It's in your head
What else do you do on a Sunday morning except go to a special training to better learn how to break boards?!
The first session was for the kids and first time breakers - I had an opportunity to teach for a change. It was a great learning tool for me. Great examples of technique over brawn and the 'it's in your head' factor. It was really interesting to be on the other side of someone battling with themselves and listening to the words I chose to help them through it.
An hour later when it was my turn to improve my breaking and it wasn't going as I wanted it to go, i.e. my foot bouncing off the board instead of breaking it, it was my peers and teachers who delivered those words back to me.
Instead of focusing on the negative chatter, or letting my subconscious sabotage my efforts, they bought me back to focus on what I could change, what I could improve in this moment.
Breathe. You'd think this would be a no brainer and that your body would just go ahead and do it. But as that helpful/unhelpful adrenaline courses through your system your breathing becomes shallow (thanks Dr Libby and your book Exhausted to Energised). For the purposes of TaekwonDo is also means you loose an important part of your power equation.
Continuous motion, foot position, don't take your eyes off the prize... the list goes on, turns out there's quite a lot for your body to remember.
Which brings me to another little interesting bit, that of muscle memory. The concept that today we learn it, then you go away, practice the living daylights out of it, about 2000 times according to Master Roundwaithe, and then it becomes automatic. The idea is to practice with easier-to-break boards and get your technique right, then when it's time to break the big one and when the pressure is on - your body just knows what to do. Isn't muscle memory amazing!
If there's one thing that continues to intrigue me on this journey to black belt is our mind, our spirit and our bodies. There I was thinking that I was advancing fast towards over the hill, but TKD has taught me while it mightn't come as easily as it did 20 years ago, you just need a little more persistence.
The spirit, with practice and with age, I think only becomes stronger too. Listen to this incredible interview with Diana Nyad, who at 64 swam 110 miles from Florida to Cuba - where her body is pushed past humanly explained limits and how the spirit takes over. Inspiration plus. So down to earth and so likeable, you could imagine having a cuppa with this incredible woman.
Enough from me... after the fails, turns out the success was waiting just around the corner.
Taekwon 
Photo credit: http://www.karateinbethpage.com/boardbreaking/index
Video Credit: Bryce Jerebine - thanks Sir!