Karambit

This is one of those weapons that I find utterly fascinating, in spite of the fact that it looks like it should be completely impractical. You slice in order to stab; you stab in order to slash. It's a weapon that's very compatible with Northern Praying Mantis Kung Fu, and in particular the Long Fist movements in the system, which -- as I may have mentioned -- I kind of cut my teeth on. 

Take a look: 

Challenge: Memorable Advice

(This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. You can find links to other writers' answers over at Long and Short Reviews.)

Prompt: A piece of advice I'll always remember

I'm not sure this technically counts as advice, but at one point I was sitting with a Tai Chi instructor in a living room in Australia... Okay, right, maybe some background is in order here. 

Ages ago, I got involved with an online writing/roleplaying site for Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time called The Grey Tower. At the time, I was still doing a fair amount of martial arts, in particular Tang Lang (Praying Mantis) Kung Fu. (Northern Praying Mantis, if you're enough of Kung Fu geek to be curious.) So one of the things I did was help help people develop their ability to write believable fight scenes. And, as a result, periodically I'd get asked for advice about studying martial arts in real life. 

I'm actually weirdly proud of being able to help with that. One kid was asking about learning swords, and I suggested a couple of things including Aikido, since I thought that it would be an easier sell for his single mom if he could find a good local teacher. He did, and a couple of years later I got a nice email back as he was finishing high school saying that he and his friend had gotten as far as brown belts in Aikido, and thanking me for recommending it. 

And this was similar, except that it was an adult woman in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, and Tai Chi, and an American instructor that she'd convinced to fly in and hold a seminar on using the jian, which is commonly referred to as the "Tai Chi sword". And, of course, as the person who'd helped her make the connection, I was invited also. So Beautiful Wife and I flew down, and I attended a lovely and very educational seminar on swordsmanship while Beautiful Wife (who was pregnant with Firstborn at the time) mostly played tourist. 

So that was how I ended up sitting in someone's living room in Australia watching unrelated swordsmanship videos with a very accomplished Tai Chi instructor. And I forget exactly what it was that prompted it, but at one point I wound up saying, "With no offense meant to your wife, I married the best woman ever." 

He said, "Every man should feel that way about his wife." Which isn't advice, exactly, and I suppose could be stated more generally, but still: it's stuck with me over the years.

Everybody should feel that way about someone in their life.

Real Work Conversations: Panda Style Kung Fu

Me: "Naw, if I was going to study anything at this point, it would have to be Panda Style Kung Fu."

Co-worker: "Nice."

Me: (lifting hands) "I've already got the build for it."

Co-worker: "And you get dumplings."

Me: "Exactly."

Martial Arts: Speed Hitting

This is actually a very effective technique, but it takes a lot of practice to master it.

Classic Tai Chi video

Here's a piece of history: a Tai Chi video from 1937.


I should really go find some of the Northern Praying Mantis videos, too...

Combat Theory 02: He's Dead, Jim

Last night, I watched the movie Arena while I was folding laundry. (This is not an uncommon combination of activities, unfortunately. The days when I could set aside time and fully devote my attention to a movie belong to a distant and possibly mythical past; life with children does not permit such an abundance of free time.) While I don't intend to review the entire movie, I am going to talk about it in terms of writing (or in this case, choreographing) realistic fight scenes. The fight that I'm using as an example takes place in about the first three minutes of the movie, so the spoilers should be minor and inconsequential; nevertheless, there are spoilers. You have been warned.

I should also point out that there's going to be some discussion of violence and injury here, so if that sort thing squicks you out, you really shouldn't read any further.

Right, so: the movie opens with two men fighting in a faux-Roman arena. One man is armed with a pair of swords, shaped roughly like the Roman Gladius but about twice as long. The other is armed with something that I'd consider a voulge - a type of polearm with a large, cleaving blade on one end.

My first impression, of course, was: This is not an even match. They're on open ground, and the polearm has a clear advantage in reach. To have any chance at all, the swordsman is going to have to avoid getting killed long enough to move closer so he can launch attacks of his own - not easily done. And if he does get close enough to attack, he's going to have to kill or disable his opponent quickly, before the polearm clobbers him. If the guy with the polearm gets in a successful attack, then the battle ends even more quickly. So, either way, I'm not expecting a long fight.

