Weapons training in Chinese martial arts
This article probably isn’t going to make me many new friends in the Chinese martial arts community, but it is a simple choice of keeping quite and don’t upset people and so contribute to the continuing degeneration of the combat aspects of the Chinese fighting arts or try shedding some light on this subject. It would be fair to say that most Chinese boxing styles make use of weapons training, some schools/styles make use of many and place a lot of emphasis on forms and two-person training forms whilst others may only utilise one or two. However it is reasonable to say that your martial arts training is incomplete without having studied weapons (handling them and defending them). In days of our martial arts forefathers, emphasis was placed on weapons training and empty hand combat skills would not have been the main priority in training up an army or a group of young men to defend their town or village. This is simply because you should never be without your weapon. I liken this to modern military personal. They are taught extensive weapon training and only the basic needs of empty hand self defence is taught in the advent that you land up without your weapon. Contrary to popular belief, however not every individual carried a nice shiny sword on his/her hip. Only warriors or the wealthy had such privileges to be able to get there hands on swords. Even in the most rural of area’s where young men and women had to learn martial arts in the advent that they needed to defend their town and homes, weapons would have been the main focus, as we are aware those that couldn’t afford swords used the most basic of instruments as weapons. The real fact is that going empty handed against another adversary who is skilled with a weapon is a suicide mission. Only the most highly skilled practitioners are able to defeat empty handed against another skilled armed opponent. If your in doubt go down to your local Filipino or kendo school and see is you can take a weapon off them or defeat them before you get hit with the weapon… you’ll have allot of bumps and lumps. When someone has a weapon your best and most effective way of defeating them is to be armed yourself. Only as an absolute last resort would you try take on an armed enemy empty handed. Firstly it must be understood that most Chinese systems have lost all real application of their weapons, they merely have forms/taolu. Compare the Chinese martial arts weapon training and combat applications to the Filipino, Indian, Japanese, okinawan….need I carry on………. And something becomes very obvious, all the Chinese martial arts have left is empty forms, there applications at best are generally wrong, misinterpreted or darn right stupid, and that is if you ever see any real applications demonstrated. It would also be important to bear in mind that many forms don’t make use of the angles that you would actually use in combat, and the forms don’t teach strategies or tactics, they mainly just list techniques. So what has happened? Without going into the whole political history of china, as this has been well documented in many articles on Chinese martial arts, the final downfall of the Chinese arts came with the communist party take over. The barehanded arts of china have barely survived, yes sure there is a lot of people in China and around the world doing what they think is old Chinese martial arts, but generally it is not! All they are doing is empty forms/taolu with no understanding of the applications and no idea of how to actually train the combat aspects of these arts; they are a mere shell, empty of any real martial arts skills. The real martial arts skills that enables a practitioner to end a persons life with a heart beat, real combat skill…. This is almost dead, it’s all just sport fighting (make reference to my other article on the differences) So it shouldn’t take a genius to figure out that the practice and use of weapons for war and personal combat have not survived at all. We have generation of practitioners today who have only been taught forms and generations of teachers and students who have never fought with them.I was told by a highly respected teacher from Hong Kong that when he learned from his teacher all he was taught was the weapon forms and two person forms, there was no application of them. If you actually nail down most old instructors today from Hong Kong or mainland China you will find that most will have learned exactly the same way, just forms! While many of the applications may at first glance look very obvious and easy to apply, they are far from it. And are you willing to bet your life on it? Would you go out and spar with a kendo practitioners or a Filipino with a stick? I would bet most my belongin'g's that 90% of Chinese martial arts instructors will ….. As we say in Ireland “get the shite beaten out of them”. Today I would like to discuss some aspects of the following four weaponsStaff (gun), sabre (dao), sword (jian) , spear (cheong) Whilst each of these could easily be an article on themselves, ill just be touching on some of the important aspects of each. Let’s examine some of the major misconception and mistakes made by almost all of the Chinese martial arts community today. Fajing with a weapon or generating internal shock with a weapon…. This is wrong, no if’s or but’s it is wrong. If you watch most practitioners go through there forms you will see them “express their power” with there strikes by making it bend and shake. While it must be noted that many styles use a more flexible spear, they do bend slightly and so are able to cut at unusual angles, shocking or fajing was not meant for weapon application. When you shock something or emit faijing through your body i.e. hands, you shock what you are touching, so whilst this may be affective when your are holding a persons