14/05/2011 – Fundamentals of Bladework Revisited

 At long last, I return.  I apologise for the dearth of posts in recent weeks as my training trip to the US saw me come down with a virulent and persistent strain of pharyngitis that progressed to pneumonia.  Other things in my life have also conspired to keep me from chronicling training as frequently as I should have.  I promise I will post much more frequently from now one.  Stay tuned for further developments.  In the meantime, I bring you last Saturday's training in this post.

This week, we came back to the bladework series.  With new people in the class, there is a lot to revise and rediscover.  My old bladework fundamentals series is still a good base to build off from, but there is so, so much more to do.

Homework assignments were discussed in class, but I will reiterate them here.  For those old-timers who have not kept up with their conditioning - GET BACK ON THE WAGON.  You all know what to do by now, so hunker down and do it.  Getting a heart attack during round-robin sparring because you're seriously out of shape will not fly from now on.

For the newbies, for now, keep working on your rolling and falling.  As you have already noticed, you will fall down a lot during class and if you cannot do so safely, you will curtail a lot of your development.  I deliberately do not spend a lot of time touching on this during class time so as to leave you with more time for the partner drills.  Also, work on the joint mobility drills we cover in class.  These will build the limberness you need to move efficiently, with a minimum of wasted movement.

Specific to today's class, get a blunt steel blade (like a butter knife) and work on the solo knife drills we touched on.

Train hard, and see you all this coming Saturday.


Objectives

- Execution of and defence against sudden attacks with a concealed blade

- Retaining a blade in the face of disarm attempts

- Fighting for possession of a loose blade



Warmup

-Basic rolling and falling; progression for advanced students - targeted rolling to scoop up a loose knife en passant


Skill-Specific Biomechanical Drills

- Leverage disarm drill

- Body figure-8 to stab

- Biker flip grip change

- Figure-8 draw cut

- Rolling snap cut

- Retrieving loose blade from forward roll – solo, competitive with partner



Preparatory Partner Drills

- Partner push drill with knife – progress from one-step push to multiple continuous pushes

- Slow standup sparring to reciprocal disarm - progress from one-step to free flow according to comfort

- Plank position possession drill – slow sparring over loose knife


Primary Skill Drills

- Concealed quickdraw ambush – paired partners; uke aims to draw concealed blade and cut/stab tori at will, tori aims to evade attack and disarm uke

- Concealed quickdraw ambush – circle, round-robin


Circle