But the choreography cheats around this problem, and does so reasonably subtly: with lots of maneuvering and dodging and throwing kicks or punches at strategic moments. There are even a couple of disarms, as the swordsman manages to disarm the polearm guy, only to have the polearm guy take one of his swords away. (This pretty clearly indicates that they're both vastly better at unarmed and disarming techniques than they are at actually using their weapons, but never mind that.) Also, in the course of this, they manage to slice each other up a bit - though, this being Hollywood, nobody actually goes into shock from pain or loss of blood.

Finally, though, the one with the polearm manages to knock down the swordsman, reclaim the voulge, and bury the cleaver-blade in the swordsman's kidney, parallel with the spine. (It's not really an attack, at that point; it's a splitting-logs-with-an-axe sort of motion.) The fight is finally over.

Boy, howdy, is it over.

However, at this point the fellow running the games surveys the audience to decide whether the fallen gladiator should live or die. This was where my Suspension Of Disbelief collapsed like a pup tent in a hurricane.

The defeated gladiator has just had one side of his torso smashed open with a polearm. At the very least, the blade has almost certain split his kidney in two. Given the size and shape of the blade, it's probably done a number on his intestines as well, and quite possible more: split one or two of the lower ribs, sliced across the diaphragm, punctured a lung. It missed the spine, so he's probably not paralyzed, but even with immediate attention from an expert trauma team in a fully-stocked emergency room and the best first-world antibiotics available, I'd give him no more than a one-in-four chance of survival. Probably less than that; I'm guessing, here. An EMT or the right sort of medical doctor could give you a more accurate estimate.

So asking the audience if he should be spared is, in all likelihood, a bad joke. If he's not dead already, he's almost certainly in shock and bleeding out: well on the way to dying. (And, by the way, every second you wait on the audience response is a second closer to him being dead.) The blade of the voulge may be tamponading the worst of the internal bleeding, but that won't last long.

Even if he did manage to survive, he'd be looking at months, maybe years, of recovery and rehabilitation before he could even consider fighting again. And that's assuming that his injuries didn't cripple him in one fashion or another.

Real fights to the death tend to be over very quickly, especially when weapons are involved. This is why most sport fighting has some equivalent of the Queensbury Rules, and why a lot of historical duels made allowances for stopping at first blood. Otherwise, you lose a lot of fighters to death or maiming. Armed combat generally isn't about two men wearing each other down until one or the other can't continue; that's much more the province of unarmed fighting. Fights involving weapons tend, by nature, to involve much more decisive injuries. There are exceptions, of course; but that's the way to bet.

Combat Theory 01: armed and unarmed

In the comments on the post about lightsaber battles, rejiquar asked if there were good beginning resources for writing and/or drawing believable combat scenes. I offered a partial answer there, but since this is a topic that plays to two of my particular interests - writing and martial arts - I thought I'd throw out some thoughts here. This might become a regular series, if it holds my interest and/or if enough of my readers find it interesting, so feel free to ask questions in the comments.

Obviously, I'm not going to be discussing self-defense in anything other than general terms, here. If you want to learn how to defend yourself, you need to find a competent instructor and spend some time training. Instead, I want to look at some elements of combat theory that might be helpful if you want to write medieval/fantasy fight scenes.

So, for starters, let's look at some of the differences between armed and unarmed combat.

First of all: a weapon, any weapon, is a huge advantage. Melee weapons - anything from a knife to a spear - offer a huge advantage in reach, leverage, and damage. With a weapon, you can hit from farther away; you can hit harder, and the edge of a blade (or even just a piece of wood) will deliver the force better than an empty hand or a foot ever will. Ranged weapons take this principle a step further, allowing you injure an opponent while staying well and truly out of his reach - unless he has a ranged weapon of his own, of course. The ideal situation is to have a weapon with enough reach that you can strike your opponent while he's still too far away to strike you.

The brings up one of the very nice things about using weapons: they offer quite a bit of gender equality. A five-foot-tall woman, facing off in unarmed combat against a man who's six-foot-four and twice her mass, is at a serious disadvantage. He has better reach, more weight, and almost certainly more muscle. He can hit her from farther away, and do a lot more damage. And if they move to a grappling situation, he can use his weight against her, too.

Put knives in their hands, though, and suddenly muscle and weight make a lot less difference. With a blade, it doesn't matter so much how hard you hit; it's much more important if you hit, and where you hit. So now the man still has an advantage in reach, but the difference in muscle now makes very little difference.

