ATA Taekwondo Tournament Board Breaks David Roberts 2.26.2011

Despite a painfully injured foot (cracked bone it turned out to be) & many people telling me I shouldn’t & shouldn’t have competed with it, I managed to earn a 3rd place medal in board breaks this Saturday.  It may not look like it in the video but each kick is very painful. I withdrew from the forms & sparring events after board breaks due to the big blood bubble forming on my foot, previous injury broken open again. Even now (Monday night) the bubble is still there & simply wearing a shoe hurts!

I never air-balled a board, but I did finger pop a couple of the 360’s, my thanks to my tough-as-nails board holders & their knuckles & my instructor Ms Hale for allowing me to do advanced content in the competition.

And thanks to my mom & wife for doing the video recording too!

Latest Injury – Broken foot

In the ER yet again. Practing my quad combo board break for the compitition on saturday. It’s a pretty awesome combo – starts with a left snapping chin level jumping front kick, then a right foot knee level roundhouse following into right foot 360 head level roundhouse and ending with a left foot shoulder level spinning axe kick. It’s all one fluid motion where my feet barely touch the ground. Really cool stuff. Well the last 360 round house sent the board flyin across the room, into a wall which then fell on a table and onto the floor making a big racket…but didn’t break it. I screwed up and hit the board just below my right foot big toe.. Very little instantaneous energy transfer due to the leverage & lack of inertia on the tip of my foot, but full power backing it up. Turned a dark purple and produced a bubble looking thing about the size of a ping pong ball all around the base of the big toe knuckle within 5-10 seconds of the hit. Still sitting in the ER waiting on my turn for an xray. Sure hope the joint is just blown all to hell intead of having broken bones. They might not let me compete on saturday if they find out i broke my foot.

Soreness

Been doing a lot of Taekwondo classes in the last few days to make up for the snow days from last week. Constant state of soreness in my legs. While doing Songahm 4 in class last night I heeled myself in the shin so hard I had to sit down for a few minutes. It actually put a dent in my shin that I swear was big enough to eat a bowl of cereal out of. I don’t mind getting hurt during sparing when someone kicks me in the head or what not, but kicking myself.. thats really irritating. And hurts LOTS. Both legs have pretty bad shin splints and aching muscles.