Attracting a Crowd (2-3 minutes)
The first 2-3 minutes of your demo should have one goal in mind: Attract attention so that everyone within sight and hearing will gather. In some circumstances, the crowd is already gathered, but you should still spend a few minutes anyway to make everyone quiet and still. A few, quick, loud board breaks will do the trick, especially to music. Be careful not to use your best material in the first few minutes, while people are gathering.
Keeping their Attention (3-5 minutes)
The next 3-5 minutes should be your best. If you have any fast-paced, musical team forms (short in length), weapons, or synchronized or sequential board-breaking routines that have a high “wow” factor, now is the time to use them.
This is not the time for long forms, one-steps, or basic kicking routines, as you might lose your audience.
But if you have a self-defense choreography, complete with throws, takedowns, and applications, this could work well, especially when your audience is older, and you believe may be intrigued by realism.
Skit Example:
- Basic Scenario: A small child, your smallest star pupil, is walking home from school and gets jumped by a group of 4-6 bullies. The bullies mock the child, who then runs off and joins “Joe’s Martial Arts.”
- Training Scene: The demo team acts as the class, with someone calling off the moves and counting.
- Transformation: After 1 year of training at Joe’s Martial Arts, the child is again confronted by the bullies.
- Resolution: The child defeats the bullies in a choreographed routine to music, and the crowd cheers.
The ideas for skits are endless, limited only by your imagination and the time you have to practice.
The Final Board Break:
I would then do a quick, but advanced final board or brick break. You should train your holders to get in place in less than 30 seconds.
While your boards are being set up, I would make an announcement, on how we are going to teach some volunteers from the audience a few techniques, and anyone who has the guts to participate in front of everyone gets to try to break a board (everyone else can try to, but has to pay the dollar.)
I would then break the board, and start picking volunteers. I would usually plant a few kids in the audience to pick first, just to get the ball rolling.
Without delay, I would then transition into the teaching portion of the demo.