Now put swords in their hands, instead of knives. The man in this scenario still has more reach, but with each of them holding three feet of sharpened steel, the difference in reach is relatively slight and unimportant. It's still there, but it doesn't matter anywhere near as much. At this point it's mostly technique: skill versus skill.

Change them to using spears, and now there's essentially no difference in reach or ability to inflict damage. As long as nobody is too weak to use the weapon (which shouldn't be the case for reasonably able-bodied adults), the differences in strength and reach are unimportant, and the difference in weight can actually be a disadvantage for the heavier person. (It makes him less maneuverable.)

This also brings up another point: in unarmed combat, it's possible to absorb a blow from your opponent in order to deliver a more powerful blow of your own. I've heard this described as "sacrificing a pawn to capture a queen". With weapons of any sort, it really doesn't work that way. Weapons do so much more damage (and remember, antibiotics are a very new invention, historically speaking) that this sort of trick essentially doesn't work. Sure, you can take a blow to the leg in order to hit your opponent's head - but with any sort of weapons, you're still in real danger of having your leg disabled, not to mention death from blood loss or infection. At the very least, you've rendered yourself unfit for any further fighting until you recover.

From a fighting and/or self-defense perspective, weapons are basically always an advantage.

Oh, one other thought on armed and unarmed combat: there's more stylistic variety in unarmed combat. Some of that has to do with context. A style developed for men fighting in full plate armor is going to look very different from a style designed to fend off multiple unarmored opponents. But a lot of it is just difference in emphasis and body types.

With weapons, on the other hand, there's a certain sort of parallel evolution. There are only so many ways that a blade of a particular weight, shape, and balance can be used by a human body. So you find that katana techniques (designed for use with, basically, a two-handed saber) also show up, historically, in techniques for the Swiss two-handed saber. It's not because one style borrowed from the other; it's because there are only so many effective ways to use a blade of that approximate size and shape.

Lightsaber Battles

For those of you who can't watch videos, what follows is basically making fun of the lightsaber sequences in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Intriguingly, they focus mainly on the stage-fighting aspects (of, you know, a staged fight) and entirely skip over the part where Darth Maul's weapon is carefully designed to help you to eviscerate yourself.

(True story: I once spoke to fellow who makes custom swords - he was making one for me, in fact - and listened to him complain about some of the design requests he gets. The one that particularly worried him was a request for a double-bladed weapon, not unlike Darth Maul's lightsaber, with a katana blade on either end of the central handle. The blades would have their edges aligned in opposite directions, giving the weapon overall a slight "S" shape. This would essentially guarantee that any horizontal slash with the lead blade would automatically and unavoidably carry the rear blade into the owner's body, sharp-edge first.)

Traditional designs may not look as exciting as fantasy weapons, but there are good reasons why they became traditional. Not killing the people who were trying to use them was a big part of that process.

This is still funny, though:

Do it yourself Wooden Sword

Friend of mine posted a link to this on my FB wall a while back. So, for the benefit of anyone who might be so inclined: How to make a wooden sword for your kid.

Boot to the head

A little martial arts humor to brighten my Friday - and yours as well, I hope.
"Come, students. Close the circle at the feet of the Master."

Getting back to martial arts

Having children has been a terrible influence on my martial arts training (which is, I admit, somewhat erratic even at the best of times). But now that the boys are getting older, I'm looking at getting back into it. This, of course, presents the same question that it always does: given my age, activity level, and the growing danger of the total collapse of civilization, which martial art would be the best for me?

So far, I'm considering:
(Warning: martial arts can be violent and uncouth, so some of these videos may not be safe for work.)

1. Kabumei

KABUMEI -- The Art of the Sharpened Grenade from Detonation Films on Vimeo.

(Clearly a very effective art, but not without its dangers. Also, kind of... splattery.)

2. Gun Fu

(A truly modern martial art, but possibly too noisy to use against the zombie hordes.)

3. Bench Fighting

(The only difficulty here is the necessity of carrying around a largish bench in case someone attacks you. Not recommended for joggers.)

4. Dancing Finger Style Kung Fu

(Clearly a devastating unarmed fighting style, but one that requires you to dress oddly and make strange noises.)


As you can see, there's a lot to consider, here. Which one do you think I should try? Are there any other possibilities I should look into?

Martial Arts and Weapons

I mentioned in my last post that a lot of martial arts lately seem to be discarding or downplaying the study of weapons - owing, I think, mostly to the popularity of MMA. I also mentioned that I think this is, or at least can be, a serious mistake.

