A great conversation I have been having with a fellow practitioner today has been over the Bart-Cham-Dao and how “flipping” the knives came to be introduced. I would love to hear your take on things, too, and what you have heard about where this came from.
It is not uncommon to see various well-known practitioners “flip” the knives backwards so that the back side of the blade is against the forearm (similar to how a Japanese sai is held). However, I was taught that this should never happen, that posing the weapon in this way makes it purely defensive.
The interesting thing is that while many “do” flip the knives, many others do “not.” Therefore, I would welcome your insight, whether just a story you have heard or an article/ book you have read, that explains why some flip the knives and others do not.
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4 Responses to “What Came From Where?”
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July 2nd, 2008 at 2:22 am
Greatings,
Obviously, I don’t know the butterfly sword form but I an escrima instructor and hold a 4th Dan in Kobudo, so I really love weapons and after reading this, it makes me think that the reverse grip wouldn’t necessarily be entirely defensive as you would still be cutting if you were throwing elbows and I know WC throws plenty of elbows.
However, it seems a little illogical loose that much reach by flipping those swords over. JMO. However I could see that if you were blocking a heavy object such as a bat or maybe Japanese sword – iow in the reverse position, the bulk of the forearm would help “re-inforce” the butterfly sword. Just a thought.
As a sidenote, the reverse grip with the sai is pretty much defensive since they aren’t “edged” unless you are doing some type of thrust to the rear or downward with the sai in a reverse grip.
July 2nd, 2008 at 2:23 am
LOL,
I meant “Greetings”,
July 2nd, 2008 at 2:51 am
Hi Monty,
At first, it “does” seem illogical, doesn’t it, that flipping the knives would make them defensive? Most certainly, this is not always the case, as you already know. There “are” many arts that effectively use a reversed weapon as both defense AND attack. But I believe our ancestors were looking at things from an “odds” perspective.
Although this is purely from my own discoveries and I was never taught formally what our ancestors discussed in relation to “how” the concepts of knife fighting in Wing Chun came to be, one thing I have found is that what always seemed logical in most other arts would “violate” a Wing Chun precept.
For example, a vertical fist vs. horizontal fist, thrusting the kicks vs. chambering them, keeping things as simple as possible vs. complex actions, and how weapons are applied. Since Wing Chun was originally created to defeat the known Shaolin systems of the time, I believe that our ancestors took a different approach to the entire “way” of doing things. And one of those “things” was to remain as offensive as possible in order to remove the myriad of blocks that other arts included.
Rather than “movement” oriented, Wing Chun is “concept” oriented. In this way, one concept can be applied to a variety of fighting applications and does not require a plethora of movements to deal with the same thing.
Naturally, you HAVE to block an attack in one way or another (unless you get there first, of course), but the goal of Wing Chun is to use the attacks “to” block while they are going in. In this way, chain-punching would be attacking but also driving or wedging the attacker’s incoming punches to the outside, thereby defending “while” attacking.
When related to the weapons, I believe this is what they meant when addressing the weapons. Although a reversed weapon “can” and many times IS used for an attack, it was drummed into us that when it is reversed, it is a defensive posture. And since we want to focus on remaining offensive, they removed this reversed position.
The other interesting facet is that when the knives are reversed, the length is completely removed. Since it is already quite short to begin with when compared to other Chinese weapons, reversing the knives removes the length altogether.
Does that make more sense? I’m sure lots of others feel just like you do, so by all means “let ‘er fly” and let’s see where it goes!
Phil
August 31st, 2008 at 2:54 am
Like I say, I know nothing about the form other than seeing Yip Man perform it on You Tube but everything you are saying makes complete sense to me – from a weapons perspective.
Cheers
MH