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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eyebeams" data-source="post: 1761330" data-attributes="member: 9225">That's a rather wacky misrepresentation of what those drills are about. Butterfly swords are civillian weapons. Spears are military weapons. You train one against the other for conceptual purposes, not to rely on the butterfly sword against the spear. Spear drills are good ways to train trapping range; I'm not aware of any "doctrine" that actually recommends their their use against a spear.As for jian and dao: I've fenced foil and epee, trained on some rapier, done a bit of kali and kendo, and learned a bit of jian and dao. The basic assumptions about what kind of engagements you get in with these weapons are makedly different to the point where there is little useful basis for comparison. Dao techniques generally assume a multi-person battlefield engagement, where someone trained with a rapier would get their ass handed to them. A jian is a multipurpose weapon of the gentry, as is a katana; both are meant to do double duty as a military and civil weapon. Rapiers and their successors are civillian weapons.Without an understanding of the context that belongs to each weapon, comparative statements about their effectiveness are meaningless.Uh, most Asian traditions have had full contact regimens for most of their existence, dude. And most of these regimens only have a tangential relationship to the ability of an average person to protect themselves. Again, context. Many arts are primarily civil defense systems; others are archaic military systems, and still others are sports. Full contact events prove that in controlled conditions with the benefit of an athletic development cycle, athletes will kick ass if they have a basic roster of techniques -- or not. Remember the Kimo Loepoldo fiasco? Joe Son? Tank Abbot? In controlled conditions, what you basically discover that the most important things are strength and the luxury of extended mat time.(It's important to note that the fallacy of every art being treated the same works both ways, as the contests between Choi-li Fut and Muay Thai artists proved decades ago. Choi-li Fut is a terrible ring art, but a pretty good civil art.)The idea that the ring is the arbiter of street effectiveness for the average person in bunk. Compare and contrast with the regimens used by normal people who want to learn actual self-protection skills -- like women's and police defensive systems. You'll quickly discover that tactical considerations like time pressure, the environment and the psychology of the engagement bring these groups back to "useless" methods like prearranged drills. And they work, too.Well, if Asian arts get better, then WMAers will be leant more tools to interpret fectbuchs and such. But such broad characterizations of other systems is, for the most part, an expression of ideology, not fact.</blockquote>

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