limbs or when striking them with your body, when you are holding a weapon you actually shock your weapon and the power gets dissipated into your weapon, the power scatters and cause’s you to be unable to focus your power through the weapon into the target, after all that is what a weapon is for isn’t it? To kill or maim an opponent easier than you could with your bare hands!!! A weapon creates shock all on its own that is why since the beginning of time they have been used in combat, a hard staff just needs direction and momentum and the staff will do the rest for you. A blade just needs to be given speed and direction and it will do the rest for you, that’s why they are so dangerous. I think this has always been a problem in the Chinese martial arts. Many styles and practitioners have used poles and other weapons to practice their fajing or shocking power, but this was or is a training tool for empty hand combat skills, it should not be confused with or used as a way of generating power with a weapon. It must be noted that practitioners do use there whole body in many of the weapon applications but this does not mean you shock your weapon. So test what I say….. take a pole or spear put a dot on a piece of paper or hang a golf ball and strike at it with a thrust but try fajing or shock the weapon with all your power like you would in your form. You can’t hit it can you? The tip keeps shaking and bending and you are unable to focus your blow at a certain spot. Now try doing it to a moving target like another person when they are also trying to hit you. You will find that you cannot aim well at all, and the actual power that hits the target is very little, all the power you see in your weapon is exactly that, power in the weapon… it cannot be transferred into the target. It was known that lancers (spearmen) from roman armies to Chinese martial artists were said to be able to hit a target as small as a fly! If you are to watch all other martial disciplines from old English fighting arts to Japanese, Filipino, Okinawan, Indian you name it, none of them shock or fajing there weapons. Are we so big headed to think that our martial arts are so superior that we know the right and best way to use them? Given the history of china and the fact that all martial arts were banned for many years, it is safe to say that most Chinese martial artists know as much about using their weapons for combat as a pig does about flying…… nothing!!! Most so called Chinese martial arts masters today wouldn’t last a few seconds against most Japanese bugeisha (student of the bugei –military arts) or Filipino eskrimandors, lets face it when it comes to weapons the Chinese arts have just about lost all combat application. Let’s look at bladed weapons of the sabre and straight sword. Firstly if you haven’t trained with a real razor sharp combat weapon as far as I am concerned you haven’t even picked up the weapon let alone started to study it. These stupid floppy wushu sh#t that people use today are incorrectly weighted and balanced and have contributed to serious technical mistakes being made today by practitioners.Firstly get up and go grab your sword………really go do it……….. Make a horizontal cut from right to left (with your right hand holding the sword) as hard as you can, like your trying to open up someone’s stomach!!! Listen to the sound you made did it make a flutter or was it a very sharp zing? Well I guess that most of you made a flutter, that is wrong and I wouldn't go try cutting something just yet as you will break your blade or put a nasty chip in it. What caused the flutter? It was the blade turning in the air and that is why you wouldnt be able to cut anything, when I watch most practitioners use the sabre they would actually land up slapping the side of the blade off their target, and these are normally traditional stylists, the wushu guys….god, they would just land up dropping the weapon as they don’t have the slightest idea of how to use them (that includes the shaolin monks of today..) The zing is made from the blade staying still and cutting through the air, the faster you cut the louder and sharper the zing. Now go out and make zings with all your cuts… when you can do that go back to your form/taolu and try getting it correct. Only then would I go start trying to trim your hedges with your sword. It is very important to practice cutting objects with your swords. No warrior in his right mind would actually try going into combat without having mastered his cuts. If you haven’t how do you know you can? How on earth could you cut and kill another human being without first having practice your cutting skills? Every style of martial arts employs some form of training allowing its students to practice its cut’s with swords or knives. Material is made up of either special mat’s (tatami) like the Japanese or even on pieces of meat which is common with the Filipino arts. Yet how many of you Chinese martial artists have been taught how to cut objects? Do you do it on a regular basis? If not you are not studying the art of the sword at all… all your doing is playing children’s games with make believe weapons. It is common in Japanese sword arts for the student to start practising with the bokken (wooden sword) and then progress to a sharp live sword (skinken). Then they may start hitting tyres and and other objects to toughen up the body for cutting through an object then you would progress to cutting tatami with a live blade, in days of old warriors practiced their cuts on prisoners. All whist studying the kata, but only after all the basics of the weapon has been mastered. Unlike the Chinese arts today that normally don’t even teach basic block’s, parries, deflections and cuts with the sword. let alone teaching their applications and doing basic one-step sparring with them, only then are you truly ready to