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[JusticeZero]

Well then, just go rocking up and say that you want to learn, but you are especially interested in those weapons. You probably won't have a weapon in your hand right away, but you can most likely get to using one soon.

[GrimHydra]

hopefully . Im going to talk to the guy tomorrow. I do have a bo staff here my little cousins were in it and atleast went that far, they have some other weps too. Is there a certain length this staff should be? its about 6ft I'd wager Is that ok for my height or all bo staffs that big?

[sperki]

6ft seems pretty standard. There may have been a shorter bo or two in my dojo, but I'm pretty sure it was taller than me.

[Rateh]

I was taught that bo staffs should be measured for the student, at about eye height to head height. I believe mine is 5ft.

[Kruczek]

For your particular situation - it truly does depend on the instructor and style. Most cases weapons will help you with your open hand martial arts.

In the bigger picture - I believe that weapons should be taught as its own curriculum and should be thought of as a second martial art. If you couldn't take another open handed martial art and do well in the first - you shouldn't be taking weapons.

[bushido_man96]

For your particular situation - it truly does depend on the instructor and style. Most cases weapons will help you with your open hand martial arts.

In the bigger picture - I believe that weapons should be taught as its own curriculum and should be thought of as a second martial art. If you couldn't take another open handed martial art and do well in the first - you shouldn't be taking weapons.

I'm not so sure that I agree with you here. I think about the only time that weapons training will actually help you with weaponless combat is in cases like with the Filipino styles, that tend to use the same movements and strategies, whether they have a weapon in hand or not. From what I have seen, the movements done are essetially the same here, whether they wield stick, knife, or hands. I don't know that all Filipino styles are like that, but I have seen many that are.

Now, when it comes to using a weapon like a bo/quarter staff, that has a long range, and really no movements that mimic what you would do empty-handed, then I don't see any relevant training cross-over here. You fight at a totally different distance, and the mechanics change quite a bit.

I also feel that open-hand proficiency does not necessarily transfer to weapons proficiency or vise versa. I think that someone could be one heck of a swordsman, without ever having studied an open-handed style; I'll bet that tallgeese has probably seen some of this from his SCA days, although the style is a bit removed from true swordsmanship. Neither will being a 5th dan in Karate necessarily guarantee reaching that same level of skill with a sword. Of course, as always, hard work can pay dividends, but nothing is guaranteed.

Just my thoughts.

[tallgeese]

Yes, it's pretty common actually.

There will always be athletic overlap in these types of endevors. Certainly the ability to move efficiently will always be helpful when going from one combat methodology to another.

But the idea of being skilled in one prior to training in another seems to be an eastern concept. Lots of people studying western swordsmenship seem to be perfectly content with just doing that.

[JusticeZero]

True; Western arts in general are much more taken with the concept of specialization. Common Western martial arts tend to be built on the principle of "Let's take one single weapon wielded out of one single structure, and figure out every conceivable way of knocking someone into next Thursday with it.. then we'll train comboes of a few of our favorites from that already rather short list."