Tips for Holding a Board When It's Being Broken

Video Transcript

"Mike Lewis with Christian Martial Arts on behalf of Expert Village, we're going over today how to break boards with your hands. The holder for your board has a pretty big responsibility. Let's go over some of the facts that he has to sort of, some of the responsibilities he has rather. Number one, he has to make sure that he has a very good stance, deep and very, very sturdy so that if I push him he doesn't get knocked off balance and you can see how his body sort of rocks back a little bit. So what he'll have to do is deepen up his stance and get a better front stance is usually what people pick for this because it helps support the back leg and helps support you from moving backwards. Also, this bottom arm is going to be almost straightened and locked out and this arm will be almost locked out so that way when he supports more to his arms that he's not absorbing shock. He's actually pushing up against and finally, one of the biggest responsibilities of the board holder is to actually check the board before the person gets ready to strike. So in other words, say if you're doing a demonstration, a board breaking demonstration, your board holder's need to check their boards number to make sure there's no knots, there's nothing to hinder the board from breaking and also that they're holding it with the right curvature. So that when they're holding the board that it's actually concaved in on side that you're striking. If you're doing multiple board breaks, they also have to check and make sure that they're not holding one board in the wrong direction, that they're not holding one vertically, with the grain running vertically, and one running horizontally because no matter if it's on the front or on the back, it's still going to hinder you from breaking the board and causing injury to the person striking."