Jan 12
25
Ilustrisimo Dos Manos
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I see several problems in this video.
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First of all, I want to say that the young man demonstrating is athletic and knows his technique well. Master Topher Ricketts has a well-deserved reputation of achievement in the FMA. This should not be interpreted as a slam on these two fine martial artists: I am presenting another side.
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I wonder about the stick. It seems awfully light and thin. My concern is that a real weapon such as a rake or shovel will be heavier and unwieldy. The practitioner will unlikely be able to do the quick strikes and broad swings we see here in the demo. If you had a garden hoe, for instance, you would have to adapt your technique.
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Another problem of training with a light weapon is that it is easy to do broad movements, but training with a heavier weapon forces you to use more economical movements.
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I also wouldn’t train with two identical weapons. I would train with the long stick against a barehanded opponent, or one armed with a beer bottle. This would help to train the practitioner to use the full reach of the stick. One would learn to counter by evading, by stop-hitting, by thrusting, by merging. Using matching weapons tends to make practitioners focus on blocking, then countering.
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On the second sequence at :04, the defender raises the stick up, then brings it down to block. At :09 we see a similar technique –the defender raises his stick up from the ground and passes it over the attacker’s underight. At :17 he raises the stick up and brings it back down over the attacker’s underleft. The shorter movement is simply to counter his underight by meeting with an underight. With a heavier weapon like a shovel, or a snow shovel, this may be all you’ve got.
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My goal has been to move the martial arts away from nunchaku, spears, gis, barefooted practitioners, machetes, and rattan sticks to the real-world environments I encounter in the US. Like the example cited on “Stun, Stagger, Stop” of the farmer who destroyed a couple of punks with his shovel; a shovel, hoe, rake, or pruner are real weapons. If you work on a farm, in construction, or in landscaping, these are tools that you are familiar with and can use to defend yourself –as long as you are focused on a likely weapon and a realistic scenario.
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