Admittedly, I'm biased. I love swords, spears, staves, knives, and all their manifold variations. I love them with the sort of deep, irrational interest that leads other people into truly inexplicable hobbies - like philately, say, or golf. But having said that, I still think there are good reasons to include weapons training in the study of traditional martial arts.

From a self-defense standpoint, any kind of weapon completely changes the nature of the game. Fighting unarmed, you can sometimes afford to take a hit in order to give a better one. If your opponent is armed with a knife, or swinging a stick at you, that simply isn't true. In fact, in a case like that your entire focus shifts to the weapon; getting control of the weapon is absolutely essential. (That assumes, of course, that you have no choice about fighting in the first place; getting away is really a much better option.) So if you're interested in martial arts for self defense - rather than, say, as a violent and competitive sort of exercise - ignoring melee and/or ranged combat is a pretty major oversight.

The obvious counterpoint is that nobody fights with swords or spears anymore. That's true, but that doesn't mean that the knowledge is obsolete. Techniques for the chinese straight sword transfer easily and immediately to a cane or anything similar; for something a bit heavier, you'll swing it around like a saber. Spear or staff techniques map fairly well for use with a broomstick or any reasonably sturdy pole that happens to be lying around. The tip-heavy, two handed cleaver (generally sold as a Dadao, if you want to google it) can be easily replaced with a baseball bat. The edge-awareness and general caution that comes from practicing with a blade is, in this context, basically just a bonus.

So that's one reason to retain weapons in your martial arts curriculum. There's also an exercise issue. One of the criticisms I've heard (generally from Mixed/Modern Martial Artists) is that the traditional arts don't put enough emphasis on conditioning. There's some truth to that accusation; I've certainly heard enough traditional schools claim that "you don't need to be in shape to study with us," or "it doesn't matter what shape you're in, our techniques will work," to become quite annoyed with those sorts of claims. Physical conditioning - and even more basic things like size, reach, and body mass - make a big, big difference in a fight. That's why combat sports (boxing, wrestling, MMA, etc.) invariably have weight classes. Yes, if someone is larger and stronger than you, you can still overcome those advantages if your technique is good enough; but that should never be taken to mean that those aren't advantages.

(Interestingly, this is much less true in any sort of armed combat. As I said, weapons are a game-changer. But I digress...)

Anyway, traditional martial arts really should involve a lot of physical conditioning - but frequently they don't, and often that seems to be because they're being taught incompletely. I can't speak for every style, obviously, but I have it on pretty good authority that the weapons forms are the loose equivalent of weightlifting in Tai Chi. From what I've seen, that appears to be the case in BaGua, also. I presume, admittedly from a small sample, that this a role that weapons commonly play in traditional training. So by leaving them out, you're potentially losing a lot of the physical conditioning that was originally part of your art.

Finally, of course, there's the inevitable Zombie Apocalypse to consider. While it's true that swords never run out of ammunition, that isn't the best reason to use one. Gunfire is noisy. Shooting a zombie invariably attracts more zombies. A quiet beheading offers you a far better chance to pass through the hordes unnoticed.

Well, okay, you can probably ignore that last bit. Probably. But I still think that a comprehensive study of the martial arts should include the study of weapons. (That actually includes guns, too, but guns are a subject for another post.)

My Martial Arts History

I've had a number of combat-related hobbies over the course of my life. I'm not talking about video games, though I certainly enjoy pixelated violence too. ("All the adrenaline, none of the guilt!") No, I'm talking mainly about martial arts.

In grade school, my brother and I took some Karate down at the local community center. (I can't tell you what sort of Karate, unfortunately, except that it was Okinawan in origin. I mention this because there are a great many different fighting styles that fall under the general heading of "Karate" - for Chinese styles, "Kung Fu" is the same way.)

In high school, I wrestled - and I think I was pretty good at it, though I never actually competed. (If that sounds odd, it's because in order to do this, I had to work out with the wrestling team for a school that I didn't actually attend. As a result, the couldn't - or wouldn't - take me along to events.)

Then I went away to college, and for about two years I did... nothing. After I changed colleges, I found a new group of friends and, among other things, got involved with the Society for Creative Anachronism. Being a Starving College Student, I only dabbled in Heavy Fighting (when I could borrow enough equipment - heavy fighting simulated knightly armored combat), but after a while I became a reasonably formidable Light Fighter. (Light Fighting basically used epees to simulate rapier and smallsword combat. This was twenty years ago, so Schlager play was still in its early, experimental stages; I never managed to try it.) I wasn't an expert, to be sure, but I was mobile and had a particular knack for the closing-of-distance involved in sword-and-dagger fighting.