learn a form. All the Chinese arts have left is forms, which are absolutely useless without the above mentions progression in training (It should be noted that a bokken is a weapon in its own right and some schools only use this) The FMA (Filipino martial arts) have similar progression in there training, it is common sense and you could not learn to fight and kill with a weapon without doing this type of training, yet sadly today the Chinese martial arts don’t even know it exists. Chinese martial artist seem to have lost focus about what the training is all about, it is about being able to kill…, this idea of doing it because its part if the system or part of the culture is bullsh#t. its just another way of saying I don’t know how to do it properly. Weapons should be done correctly or not done at all, you would benefit more from training your empty hands than just doing something for the sake of it, if it means it die’s out well then so be it, it obviously isn’t worth keeping if you don’t know how to do it correctly. Traditional martial arts have special methods of training its students to be able to kill another human being in combat. Traditional martial arts are not about keeping meaningless empty forms for the sake of it. The same thing applies to the swords as it does the staff and spear, don’t faijing it. This has become common practice when using floppy wushu swords. People try make them snap and make load noises as to show their power , the more the sword bends and bangs the better your doing… what bloody idiots……. I think these swords have contributed to the miss-use of the sabre and sword. Go try getting you dinner fork and trying faijing it into a piece of steak, at an exact spot not just anywhere.. You can’t do it can you…? So why would you try do it with a larger bladed weapon against moving target? The fact is that a sword by its very nature creates massive shock because of its blade, you just need to give it momentum and direction and the blade will do the rest for you when it hits the target. And generally the tip is razor sharp! It just needs to be thrust with power and focus with the body behind it to get it into a person. If you fajing, just like the pole or spear you will miss the target as the tip will be moving left-right and up and down. Instead it should be completely still. There are many details into striking correctly at certain anatomical targets but im concerned only with the immediate problems at the moment. Then we have the two person training forms found in many Chinese martial arts schools, to the novice and to the unskilled practitioner who knows nothing about weapon fighting these look exciting and you really think “wow these guys know how to use these weapons” but that is usually far from the truth. Take a closer look at the principles and techniques used, and you will find that most would get you killed in combat. One must try to ascertain who and why this form was developed, in many cases it was made for demonstration similar to the things found in Chinese opera or circuses. They are there to woo the crowds and to get people into your school by giving them visual treats. Then there are the forms that have been put together by recent teachers that had no idea how to actually use the weapons and it is just something to teach the students to keep them busy and fool them into thinking that they could use the weapon. Why would a teacher do that you ask? simply because he didn’t / doesnt want his students to ask question how to use the movements in the forms…he doesnt want to be found out that he has no idea of how to actually fight with them. Then there are the few that actually have good principles and applications, but they often need to be opened up into real applications, they are somewhat like short hand versions of the practical applications of how to use the weapon. These are few and far between today simple because you have teachers that no longer know how to use the weapon teaching them so they do not know all the small details that make up these principle/training forms. I personally know forms that block blade on blade, well that would be your blade ruined and unable to use again. Then there are also movements that have the practitioners blocking overhead sword cuts with a wooden staff. And similar with the kwandao!! Well let’s get practical here… if you think that will work let me go get my real sabre and you hold a wooden staff over your head, my sword will be stuck in your skull, simple as that. I and some of my kungfu brothers have cut straight through wax wood staff’s (bai la gan) that many people use today with the utmost of ease. When you come across a form that has these kinds of major mistakes, you would be right to question everything else that is taught within this form……it should be noted that some did use staff’s made of brass or iron and these could stop bladed weapons, but few styles used these. Most styles make use of birch or oak and the height did depend on the practitioner, it is often said that southern fighter staff reached his eyebrows (qi mei gun) and the northern staff would reach the base of the wrist when the arm was extended over his head. The thickness was such that the thumb and the first finger just touch around it. When I first took up martial arts I dreamed of someday being a warrior that could dispatch bad evil doers to the next life with a swift kick and a slash of my blade. For many years I trained hour’s everyday studying these weapons, set after set with no details of how to actually apply these in a real life and death duel. But I figured - im new ,im not good enough at the moment, eventually I will be taught, after over a decade I started to realise that this was not the case, simply teachers don’t teach them because they don’t know. Why would you teach someone a weapon without application… this bullsh#t