 Boardbreaking, one of the long-standing traditions and one of the most iconic demonstrations of the martial arts. It is used to demonstrate precision, strength, and proper technique. And honestly, it's a lot of fun. However, the two major downfalls about boardbreaking is, one, it's honestly a waste of good wood. It's not the best use of natural resources, and especially since you can't really use the leftover pieces for much. And two, the costs. Sure, if you're just going to break a couple of boards, that's not so bad. But if it's something that you're going to do repeatedly, or you have a class with students that will be breaking boards on multiple occasions, that cost adds up very quickly. Enter the re-breakable board. I love this as a teaching tool, and it's also a good alternative way to break boards without the waste of natural resources. So in this video, I'm going to review these as a training tool, and also how they can be effective in teaching. Now, a lot of people might ask, well, what is breaking boards to have to do with self-defense? And there's the old joke, oh, that'll work for me if I'm ever attacked by a tree. I get it. It's not always a practical thing, and it doesn't always correlate exactly to self-defense, but it is a feat of strength. It is a way to learn proper technique. They don't just break when you tap them. I mean, they do require some force, so you still have to deliver good precision and technique. Otherwise, you could hurt yourself if you do it wrong. Also, this is going to be a general review, pretty much all brands. This is not a sponsored video, so I'm not promoting one particular brand. But there's a lot of different companies that release these boards. So this is kind of a general review of the item as a whole. Now, this one, brand new out of the box, hasn't been broken yet. They do have a bit of longevity to them. Also, they do also tend to wear out. And we'll get into more of that later. This one is about, at this point in time, about five years old. It's seen a lot of love, a lot of training. It's not in the best shape, but we do still use it. So these suckers are pretty durable. They're made of a hard plastic. This particular one is Tiger Claw. They've got good handles on here, split down the middle. Once you break it, it comes apart. You slide the pieces back together. You get to break it again. Now, this one is the black belt level. That's why the black padding. They do come in multiple versions. You have, usually they start with like a yellow or a blue to begin with. These are the lighter challenges. They're a lot easier to break, but these are excellent for like the smaller kids, especially for self-confidence. A small kid's not going to be able to break a board, especially not right away. Five, six years old. They're still learning coordination. They're not going to be able to perform jumping spinning kicks that are a half inch piece of pine. So these are a great start for that. So you move on up to the black belt board. I like this one because this one's a little bit more representative of an actual piece of pine. It's pretty strong, especially brand new out of the box. So I would say this is a pretty good analog for a half inch piece of pine. It's not going to break very easily. You're going to have to put a good amount of force behind it. So it does give a pretty good realistic simulation of breaking boards. And with the added bonus, you could put it back together and do it again. Now, one thing I want to note. The reason these are really good for precision is in order for this to break, you got to hit it right here in the middle on the straight line. This is the weak point. You hit it up here or down here. It's not going to break. A piece of wood with enough force, you could crack it in a few different spots. So this one really, really emphasizes your precision strike right on that seam, which I think is good because that gets you to focus and just gives you better technique overall. The other thing I like about these a lot is that when they break, there's no mess. No splinters. Oh, we do black belt test with kids or even with the adults. And we used to do traditional board breaking. Splinters go everywhere, especially if you've got someone who wants to hit against the grain, which is a lot harder to do than with the grain. But the boards will splinter and afterwards we're sweeping up all these pieces of wood all over the place. These things, no mess. You break it, you put it back together, you do it again, over and over and over. That saves so much time and aggravation. So how do these compare in difficulty versus real wood? I've touched upon it briefly, but as I said, the lower colors, usually yellow or blue are the lowest levels. These are for kids and adults will break this no problem. It takes very little force to break these. You got your middle ones, usually red is usually the intermediate challenge. These are good for maybe the middle school age group, the younger kids to middle age group until they get used to it. It teaches them technique. It's also not as intimidating right off the bat because it's not super easy from the break, but they have to apply a moderate amount of technique and pressure. But then they're not, you know, not facing the thick black belt board, which honestly for kids is really tough to break until they've really gotten good