques, like running jump side kicks over obstacles, or breaking boards above their head level.

If you’d like to see more photos from our most recent board break clinic, then take a look at this gallery: https://teamkowkabany.com/gallery/nggallery/team-kowkabany/kfma-board-breaking-clinic-june-2026

Here’s a look at the power these techniques can create on real boards!

If you’d like to see more details on how to develop this kick, take a look at this article: https://teamkowkabany.com/the-reverse-side-kick-of-taekwondo/

Chief Masters Laura and David Kowkabany have dedicated their lives to helping every student at KFMA to recognize their God-given talents, and to learn to develop them to their full potential. Students who train at KFMA will not only develop the physical skills of the traditional martial arts, but will also develop a number of life skills that will help them to find success in their academic fields, in their professions, and in their personal relationships.

For more information regarding our family martial arts classes, just give us a call at 813-540-5528. KFMA is located at 13910 Monroes Business Park, just two doors down from the Tampa Bay Brewing Company off Racetrack Road.

Kowkabany’s Family Martial Arts is chartered with the American Taekwondo Association: https://atamartialarts.com/