Which weapons best?

[JerryLove]

Just out of curiousity, How much sparring with a staff against other weapons have you done? This has not been my experience. In close a staff usually looses. It gets grabbed or jammed and you get hit.

I was a stick jock in the SCA for about 2 years. Every weekend I was out on the field with a big stick fighting. My preferred weapon was the great-sword, which has many of the same charicteristics.

 

tuck the staff against your chest and movie it with a combination of waist movement and using the far arm (from what ever is jammed) to work the lever. The amount of power available to you should overcome most anything that's jamming.

[AndrewGreen]

Just out of curiousity, How much sparring with a staff against other weapons have you done? This has not been my experience. In close a staff usually looses. It gets grabbed or jammed and you get hit.

I was a stick jock in the SCA for about 2 years. Every weekend I was out on the field with a big stick fighting. My preferred weapon was the great-sword, which has many of the same charicteristics.

 

tuck the staff against your chest and movie it with a combination of waist movement and using the far arm (from what ever is jammed) to work the lever. The amount of power available to you should overcome most anything that's jamming.

 

I think you misunderstand what I mean by jamming.

 

Go to a clinch, doesn't matter how much power you can get if you can't move your weapon. Same if it gets grabbed.

 

Also does SCA go continuous or stop on hits?

[JerryLove]

Go to a clinch, doesn't matter how much power you can get if you can't move your weapon. Same if it gets grabbed.

 

I'm quite familiar with jamming. Jamming a staff held and wielded properly is quite difficult.

Also does SCA go continuous or stop on hits?

Full speed and power until someone yields. I've seen people get limbs broken *through* metal plate armor. The hits are hard and frequent enough that the large rattan sticks often break.

[tommarker]

honestly, its kinda dumb to train in a weapon for self deffense, do it for fun, tradition, and tournament. But if you did want a classic weapon for self deffense, id say either sai or tanto is your best bet.

 

Or tonfa, nunchaku, rope, short stick. All of these are perfectly valid, and many other weapons have principles which can carry over into these 4.

[AndrewGreen]

I'm quite familiar with jamming. Jamming a staff held and wielded properly is quite difficult.

 

I think the difficulties of a communicating with text are showing up. Either you know something about staff work that I have yet to come accross or are not really grasping what I mean by jamming/clinching.

 

This does happen, lots, if it is allowed. And a staff in a clinch or on the ground is pretty hard to use.

[JerryLove]

If they put both hands and their body on the staff to contest control or enforce the jam; then you are contesting the staff. There's not much way to avoid it (other than hit them before they do), but they are not jamming and attacking either.

 

Used properly, there is not a good choke point on the weapon / your body that could be easily exploited to jam the weapon.

 

If you have a 6-fot staff, put your hands three feet apart and equidistand from the middle... hold the staff against your torso from hip to opposing shoulder.

 

Tell me how you would imagine the Jam starting and I'll walk you through beating them up while they try.

[KoreanTiger30]

My Master always told me the best way to learn a weapon was to pick it up and train yourself. That actaully works really well, nad Master Choi has said that I have perform very accurately by apply basic fighting principles to it. The first wepon that appeals to you is the best way to go.

[KaratekaAikidoist]

Not to boss you around but if i were you, I'd learn shuriken throwing as a secondary thing and practice with a bokken until you decide because according to me, a sword would win at close range with a gun. All you guys who say a gun would win, you have to ask if the assailant would have time to get the gun out, considering we're martial artists.

[Martial_Artist]

How often do you carry a concealed sword? I carry a concealed handgun always. It takes less than 0.07 of a second for me to draw and fire a doubletap(two shots fired sequentially). Can you reveal a sword, draw, and strike me down before I see you go for your sword, step to the side, and shoot you? Are you confident enough to do that?

 

A shuriken requires that you at least pull back to get enough force to throw the thing to do any amount of damage, least of all stick into your target. Can you pull back and release before I see what you're doing and just move out of the line of force? Meaning, once you let a pretty obvious object fly from your hand all I have to do is move inches from your sight picture and I've avoided being hit. Same with knife throwing. Dodging bullets, however, is something for the Matrix and something not easily done.

 

I'd place my bet on the gun-wielder. Not to say the sword-wielding martial artist doesn't know his stuff. It's just pretty inefficient to walk around carrying a sword concealed and then try to reveal the weapon to use it against a gun-wielding opponent. However, if a sword is all you got, then good luck.

 

MA.

 

About jamming the bo. I can think of several ways to stop an opponent who is standing there with a bo diagonally across his torso. It won't do much to demonstrate through words, though. As anyone can talk their way through a situation. But, for arguments sake. Moving close to the opponent will probably exact a strike of some kind. Let's just say a blow towards the head. I don't mind getting hit in the forearm, while I'm moving his point of power is moving further behind me as I close the distance. The closer to his hand the bo strikes my forearm the less power it has to do damage(compared to the end of the bo striking my arm, much more powerful as that is where the leverage lends the force). While I take a hit to my forearm, I can either strike to the face, neck, groin, torso, knees and then take hold of the bo forcing a jam at the same time pushing my opponent further backwards, disrupting rhythm. I do not stop striking either as I work to disarm, or even just disable my opponent. I have fought a bo-wielding opponent empty-handed and didn't take his bo from him. I controlled the distance and took his consciousness away.

 

Now, knowing what I could do (not that it is what I will do, just an example for words sake) it probably will be quite easy for you to devise a counter for it. Of course, we could go back and forth exchanging what if's and could's and should's, but that won't get us anywhere. The point is: jamming an opponent who wields a distance-specific weapon is quite possible and often easily attainable when approached properly. Conversely, a skilled bo-wielder will fight to keep the distance to his advantage. So, jams are possible, so are defenses against jams.

 

MA

[AndrewGreen]

Tell me how you would imagine the Jam starting and I'll walk you through beating them up while they try.

 

And I could give a walk through of how to gain a clinch, but what would be the point? Like MA points out, anything can be countered on paper.