Weapons class will expose you to a world of scenarios, techniques, challenges, and real-world knowledge and understanding. Weapons can be anything from a knife, baseball bat, hammer, water bottle, purse, firearm, etc and they can all be used more than one way. Along with usage, we also learn defense tactics against other weapons, both with and without a weapon of our own. Weapons Training and Tactics is a superb way to compliment and supplement any martial arts training. Even without martial arts training, simply learning how to handle, move, and utilize random everyday objects as defensive tools could one day save your life.
We teach weapons in a few ways… One is through the art of Aikido. Aikido has utililzed and incorporated weapons such as the Jo Staff, Hanbo, Knife, and Bokken in its curriculum. Since Aikido was derived from the samurai warrior martial arts, specifically Aiki-Bujutsu, many Aikido movements and techniques were actually derived from defense against, retention, and usage of weaponry. The only difference with Aikido Weapons training versus other martial arts disciplines is that of its main philosophy of peace and harmony; therefore killing the opponent on one’s own accord is not the goal.
Kempo Karate and Ju-Jutsu were the heart and soul fighting styles of the Samurai Warriors and was even passed down to the commoners over time. Kempo Karate is the striking and blocking art used once unarmed. The body movements used to block and strike empty-hand are the same are with a weapon. Since Ju-Jutsu has many throws and off-balancing maneuvers, they would also use their weapons in conjunction with this art to deliver a devastating attack.
Practical Self-Defense training, especially with modern weaponry such as firearms, surviving a scenario involving a weapon is less likely for an untrained individual. Not only do we discuss and practice defenses with and without a weapon against an attacker, we also focus on surviving the encounter. We typically combine this training with that of our Self-Defense Combatives class to teach straight-forward, no non-sense approaches to survival.
A list of weapons we go over include:
Samurai Sword (Katana)
Handgun
Knife
Tanbo, Hanbo, Jo, and Bo Staff
Sai
Nunchuku
Tonfa
Kama
Asp or Extendable Baton