Brianna Parker breaks her very first pine board with the heel of her hand Thursday at Rick Hall’s Tiger Rock Martial Arts in Hixson.Pine boards beware: You are on the chopping block for students of Tiger Rock Martial Arts.
Students and instructors alike are able to use the heels of their palms, their elbows and their feet to break 1-inch-thick pine shelving boards, sometimes stacking them three or four deep, but they don’t do it to show off.
The Hixson Tae Kwon Do academy uses board breaking to test a student’s readiness to advance to higher ranks. As students progress to higher belts, they are required to break boards as a means of testing their technique’s focus, power and accuracy.
It is not a test that Grandmaster Rick Hall, an eighth-degree black belt and the academy’s owner, takes lightly.
“We are using real, legitimate self-defense techniques,” he says when talking about why board-breaking is performed. Unlike some academies where boards are bolted to the wall or supported with cement blocks on the floor, Tiger Rock Martial Arts instructors hold the boards. That means the instructors move naturally with the force of the blow just as an opponent might.