“Yī’, èr, sān, sì, wǔ, liù, qī, bā, jiǔ, shí!” “Ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi, kyu, ju!” “Hanna, dul, set, net, dasot, yasot, elgob, yadol, ahop, yol!” For those of us in the martial arts, there are, I would imagine, very few of us that cannot count to ten in the language… Continue reading Fighting Words: The linguistics of martial arts.
A conversation that seems to come up from time to time in martial art circles especially in weapon and fencing based arts, is the issue of realism in sport and sparring. We all want to be practicing real techniques and methods that work and will serve us in what ever goals we have in the… Continue reading Of Rules and Realism
Attention! Head on over to to North Star Martial Arts and check out a copy of Scott Phillips new book on Taiji and Bagua, "Tai Chi, Baguazhang and The Golden Elixir: Internal Martial Arts Before the Boxer Uprising". This is a unique examination of some of the more esoteric practices that could underly many of… Continue reading New Book: Tai Chi, Baguazhang and The Golden Elixir: Internal Martial Arts Before the Boxer Uprising
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y35IY8I-pDo An example of match play using the FFE rule set. Here it is! We have finally have some good examples of the rules for the French Federation of Fencing Lightsaber competition. This is of course the system that our own Cedric Giroux produced for the FFE and recently made the news. Ever since then,… Continue reading The French Rules in Action!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lNRNtw3zWw The live broadcast of the Symposium. Symposium 2019 This past weekend we held out 2019 Seven Forms Symposium. This year was very special in that we met in real life and in real time to exchange skills ideas and produce something new. This we also had the honor of hosting one of the founders… Continue reading Seven Forms Symposium 2019
My background in Chinese martial arts is varied and diverse. I have been lucky enough to study with some of the best teachers working, both famous and unknown. My first art is Taijiquan, which my teacher Gabriel Chin learned from the Yang Ban Hou lineage. Later I studied Wushu with Ma Chao of the Beijing… Continue reading An Overview of Ma Shi Tong Bei Training
Translators preface The following document is taken from an extant copy of a volume supposedly dating from the Old Republican period. It is titled “Of the Unity of the Grid and the Circle.” The original text is in some manner of Corellian, an antecedent of Basic. The text consists of a series short explanatory poems.… Continue reading Soresu: Of the Unity of the Grid and the Circle. Book 1
The Chinese arsenal is full of strange weapons that defy explanation. There is an amazing array of strange and unusual weapons for every mood. Especially blades. There are so many ornate and bizarrely shaped bladed weapons it's hard to keep track of. Many of these are first recorded in the 1800’s or later, so arguments… Continue reading Liujiao Dao 鹿角刀: the “Deer Horn Knives”
