Edged Weapons Training
 
- Article 5 From 09-28-01 -

The Edged Weapons Training section will give concepts of motion for the use of edged man-made weapons studied throughout American Kenpo Karate training.  The two weapons which will be discussed most often will be Kenpo knives and the Kenpo sword.  Initially, I must request that before reading or trying any of the concepts discussed in this section that you use these weapons with great care so as not to injure yourself in any way, and do not over train in these concepts.  Either of those would be detrimental to continued training and to the safety of the practitioner.  Being that edged weapons are much more dangerous than virtually almost every other weapon in the martial arts, extra care must be taken in training.  One suggestion would be to use practices weapons such as plastic or wooden knives for many hours before training with real edged weapons.  And should you want to train with more realistic weapons, another suggestion would be to tape a practice edged weapon before working with a live edged weapon. Regardless, the best training is careful training. Now let's get to work.     Swords and Knife Training, to be honest, with the idea of collapsing has a lot of the same concepts as Clubs, but with a more sharp context.  Whether using a sword with two hands or one, using single knife or double knife concepts, the ideas and motion are similar.  The big and obvious difference being the addition of the blade instead of the blunt stick.  So with this in mind, once again be very, very careful when working any of the ideas we discuss in this section.  To illustrate this, we have found a website online that discusses using edged weapons in kenpo as well.  Actually, it is dedicated to one specific style of knife with a fine example of why training with a non-edged practice weapon before going “live” is so crucial.  Technically it shows why you should be careful when “messing” around with a knife, but that is based on a guess given the position of the knife and the placement of the wound, however I digress.  The link is at: http://www.kenpokarambit.com/technique.htm      While we aren’t personally into this style of knife for a couple of reasons (partially because of what is shown at the bottom of the page, it’s a little messy just to warn you), the website is great and very informative.     So now on to business.  With the sword aspect of this conversation you can initially look at it from two perspectives.  The first being the main theory of motion for collapsing your path of action, that being moving your slice, thrust, parry, what have you to the opposite side of the weapon.  This typically involves hitting with the base of the tool while keeping mindful of where the blade is going at all times while training.  Don’t want to loose anything in translation, like an arm or an organ or something.  This would be the most accurate translation of the collapse we are talking about in this training session, given the width and depth change brought about.  The other has to do with a conversion of grip position, say changing from a Forward Grip to a Cradle Grip and vice versa.  A perfect example of this in training would be converting the 2 Striking Sets to blade work.  A good point of view that’s been thrown around for a while would be the 1st Striking Set can be done from a Forward Grip with the upper and mid level slicing movement going in and out of your center line, then Striking Set 2 from a Cradle Grip position for slicing and thrusting motion from an inverted grip.  From there you can start to move comfortably between the two by converting the grip through an exchange, even through “palming” if you were going from two hands to one with the sword.  A change in sword position can be effective on a mobile opponent or in how you move your striking position similar to the collapsing we’ve been talking about, just without the same type of weapon change given the limitation of the swords distance variation.      With that in mind now we can get to the knife side of things.  Sure swords and staff can give you great range and a lot of overall power, but stick and knives translate better from Empty-Hand work.  It’s a more comfortable transition.  The same type of translation can be found with knife work as was discussed in the sword topic when looking at collapsing.  Whether it be a parry, thrust, slice, what have you, the collapse can take place from moving to the opposite end of the tool to strike.  This concept in collapsing would be why it is so important to take into account the entire tool when working with a knife (or even a sword for that matter).  All of it can be used as a weapon and should be considered as such, just as the entire body can be used in self-defense.  Say in the example of the self-defense technique Shielding Hammer, as the strike comes in you set with the outward either parry or hammering block if you feel like it, move in with an inward slice to some important target, and the collapse it to an outward hammer strike with the base of the tool to an open target (solar plexus might be nice, not that it would matter at that point given the offensive strike already succeeded in ending the matter).     As with the Kenpo Club sections, the best tools to train with non-empty hand material is the the empty-hand material, whether it be for the examination of collapsing motion, or just general study.  The empty-hand forms, sets, and empty-hand techniques lend themselves very well to the crossover into man made weapons.  All it takes is a little work and an examination of the motion and concepts described in any of the three within the system.  But, once again, I can’t stress enough with edged tools, be very careful.  Train extensively on a non-edged weapon before moving to a live tool.  Blunt weapons are dangerous enough with the complication of an edge, so work carefully in any system you choose to before moving to a real sword or knife.  The life and limb you save could be your own.