Everything I Need to Know about Inertia I Learned from my Chain Whip.
Back in March I began taking Tai Chi courses at the Shaolin Do school here in San Antonio. The timing was pretty darn perfect, seeing as that's when the arthritis started up as well.
Anyway, the school offered a special one time class on the Chain Whip for anyone who was a current student. The chain whip isn't a required weapon form until something like 3rd degree black belt. The instructor was very clear this was a training tool for us to use to improve overall performance, not intended to make us experts(or even competent) on the weapon in one evening. So on Wednesday night I went to learn the Dance of the Dragon King.
Guess what? The Dragon King bites. Its really no surprise that the most effective use of this weapon is to hand it to your attacker and watch him or her knock the living daylights out of themselves. We were using the seven section chain whip, there also being of course 9 and 12 section whip variations. It's seven metal links, connected by metal rings, with a heavy pointed weight on the end. We covered the weight with a circular tubing of insulation before beginning but you can see why it very easily breaks bones within either a few seconds or minutes of practice.
I will not bore you with the accounts of how many times I hit myself, where I hit myself, and ingenious curse strings I managed to suppress. The imagination is so much more vivid than words. Even so, the whole experience was fun in its own way. There were 30 to 40 of us in the parking lot under the street lamps whirling and spinning around, and every once in awhile, you could see, just for a second!, why we were all there.
Anyway, the school offered a special one time class on the Chain Whip for anyone who was a current student. The chain whip isn't a required weapon form until something like 3rd degree black belt. The instructor was very clear this was a training tool for us to use to improve overall performance, not intended to make us experts(or even competent) on the weapon in one evening. So on Wednesday night I went to learn the Dance of the Dragon King.
Guess what? The Dragon King bites. Its really no surprise that the most effective use of this weapon is to hand it to your attacker and watch him or her knock the living daylights out of themselves. We were using the seven section chain whip, there also being of course 9 and 12 section whip variations. It's seven metal links, connected by metal rings, with a heavy pointed weight on the end. We covered the weight with a circular tubing of insulation before beginning but you can see why it very easily breaks bones within either a few seconds or minutes of practice.
I will not bore you with the accounts of how many times I hit myself, where I hit myself, and ingenious curse strings I managed to suppress. The imagination is so much more vivid than words. Even so, the whole experience was fun in its own way. There were 30 to 40 of us in the parking lot under the street lamps whirling and spinning around, and every once in awhile, you could see, just for a second!, why we were all there.