I was invited down to Tulsa, OK by Jon Eppler of the Tulsa School of Defense to do a seminar on Bartitsu, Bowie knife and knife and tomahawk this last weekend. Saturday was spent working on Bartitsu. I introduced the group of about a dozen students to the history of Bartitsu and then led them in a round of Farmer Burns warm up exercises. The first part of the class was dedicated to pugilism as a basis for self defense striking. Just before the lunch break we focused on the back heel and cross buttocks throws from pugilism. After lunch we worked on a number of the Canonical jujutsu plays. We worked off the techniques that involve the trip to the rear ala the back heel throw from pugilism. I then introduced the concept of using the control of the head with the head twist to take down your opponent. After working on the head take down we went neo-Bartitsu with rear naked chokes. We then shifted to Canonical Vigny stick plays. After working several of those techniques I went neo again and worked techniques using the sick in two hands. We finished the day with failure drills where the antagonist breaks the initial technique and the defender responds with variations from other techniques to solve the problem. After a long day of training outdoors the students all expressed satisfaction with what they had learned and we were all glad to sit down have some tall cold drinks and partake in the BBQ provided by our host Sunday morning found the students ready to learn about James Bowie and his big knife. I had to break it to them that Bowie was not the American Robin Hood he has been made out to be in the myths that have grown up about him. We started with a warm up using my twelve point angle of attack drill, going forward, backward and side to side as well as taking a knee, since we know Bowie killed his mortal enemy while kneeling, I then introduced the stance I like to use for the Bowie knife and explained why I like it. We then worked on defending against the angles of attack from that stance. After spending most of the morning on those drills we switched to offensive drills with the big knife. Just before the lunch break we worked failure drills with the knife where one partner is put in a position of disadvantage and has to fight his way out of it. After lunch we switched to working with the knife and tomahawk. I related that this style of fighting is for skirmishing not duels. I quoted from Robert Rogers Thirteenth Rule of Ranging on rushing upon your enemy with hatchet and cutlass. We then spent about two hours doing drills against a single opponent who also has hawk and knife. I then had the students switch to fighting against a military officer with a sword or a soldier with bayonet on his musket. We finished the days drills working on attacking a small group of soldiers with our hawk and knife. The evening was spent in pleasant conversation about the history of fighting styles and listening to a three man combo of students from the Tulsa school playing various Irish and Scottish songs.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 17:09:04 +0000
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