of keeping the secret for a select few “worthies” or so that people don’t abuse the skill is rubbish. You could go off to a Japanese ,Filipino or Indian martial arts club and start learning how to use the weapon as soon as you pick it up. The Chinese try make all these stupid excuses and moral rules why they don’t teach or train them correctly, but simply it was never that way, if a teacher accepted a student he taught him correctly. They don’t do it today because they have no clue how to use them. Do you practice your fighting stances with each weapon? Do you know how to square up to an opponent with your weapon, what way will you hold it and what can you do with it being held at certain positions? Do you know what it could mean when you opponent takes a certain kind of stance? Do you practice moving and distance/timing drills with partners? If you don’t have these basics skills you will be dead pretty quick in real combat. There is no second chance with weapons; one or both of you are going to die! Firstly you should learn how to hold the weapon correctly. Im continually surprised at the amount of instructors out there that don’t know how to grip a sword correctly or hold the spear or staff properly, these are basic fundamentals that have to be mastered before you even begin any techniques. Then you should study different fighting stances that will allow different attack and defensive techniques. What timing and tactics are needed to actually make these techniques work and what parts of the body are you aiming your blow at and what will it do? A Chinese broadsword/sabre will not cut you in half and take off limbs like Japanese’s katana will. They are used differently, one is used with two hands and will literally cut you in half with a single blow, the Chinese sabre is held single handed and will not cut straight through the body like that, it is used with very fast multiple cuts that will cut chunks of meat off your opponent. Why do most Chinese sabre forms have you holding your hand out in front of you? It was to replicate the holding the scabbard, this is the same way you hold your two fingers(index and middle) straight when doing sword forms. Some complete idiot’s say it is for pressure point striking…ha-ha yes you want to hit pressure point so badly whilst your sword fighting you hold it that way all the time. Others say it is to balance the qi out in the limb because you are holding a sword in the other. God, if you get unbalanced because your holding a sword and making a sword hand with the other rectifies it…well you need to go see a special doctor that has special medication for you, because your have serious mental problems, let alone being able to last in a sword fight if you think two fingers will keep the energy balanced… maybe it is to plug the holes that will be put in your body by someone else’s blade!!! The two fingers are for holding a thinner scabbard, try it! It fits perfectly. So how many of your train with your scabbard? It can be used as a great tool to help deflect a weapon.Why do swords have tassels on the end? To confuse your opponent… if the guy can be confused by tassels then he didn’t have much a chance anyway did he? And that’s a stupid idea, because when I see the tassel I know where the blade is!!! It was common for many people to carry a sword, warrior’s swords where for combat and practical fighting and didn’t have any fancy tassels on them, however the rich individuals who carried a sword more for fashions had the tassels on them because they looked pretty, and it was a fashion statement. The cloths at the end of the broadsword can be used to clean the blood off your hands after combat, but other that that they have no practical use. It was said in Europe that many tied the blade onto the arm so that when they were in combat and they lost their grip or the hand cramped after hours of fighting they didn’t loose their sword…. it’s a good idea, don’t know how true it is though. Similarly the tassel at the end of the spear was to soak up blood. All these small things had practical uses for real combat, look at your weapons forms and you will be surprised what you see, if they are done correctly. Do you know what will happen if you cut someone’s throat? Probably not, and that a good thing im sure. But if you become a student of the warrior arts you need to know, the neck will open up and the blood can spray up to 15ft in the air, not a little line of blood like in the movies. So what moves do you have after this cut, maybe it is to move away from this, or maybe you cover it with your hand so you can continue cutting/stabbing?I know this sounds horrible to those un- accustomed to the real martial arts but it is what it is.I think it is irresponsible to teach these weapons without teaching students what type of damage they will do to a living creature, this hopefully builds responsibility and ultimately a respect for all living creates as you soon realise how fragile you are. Every time I pick up my weapon, I think about the warriors of old, and what they thought when they picked up there’s. There was no messing around, no just running through a form and throwing it back into a bag or in the corner. These warriors used these instruments to protect their lives whilst taking another. It was like a modern military mans rifle; it is looked after and respected because your life depends on it.A teacher once told me that you can tell the quality of a schools skill with weapons by the quality of them. If they are all dirty and thrown in a corner, they have no idea how to use them. If they can’t be bothered to clean and repair them and use good quality weapons, they certainly won’t bother to practice them correctly. Simply they have no respect for them. Think about that, I found it to be true.When you know how to use a weapon correctly you have respect for it.
