KWAN DO

[dtstiachi]

Hello everyone,

Do any of you use the Kwan Do in any of your Kung Fu forms? Could you tell me any of your experiences (not history, I can google that) with this weapon? If you have, what do you think about it? Thanks for the imput.

[fallen_milkman]

You mean Kwan Dao? I haven't personally trained with one yet, but my teacher has been learning a form recently. The form is extremely impressive, and it looks like a lot of fun. How could a cross between sword and staff NOT be fun, though?

[dtstiachi]

thanks fallen_milkman, my typing is abomidable. yes I meant Kwan Dao. Do you study an internal chinese art? I also like the cross between sword and staff. I wonder if one knows a bo kata if they could effectively yield a Kwan Dao. I've heard they are extremely heavy.

[fallen_milkman]

I practise kuntao. It has internal aspects, more than some arts, but is mostly a softer external art.

As for the weight of a kwan dao, they most certainly ARE heavy. Luckily, us Chinese martial artists like to let our weapon's weight do the work for us.

I bet if you knew Chinese broadsword and staff or spear well enough, you could do some guesswork at weilding a kwan dao. I doubt I could, with only a year of study in, but if you've been working with weapons longer it might be worth a shot. (Assuming you can't find someone to teach you.) If push comes to shove, I'd just look for a dvd or video of a form, and start there.

[ovine king]

us Chinese martial artists like to let our weapon's weight do the work for us.

just want to clarify.

the way you tend to hold a weapon, especially a heavy weapon is that your base structure is almost solid. The result is that you don't really swing the weapon, instead, it moves as an integral part of your arm structure. What this also means is that when you 'play' with something like this, the movements look almost slow and rigid.

Incidentally, a proper kwan dao is quite a heavy weapon; the ones you tend to see being used in displays are just that, for display and are much lighter.

It's also quite hard to find a quality one as I have on one occasion broken one because the thing just wasn't made to withstand even my feeble 'shock' power on a sinking stroke.

Granted I'm not the most proficient weapons player and I was only really playing with it doing things adapted from other weapons that i do know a bit about but i still figure it should've been able to well, not break.

[fallen_milkman]

Good clarification, and I definitely know what you mean by finding quality weapons. It seems like 95% of the stuff on the market these days is NOT made anywhere near as tough as it could, or should, be. And the stuff that IS good is way too expensive for the struggling college student.

[swordsmith]

I own the weapon in question and have never used it profetionally

it is a great weapon with a wich history to me it feels alot like a naginata wich is the closest japanese wepon you'll fing to the kwan day but that mite just be mine.

[cleung]

A competitor on the NASKA circuit by the name of Mark Bayne uses the kwan do as weapon of choice in his weapons forms division. He uses a traditional weight one too. I've seen some of the wushu people use the kwan do but with a very light wushu version.