SECRETS OF MARTIAL ARTS WEAPONS

 by Yang Shuangxing

How often have I witnessed a weapons competition or demonstration that involved tossing the weapons into the air and catching it, or placing it on the ground and then doing a shoulder-roll over it, and other such ridiculous displays of half-baked gymnastics and tumbling!! What's worse is that many of these young people actually believe that that's how the weapon is to be used! In actual combat, anyone tossing his weapon into the air would be long dead before it hit the ground. And those who do spectacular flying kicks and cartwheels? They wouldn't have to buy shoes in pairs anymore...

Many contemporary competitions allow participants in the Weapons Forms Divisions to use replicas of actual weapons...and they've been produced strictly for showy competition. Modern Wushu utilizes sword that feature ultra-flimsy (and very lightweight) blades that would never hold up in a real fight. Moreover, modern Wushu performer would be hard put to perform with live steel, which is considerably heavier than their “make believe” swords; in fact, they'd likely injure themselves!

And Karate stylists can be seen using very thin, synthetic staffs when they walk into the ring. Such flimsy “weapons” are not permitted in competition in Japan or Okinawa for obvious reasons. The Japanese katana is sometimes used (and abused) by such performers, who sometimes place the sword on the ground in front of them and do somersaults or cartwheels over it before grabbing it again and swinging it around like a Louisville Slugger (a well-known baseball bat from my youth) or twirling it around in cute curved and circles (much like baton twirling) with one or both hands... such movements are testaments to their (and their teacher's) lack of knowledge on the subject of real swordsmanship.

And Chinese swordsmanship isn't taught at all anymore, even in China (where the government fears that if they learned such things, the people might revolt someday). Gong-Fu stylists learn forms, but that's all. And they may even do them very well, but they openly display a total lack of real fighting skill when they perform.

My teacher was one of the last real swordsmen of China back in his day. Thankfully, he insisted that I learn how to actually use a sword apart from practicing forms. I learned that there's much more to the traditional form than most people realize; special forms of cutting and even disarming the opponent. I would eventually develop what I call “dirty tricks”; techniques that are not found in traditional forms, such as a couple that cause the opponent to slice his own throat...with your sword! In mock fights with wooden and aluminum blades, I have found these techniques to be successful 100% of the time! I teach them only to my most senior students.