And then I graduated, and again did nothing for several years. After I moved from Lawton, OK back to the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, my brother and some of my friends introduced me to a place that taught Northern Praying Mantis Kung Fu... a system I particularly enjoyed, and one for which I still have a great deal of respect. That got me introduced to the basics of staff techniques, and the beginnings of two-handed saber. Unfortunately, the commute eventually became too much to deal with, and I started looking for a place closer to home.

That brought me to a fellow who taught at a local Chinese community center - the sort of place where they speak English mainly as a courtesy. He offered courses in BaGua (Eight Trigrams), Tai Chi, and Hsing-I... and while the teaching style was very different from what I'd had before, there were some advantages: among them, the fact that he would offer a course for just about anything that enough students were interested in.

I've always been interested in weapons; it's what brought me to traditional martial arts in the first place. So here, I was able to work with the Chinese Jian (straight sword) and Dao (saber), and pick up the basics of spear as well. Best of all, the styles he taught were compatible with the Praying Mantis Kung Fu I knew already; I didn't have to unlearn anything in order to learn new skills.

Then Firstborn came along. His arrival pretty much killed off my free time. If he would have napped during spear class, it might have worked... but no, he wanted to get up and move around. In a roomful of people practicing with spears. That might have been funny in a Warner Brothers cartoon, but in real life? Not so much. So that pretty well ended my practice of Kung Fu.

Once Firstborn was old enough that he didn't require the constant attention of whichever parent was taking care of him - I want to say that this was just before he turned two - I found a place right down street that taught Brazilian JiuJutsu. They didn't teach weapons, but that style meshed neatly with my wrestling background (and, oddly, with some of the Tai Chi and Mantis techniques as well). By this point I was willing to sacrifice weapons for exercise, so I signed up. That lasted for about a year and half, until they changed locations and suddenly became a whole lot less convenient to get to.

By then, though, the Praying Mantis school had opened a branch over on my side of the Metroplex, so I was able to do that again... for about six months.

That was when Secondborn arrived. But this time, we were expecting the interruption, so Secondborn never got a chance to try to insert himself into a martial arts class. Given his unerring instinct for placing himself in the worst possible spot at exactly the wrong moment, I'm sure he's very disappointed about this.

Secondborn, however, is coming op on his first birthday... on Thursday, in fact. So we are once again nearing that magnificent moment where I might actually be able to have hobbies again. And after some consideration, I'm leaning towards a place that teaches Korean swordsmanship. It's not as close as it could be, but it's easy to get to, and I'd get to play with weapons again. (The current emphasis on MMA seems to have caused a lot of schools to quit teaching weapons and focus entirely on unarmed techniques. I think that's a mistake for several reasons, but in all honesty I'm mainly annoyed that it makes it just that much harder for me to find the things that I want to study.)

So, assuming that the Zombie Apocalypse doesn't arrive in the next six months or so, that's probably the plan.

Time to get back in the game

Being the parent of a new baby has completely eaten the time I used to spend on martial arts - which, admittedly, wasn't all that much to begin with. I'm okay with that, but I'm looking forward to the point when I get some of my own time back.

I'm also looking forward to the time when I can start the boys on martial arts. I really thought they were still too young - especially Secondborn, who isn't quite six months old yet. Turns out I may be wrong about that; I've just been thinking in terms of the wrong sort of martial art for his age group.

I'm a little disappointed, actually. It turns out I could have been doing this with Firstborn for the last several years:



Tip o' the Hat to Ambre

Writing, Martial Arts, and Priorities

I mentioned earlier that I don't get a lot of writing time right now. (And what I do get is often done while I'm taking a break at work.) Oh, I could get more writing time if I wanted it - just as I could find more time to practice martial arts if I really wanted to - but I'm not willing to do the things I'd have to do in order to get that extra time. I like having a stable job that offers actual retirement; I like not worrying about whether we'll have enough money to make the car payment on time this month, or whether that will cut into our grocery money. Similarly, I like being married and I enjoy spending time with my wife. I like being part of our children's childhood, getting to know our boys and watching them grow up.

