SWORDDUELING.COM

Aikido’s grandmaster Morihei Ueshiba said: “In barehanded practice you should move as if you had a sword; when holding a sword you should not depend on it but move as if you had none.” Here are a couple of Daito-Ryu demos showing that principle:

Daito-Ryu is the parent art of Aikido. Ueshiba learned it from the legendarily bad-assed Sokaku Takeda.

So Miles mentioned 52 Blocks to me. Fascinating stuff. A truly American martial art. Combines the basis of boxing with the defensive tricks of Wing Chun (trapping hands/blocks), Silat (elbow destructive/”defanging the snake” techniques), Bagua (circling, a number of techniques I see mirror moves from the Bagua 64 Straight Palms set), Drunken boxing (random unpredictability/ openings as feints), etc.

One interest “origin” I heard was the development of the techniques in prison, like tight cell spaces for when you have handcuffs on. Particularly the handcuffs thing makes alot of sense as the elbows get thrown alot and 52 really seems to use them as the basis for defense and close-in offense. Powerful stuff.





Basic block #1 – Skull and Crossbones



Sparring vs a kickboxer


NYTimes documentary

Interesting site on Chinese spear technique.

Throwing spikes, throwing stars – here is a site that provides awesome detailed practical information on this art. Excellent info.








Here is this as a pdf book.

Very good and clear explanation.