BUT CAN YOU REALLY USE IT?

 By Yang Xuangxing

Okay, so now you've learned a staff, sword, or whatever form...and you're comfortable with it. Your teacher says that you perform it rather well and you feel pretty good about it. But...can you actually use it against another weapon? In days long past, that was a given. Not so nowadays. Many people there are whose skill at performing weapons sets is really extraordinary...but they wouldn't stand a chance against a determined girl scout armed with a particular weapon.

My teacher was very old school (the “new, improved, street-oriented forms" didn't exist back then) and he insisted that his students not only learn how to perform their weapons sets skillfully, but that they also learned how to use them. We never suffered a serious injury, either. He was smart enough not to allow us to practice with live swords and although we wielded only wooden blades, we were very careful about making solid contact. And we started off slowly and gradually learned. I now do the same thing with my own students.

When I was much, much younger I was often very foolish and not without a good dose of pride. At least that's my excuse for having accepted numerous challenge matches, which were more than a little common in those days. And a few such engagements involved the use of swords and even staffs a couple of times. And the weapons were live. Like I said...I was very foolish. But I learned quickly how the weapons really worked and even created a handful of my own peculiar techniques, which will never be seen in traditional forms, But they work very well...for instance, one technique I developed is intended to elicit a particular defensive response (and it happens every time, whether performed with a sword or broadsword)....which will cause the defending party to slice his own throat with my sword! Of course, I never carried that technique to its conclusion...

Yes, it was foolish. Beyond foolish. But God was with me and I learned. And I appreciated what I had been taught and why.