Kobudo Question
Just a general question to you out there. What weapons do you study? Is it a full weapons system or just a single weapon? Do you believe they should be studied! Or have you found it helpful? -Andy :?:

Hi Andy, I've only just scratched the surface with weapons training really, couple of times a month we do some weapons training used to do more but not so much at the moment, mainly the weapons associated with Okinawa such as bo, nunchuks, tonfa and sai havn't done any of the more traditional Okinawa weapons. Also done a bit of bokken and jo work when was doing aikido. That was really interesting to see how the sword techniques link in with the techniques of aikido. I also enjoy training with modern offensive practise weapons such as knife, bats, bottles etc was recently at a police defensive tacticts seminar which was interesting came home with marker pen all over my arms and t-shirt :roll: (was simulating knife strikes etc) I will continue training with some of the more frequent western 'street' weapons but I also hope to do more intensive traditional weapons training in the future and really get in to a sysytem, I find all the sword arts fascinating. I like the weapons systems that can benefit and crossover to unarmed fighting arts techniques such as escrima etc. I find the history of kobudo really interesting too. I think weapons should be trained and are great for teaching maai and timing etc both weapon vs weapon, solo weapon training and weapon vs no weapon give a great extre dimension to training. What about you have you trained much with weapons? Have you found any techniques in the kata that may be responses to weapon attacks or do you believe the katas are purely for unarmed combat?