Let’s start with a laugh, I like to say I’ve never met a board I didn’t like…

Well anyone who has attempted to break a board has experienced this at least once!  Lose your mental focus, feel fear or uncertainty, lose your physical focus and that will probably be you jumping around screaming!

Focus, this is the real trick in the Martial Arts or any fighting art, to much focus (see above) can be a bad thing.  While you may gain power you lose your situational awareness.  Instead of focus you need to train to stay relaxed, aware of your situation and fluid, this will give you the ability to react without the time delay of planned movements.  When I spar I rarely look at my opponent, in other words I do not focus on the person I am fighting.  Instead I relax my focus and heighten my awareness of the entire sparring situation, taking in their whole body or multiple attackers.  This is almost the opposite of what most students are taught when breaking boards.  Yet relaxing your focus can accomplish the same thing with the benefit of not getting tunnel vision.  You are simply putting your fist or knife hand strike to a defined spot, past the object, regardless of the object.

However I’d like to end by saying I have never met a board I didn’t like…

Perhaps I need to rethink that!