at it. So adjust the levels accordingly. So if you've got kids to work with, I would suggest with the yellow or the blue boards working your way up to red. And once they get really good, give them the challenge of this black one. This, I use this. When we first got these boards, all the kids of course said, oh, let me hit the black board, Mr. Dan. I'm like, are you sure you're ready for that? And of course they all wanted to try it. I let them kick it because, you know, punching with your hand doesn't break. That hurts. So I let them kick it and they couldn't break it, but they wanted the challenge of doing it. So I let them try it and they realized, huh, this is going to take some work. But then they made them work up the other boards and worked their way up to it. I tell you right now, the first kid that broke it, it was with a kick. The grin that showed up on his face was invaluable. It was priceless. And from that point on, they all stepped up their efforts because they wanted to do it too. So that goes back to why I love this as a training tool. So as far as difficulty goes, I would not compare the lower boards to real wood, but this black one I absolutely would. Like I said before, I would kind of equate it to a half inch board of pine. It's got pretty much a similar resistance. It doesn't have as much give as wood though. It might be weird to say that wood is softer because wood's pretty hard, but it's softened in hard plastic. And that might be why they put this black padded on it a little bit, maybe a little bit for traction. This really doesn't do much to pad it. It's really more for grip and traction, but this does nothing to soften the blow. It does give pretty good resistance. So I would say this board is pretty comparable to an actual real wooden board. Now, going back to my example with the kids, they were intimidated with this board. So I had them start with the smaller ones, and even the little kids, they had trouble with that, so they had even the lower boards. But the one thing is, they're afraid to hit it, especially when they're first starting out. It's intimidating. If any of you have ever tried to break wood or concrete block and you don't actually break it, it hurts. To the point where there's a psychological effect where they tend to hold their power back. I've worked with kids. They're afraid to hit it. The secret to breaking boards is you don't aim for the board. You aim for the person behind the board. If they're in a stack, you don't aim for the top one. You aim for the third or fourth one. You want to punch through it. So basically, the general idea is when you break a piece of wood, you're actually making contact with about 80% of your travel through your punch. So basically, 100% would be through it. So you want to hit about 80% of travel into the board so that way you're penetrating through the board. If you're punching at the surface, it's not going to break. You have to commit 100% to go through it. If you hold back, if you don't commit, it's likely to hurt. So with the kids, they were intimidated by this at first. Kids, if it's something they haven't done before, they have a fear of pain. And again, if you don't commit, it does hurt. So it teaches them, especially if you start with the lower boards, let them start with the easiest one. They break it. They feel comfortable with that. Then they're willing to put a little bit more energy in the next one than the next one until they work up to this. Once they learn to break this, they're not afraid to hit anymore. They're not afraid to make that contact and they commit to the strikes. So as a teaching tool, this is fantastic for teaching them full commitment with their technique. Also, I just want to mention this is meant for bare hands or bare feet. I don't recommend kicking these with shoes on. It probably goes without saying. I mean, you really shouldn't be wearing shoes in a dojo anyway. But some schools will train outside in concrete. You'll break it just fine, but this tends to get torn up a bit. And you don't really want, I mean, unless you don't care. But shoes will kind of tear up the padding on these pretty badly. Now, let's get into durability. While I do equate this with a real piece of pine, over time, they do break down. I love them. They're a fantastic tool, but they do wear out. And over multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple breaks, they do get a little bit easier to break. As is, you can see. As is, you can tell with this one. Again, we've had this for about five years now. It breaks much easier. This is now the beginning board that we use. The lower boards, we have some red ones and blue ones. You look at them funny and they just fall apart. So we don't even use those anymore. But this black one is now a good intro tool. Plus, it's not so bad that the kids think, oh, I broke the black board. So it's a good one to start with. But when they come fresh out of the box, it's pretty solid. It's going to take a good full force to break this. So they do last quite a while. Okay, safety. I've seen some reports and reviews with a concern at what happens to these actually break. And I don't mean break the way it's supposed to, but say the plastic cracks. Can you cut yourself? Yeah, that can happen. But guess what? That can happen with wood too. So as long as you practice with these properly, you