So it's fair to say that I'm not a published author because writing isn't important enough to me. The same goes for martial arts; I'm not as proficient as I could be because I haven't made it enough of a priority. The thing is, I'm okay with that. More: I'm proud of that. These things are important to me - important enough, at least, that I don't drop them entirely - but being involved in my family and providing a reliable source of income are more important. It is a matter of priorities - and those are mine.

I mention this because I occasionally run into the attitude that if you're not Sacrificing Everything For Your Art - be it writing, painting, Kung Fu, Golf, or whatever - then it somehow reflects badly on your value as a person. Not spending all my off-work hours on my chosen activity - or having a full time job that interferes with pursuing that activity - is a mark of laziness, of someone who prefers comfort over achievement. Is that really the sort of person you want to be? Lack of obsession is tantamount to lack of interest; if you aren't willing to pursue your goals with your whole heart, why even bother?

This is sort of understandable if you're the sort of person who has one single hobby which occupies the majority of your attention. That's not me, though - and it isn't most people I know, either. Most of us have a variety of interests, which are more or less important to us, and we spend a fair amount of time balancing our schedules to fit our priorities.

Here's the thing: I have a good marriage, and we're raising a good pair of boys. That's the goal that I'm pursuing with my whole heart. Having a stable job that pays decently isn't absolutely necessary to that, but it makes Being Married And Raising Children so much easier that it might as well be. Writing is still a priority - I don't think I could give it up if I wanted to - but it's a much lower priority. I can live with myself if I never get published, but if I screwed up my family...

Martial Arts are even lower priority. I still intend to go back to them, but right now that hobby is completely on hold. Maybe someday the boys will join me. (It's pretty easy to pictures us beating each other with sticks in the back yard...)

So: I'm not sacrificing my goals for comfort, or out of laziness; I'm not sabotaging myself out of fear or insecurity. I'm doing exactly what I think is important. It may not be what you think is important, or even what you think is cool, but that is not my problem.

I've been a lot more comfortable about being myself since I figured that out.

Pekiti Tirsia Kali

Tonight I visited another martial art. I won't call it a school, precisely, because it's basically a guy teaching out of his house. I've looked at this art before, but it was several years ago. Tonight was a strong reminder of why I liked it. This particular style is called Pekiti Tirsia Kali.

The first thing to realize it that was meant to make people ready to fight as quickly as possible. So it starts from weapons, and works back to unarmed from there. The main weapons it uses are machete and knife; it also has some gun-oriented components. This has a certain bloody-minded appeal for me.

Secondarily, it's surprisingly compatible with things that I've already done. It recognizes and trains the Six Harmonies, though it doesn't refer to the concept that way. (The Six Harmonies are hips-and-shoulders, elbows-and-knees, and hands-and-feet. To produce power, they are coordinated in any larger movement - hence, in harmony.) The stepping and stances are compatible, too: angular steps, very mobile, with attention to both closing and exiting. A lot of their attacks are built along diagonal lines, making them very similar to some of the Long Fist movements used in Mantis.

I have a few minor issues - the main one being that their idea of a "long" weapon is a machete. My idea of a long weapon is a staff or spear. I am not entirely sure that those weapons don't exist in this style, but they're certainly not part of the introductory curriculum. I'm also not sure whether this style works mostly with single weapon, or whether they ever use paired weapons.

But it's interesting, it's close, and it's no more expensive than anything else I've looked at. It's firmly focused on weapons, and I could probably get quite a bit out of it in the six months or so that I have available. I could do a whole lot worse than study this.

Saturday Morning Staff Meeting

On Saturday I started a seminar on the Yin Shou Gun ("Yin Hand Staff") form. The name refers to the fact that both hands use a palm-down grip throughout most of the form. (I was going to link to a video, but the ones I'm finding don't look much like what we were doing. They're very pretty. We're not doing 'pretty'.)

The class is over at the Fort Worth school, which is a bit a of a drive, but it's only once a week so it's manageable. That also gives me a whole week to forget what we went over in the previous class, but in this case I have a small advantage - I've done this form before, or one very like it. Visiting the Fort Worth school was like Deja Vu all over again.

We did a few sequences to get started (and to get a feel for how this particular form works), and I wound up working with one of the Wing Chun students. (I studied Northern Praying Mantis, back when I was formally a student there.) This was interesting to watch, as some of the stepping that I consider basic to mid-level material apparently doesn't exist in Wing Chun at all.

