Iai-do
Iai-do (Japanese swordmanship) is so much fun. Games like Too Human are cool because you get to handle these epic weapons and pull off these cool moves. Iai-do is pretty much just doing that for real. It is exactly as fun as it looks like it would be.
For my regular karate training, I actually dislike the more "practical" stuff, including self-defense and defensive takedowns and throws because I like karate for the art of it. There is no ceiling to how good you can be, so it's a constant process of self-improvement and self-control, which is valuable both as a mental and physical exercise. All of our movements and stances are presented to us (in our Shuko Kai style) in terms of how to use them in combat, but for competitive kumite (i.e. sparring) we scale back our moveset to more basic, highly efficient movements.
There is no less "art" in Iai-do, but the thing that makes it fun for me is that the purpose of sword combat is a fight to the death. I treat karate as largely defensive, but Iai-do is largely offensive. We're severing heads. We're ridding our opponents of their hands. We're opening our opponents' bodies' insides to the outside world. The penalty for a missed block is not a mere punch or broken bone - it is death.
Of course, all of this is theoretical since we are training with wooden swords (at least for our partner exercises), and we spar using foam-covered swords, but the brutality of the move set is pretty fucking cool. The move set is pretty basic but requires a lot of focus and exacting control.
For my regular karate training, I actually dislike the more "practical" stuff, including self-defense and defensive takedowns and throws because I like karate for the art of it. There is no ceiling to how good you can be, so it's a constant process of self-improvement and self-control, which is valuable both as a mental and physical exercise. All of our movements and stances are presented to us (in our Shuko Kai style) in terms of how to use them in combat, but for competitive kumite (i.e. sparring) we scale back our moveset to more basic, highly efficient movements.
There is no less "art" in Iai-do, but the thing that makes it fun for me is that the purpose of sword combat is a fight to the death. I treat karate as largely defensive, but Iai-do is largely offensive. We're severing heads. We're ridding our opponents of their hands. We're opening our opponents' bodies' insides to the outside world. The penalty for a missed block is not a mere punch or broken bone - it is death.
Of course, all of this is theoretical since we are training with wooden swords (at least for our partner exercises), and we spar using foam-covered swords, but the brutality of the move set is pretty fucking cool. The move set is pretty basic but requires a lot of focus and exacting control.