don't goof around with them. You don't start hitting people with them. You'll be fine. Just practice common sense when you use these. I would call these safer than wood because you're not going to get splinters or you're not going to get wood shards flying everywhere. So as far as the cleaner tool, I like this a lot. What about stacking them? All right, the kids get cocky. We've got this red one here. It takes a bit of force to do it, but maybe they're not quite ready for the black one. So they want to stack these boards. Okay, you can do that. But stacking them actually makes them a lot harder to break. I could break this board really easily. It's red. It's intermediate. But even if you start stacking them with the beginner boards on it, because you're taking away their ability to give and bend a little bit, so you have to hit them much harder. You can do it. They will break. But you have to put a lot more energy into it. It's not just the equivalent of hitting two boards, but probably more lines of hitting three or four because they're reinforcing each other. If you want to use multiple boards, I would recommend what they do with concrete blocks or stacks of wood. You put like the little gaps in between. So there's a little bit of give. So when you break the first one, they're punches. They're good for elbows. They're good for knee strikes. They're good for feet. But there's a variety of techniques you can use these with. And that's what I like about the kids. So we get them to practice breaking it for the first time. Their confidence is up. They've got it. They're feeling good. So they're like, okay, well now that you've got the kick down, break it with your fists. Oh, you got that? Great. Break it with a chop. Break it with an elbow. Break it with a back knuckle. You know, once they accomplish one, we get them to do the other ones. There's so many drills to do with this. Do with that. Start moving around. Get them to hit a moving target. So again, a great tool. Multiple applications. A lot of techniques. The kids love it. I'll tell you that right now. Besides the confidence building, which it does, I have seen these kids light up when they break it. And I've seen them work hard to break it. And then all they want to do is break it. But you should see the excitement. You break these out, they get excited. They come up to you after class. Can I break the boards? You know, there's also something really satisfying about the way these things snap. They got this nice crisp crack that just feels good. Kind of like the same thing with the board. But to me, these almost sound a little bit more of a sharper sound. So, definite fun tool to use. Also, if you like breaking boards, what about breaking blocks? They make those too. I have not personally used them, but they do have re-breakable bricks. And from what I understand this, they're yellow and they've got the red. Yellow is the intermediate, pretty easy. But red is supposed to be pretty tough. It's supposed to be equivalent to like, if this was a real board, that would be a real brick. So if any of you have tried any of the bricks, I'd be interested to hear what you think, because that might be something we might invest in. But yes, so they make bricks and they make boards as well. When it comes down to the cost, they're not too bad. Especially when you consider what you would spend on wood. You know, if this thing lasts you a couple years, it's worth the price. 30 or so dollars. Ballparking, you can find it cheaper. You know, look on Amazon, we've got some links below if you're interested in buying the boards. The red ones, they're a little bit less. Sometimes you can find them in the pack for like 60, 70 bucks. You get the whole kit with it. Might seem like a little bit at first, but if you think about it, how much would you spend on boards? If this thing lasted you a couple of years, how many boards would that add up to? To me, the cost is a no-brainer. Alright, so here we have a brand new board. Fresh out of the box for its maiden break. I like them brand new. They're a little bit more of a challenge, because they do wear out over time. So basically the great thing about these boards is you hold them up, you turn, you line, you aim. So you've got to hit them right in the center of the board. You hit them on the top or bottom. You're most likely not going to get a break because you have to hit right in the middle. That's a one downside, but it's also an advantage in my opinion, because it focuses you on direct energy right there. So you load up. One, two, and... Just like that. Just like a real board. And the nice thing is you can put it right back together and do it again. So overall, I really like re-breakable boards as a training tool. They are perfect, but they do a really good job and they are a better alternative for using real wood, at least as far as waste goes. Even though they do wear out and they weaken over time, they're still a major cost saver compared to how much you would have spent on real boards. So if you like board breaking, I do recommend picking these up. Thank you so much for watching. I would love to hear your experience, maybe creative drills you guys might have with using these re-breakable boards or even the bricks. So if you liked this video, please share and subscribe. I appreciate you all. Thank you and see you next time.