Prior to Saturday, I had been seriously considering taking up Wing Chun. It's a much smaller martial art than Mantis - less to learn, fewer forms to memorize - which would be good, given that I don't have all that much time to devote to it. It also works at very close range, which means you can practice it in relatively small spaces. (Mantis, by contrast, is best done in a gymnasium or outdoors.) Unfortunately, since my main interest is weapons, and the stepping for most weapons is very different from the way Wing Chun sets up, Wing Chun is out.

That leaves four possibilities, from the original list. In no particular order:

1. Aikido - $100/month, good exercise, staff/sword/knife, workable schedule.
2. Pekiti-Tirsia Kali - $100/month, stick/knife, inconvenient schedule.
3. Kumdo - Prob. $100/month, excellent exercise, all swords all the time, inconvenient schedule.
4. Mantis - $50/month, weapons in weekend seminars only, convenient schedule.

Bugger. When I write it out this way, it's almost a toss-up. I guess I should confirm the cost on the kumdo, but... I dunno. We'll see.

Running with the Geeks

Sadly, this is not too far from the truth...


(Courtesy of http://xkcd.com/)

My problem is that I simply don't enjoy exercise, and I don't have the discipline to force myself to do it. So in order to get any exercise, I have to find something that I enjoy doing, which just happens to be good exercise. This is how I, as a sword geek, ended up studying Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (which has exactly nothing to do with swords) for a year and a half.

Now I'm hoping to find something that will let me play with swords, and also happens to be good exercise. Aikido looks like the best option so far; I'd do taijiquan (Tai Chi), but the only school I know which includes a serious emphasis on weapons use is based near Washington, D.C. - so the commute is a bit prohibitive...

Another Martial Arts School

So, my sister-in-law and I have been looking at local Martial Arts schools. We haven't had a lot of time, so we're basically hitting one a week. Results so far have varied from disappointing (good instructor, bad students) to pleasantly surprising (much better than I'd seen that style taught before), to last night's entry... which was interesting.

I'm reluctant to name names, especially on the less impressive schools, so bear with me.

Last night's entry was a small, local Kung Fu school. The instructor offers three sorts of classes: a forms class, a sanshou (free-fighting) class, and Tai Chi. We arrived in time to watch the very end of the forms class, and all of the sanshou class.

The forms class had four students, in the 12-15 age range. The forms had a very Wushu feel to them - flashy stances, wobbly-bladed swords, dramatic movements. (For those unclear on the distinction, Wushu is Communist state-sponsored Kung Fu, and tends to be more of a performance art and less of a fighting style; as part of the performance, it uses thin, flexible blades on any weapons.) This was a little disappointing, as I have no interest in studying swords that aren't actually swords.

The next class was the sanshou class, which was what we'd mainly come to see. I was particularly curious about how one would teach sanshou, as I tend to think of it as something you do as part of learning a style. In this case, the students were a young man (maybe eighteen), and a woman who looked to be in her early twenties. They worked on basic kicks, basic punches, and some stepping, either in the air or targetting pads. When they were targeting each other, they wore oversized boxing gloves. Apparently the sanshou class involves some knee and elbow work as well. This was Kung Fu stripped down to its fighting essentials... which is to say, it was basically just kickboxing. My reaction (which mirrored my sister-in-law's almost perfectly) was essentially, If I wanted this, I'd just study Muay Thai and have done with it.

As I said, it was interesting. The instructor was good - he could demonstrate exactly what he wanted, fast or slow, and his movements were graceful, balanced, and coordinated - but he managed to completely avoid everything that I would actually want to study.

At one point he asked what we'd studied, and we told him that we'd done a little bit of Northen Praying Mantis. (This is known as "hiding your tip". We've actually studied more than a little of it.) This led him to show a little bit of a mantis form, and explain that mantis moves were too flashy for real fighting.

There two problems with this. The first is that the phrase "praying mantis kung fu" doesn't actually tell you that much. Why? Well, first, Northern Praying Mantis is a completely different style from Southern Praying Mantis; aside from the name, there's no connection between them. Second, Northern Praying Mantis has several different branches, which do things differently - sometimes very differently. To further confuse the issue, at one point there was an effort to preserve and consolidate all styles of kung fu. As a result, there is now a mantis form in what is usually taught as "Shaolin Kung Fu".

I believe this last is what the fellow last night was thinking about. Because of its history, that form focuses on the distinctively mantis movements, and - if taught as part of wushu - actually will be more of a showy, display style. But that's the mantis form, not actual Mantis Kung Fu.

