The first find features Addy Hernandez’s new DVD: “A Cut Above.”
The second find features Dr. Yang taking a traditional approach to knife defense (HT Ikigai).
For a time I studied YMAA-style chin na so it’s cool to see Yang incorporate chin na into knife defense. My knife defense skills suck. No offense to the classical folks, but, given my free time (what there is of it), I’d probably rather take lessons from someone like Ms. Hernandez.
The third find is a quick update to this post. I just noticed that Sensei Strange posted another cool knife video. Check it out!
The last video features a rare style of kung fu (at least rare in the U.S.): Five Element Fist.
I could not find much on the Interwebs about this style:
The hallmarks of the Wong Fei-Hung lineage of Hung Ga are deep low stances, notably its “sei ping ma”[1] horse stance, and strong hand techniques, notably the bridge hand[2] and the versatile tiger claw.[3] The student traditionally spends anywhere from months to three years in stance training, often sitting only in horse stance between a half-hour to several hours at one time, before learning any forms. Each form then might take a year or so to learn, with weapons learned last.
And most likely this:
“Five Elements” refers to the five classical Chinese elements: Earth, Water, Fire, Metal, and Wood.
Can you imagine spending a year learning just one form? I can’t! I was just having a version of this conversation with the Tater. The gist of our conversation concluded with Tater’s observation that some styles of Chinese kung fu teach things the way they do, because that’s always how it’s been done. It’s funny but if you look at some “traditional” Japanese or Korean styles you’ll see that they’ve refined things a bit.
Anyhow, Five Element Fist is beutiful to watch but I probably would not visit.
-BCP
I’d train with Hernandez any day!
Seriously, those two knife videos show how modern filipino-style bladework is so much more efficiant than the stuff Yang is teaching.
DR –
Yeah, I agree. Knife-training is on my martial arts bucket list. My fear with the Yang approach would be that if it’s like the Chin Na, much would be very hard to pull off — esp. with a live blade! This is not to say that you can’t learn a lot from YMAA. However, if you have a life, you often end up having time for one (maybe two!) martial arts. So I’d probably go with Hernandez (I’ve heard good things about her) or something like a Krav Maga workshop.
DR -
Check this out!
Not enough control of the attacker’s blade. I want to know where that damned blade is at all times. That may include basing the knife hand against my body, locking it in so it can’t cut.