So that's the first problem: he didn't know what we were talking about.

The second problem is this: if someone comes to your school with prior training in another style, don't dis that style. First of all, even if you're familiar with the style, you don't know how they were taught. I've seen some good styles taught very poorly, and I've met some very formidable practitioners of styles that I would otherwise dismiss. You never know. Second, if the person liked that style, they're likely to feel insulted when you talk it down - and that's not the reaction you want from a potential student. Third, and most important, it makes you sound insecure about your own style. Again, this is not the impression that you want to make.

Seriously. Don't be that guy.

Finding a Martial Arts Studio

I am, as many of you already know, a sometime martial artist.

There are a lot of reasons why people get into martial arts: self-defense, competition, exercise, confidence-building, etc. My interest is mainly in ancient weapons; trying to study martial arts is basically an outgrowth of that. That's not to say that the unarmed elements don't interest me - they do - but it does mean that what I'm looking for in a style/school/teacher is a bit unusual.

Complicating the issue is the simple, undeniable fact that I'm not a very good student. For me, martial arts are a hobby - one among several. I don't have a great screaming lot of free time just sitting around, begging to be used; so any classes I take get squeezed into my schedule along with everything else... and they usually get assigned about the same priority as writing. Since writing falls behind all the things I consider necessities - things like keeping my job, covering for my wife, being a good parent to my son - there isn't a lot of time left.

That would be fine, if it meant that I could set aside, say, two hours a week for classes. Unfortunately, my free time also tends to be erratic. Things come up, pieces of the schedule move around, people get sick, and sometimes we even have genuine emergencies. This is a serious problem for my writing, but it's even worse for my martial arts. Missing a single class doesn't seem like a terribly big deal, until you realize that it's your entire week's worth of study - and that the next time you return to class, you've effectively been gone for two weeks and everyone else has moved on to the next bit of the curriculum.

Study of the martial arts - like any other complex skill - requires repetition. To get that repetition, you need some combination of regular class attendance and practice outside of class. I have never (well, rarely) been able to manage to practice outside of class. That pretty much leaves class attendance, and I can manage that about once a week, on average. Most schools suggest that you need to attend at least twice a week (and regularly) if you want to make steady progress. Obviously, if you attend more, you'll learn faster. And if you attend less, you learn more slowly, but... well...

At twice a week*, you advance steadily if not quickly. You'd think that someone attending once a week would take twice as long to advance, but it's worse than that. Once you drop below twice a week, you tend to lose track of things between classes. You're not getting the benefits of repetition; you're essentially re-learning skills each time you come to class. So instead of twice as long, it takes three or four times as long.

And so but anyway, I'm looking for a new school. The reasons for this are twofold: first, the style I was studying doesn't include weapons; and second, that school is moving to a larger place, which happens to be rather further from my house.

This has led me, once again, to start looking for schools in my area. I'm looking for something that teaches, or at least includes, weapons; something reasonably nearby; something that offers enough classes at enough reasonable times that I have a decent chance of actually making it to class; and something that doesn't interfere too badly with my prior training. Should be easy, right?

Let me tell you, it'd be a lot easier if these places just answered their &*^$%# e-mail. Of the various places I've tried to contact, the fastest response I received took a week and a half. I just got one back today that I swear took three weeks; I'd forgotten exactly what I asked them, and they didn't include the text of my inquiry in their response.

It's almost enough to drive me back to the SCA. Not quite, but almost.

Anyway, among the traditional schools in the area, I've narrowed it down to about half a dozen. They're mostly Chinese styles - Northern Praying Mantis, Wing Chun**, Long Fist - and one Japanese style, Aikido, thrown in for good measure. I need to do a little more searching: there are a few styles that actually start with weapons - Escrima, Kali, and others - but they're rarer and for some reason they don't tend to show up on general searches for Martial Arts. There are also some organizations devoted to the recreation of the traditional Western martial arts, such as the AEMMA and the ARMA; the last time I checked, they didn't have branches in my area, but it's been a few years and that could have changed.

All this would be a lot easier if I could just win the lottery and retire now...

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* This is a bit arbitrary, and there are probably people who need more or less exposure than this; but it's a good rule of thumb in my experience.

** Wing Chun gets something of a bad rap among the MMA/UFC crowd, but for my needs it's not bad at all; it's actually the only style for which I have two schools on my list of places to visit. My only gripe with it is its limited selection of weapons.