A Stick or Rolled up Newspaper can be useful

Kobudo today

 

Let’s face it, while the traditional weapons found in Okinawan kubudo all work, for the most part they are extremely impractical to carry around today.

 

Imaging carrying a Bo around during your daily activities. Or a Sai considering how metal detectors are increasingly our future, or even the Tonfa (though a tad more portable)

Unless perhaps you live on a farm, or some very remote place, carrying kobudo weapons around simply is not practical.

 

There are valid reasons to pursue Kobudo training much as a force enhancer for your karate studies. But less so for defensive use.

 

Knives are a separate issue, they remain relevant, but I stress an instructor must consider many things to consider such a part of karate training.

 

I received various tanto training,

but did not consider such appropriate for student study, kyu or dan student.

 

I did retain such training solely for the instructors study.

 

Should times change such that such knowledge is useful for the student,

they have some training that they can decide to use.

 

The one study I offered for the advancing kyu student,

most applicable for street self defense in today’s world.

Is our Bando Stick studies.

 

 

Practical in the extreme.

Adaptable to anything held in the hand.

We teach a beginning version and a more advanced version.

 

The adaptability of the technique,

Is something left to the instructors discretion.

 

On the whole I did not teach weapons to youth.

One year I did make an exception,

At a New Year’s camp over, to give a present to parents.

I did offer one time showing the students

how rolled up newspaper could be used as a weapon.

 

I never repeated the lesson,

But it remains a useful option for the trained adult.

 

A rolled up newspaper does not appear to be a weapon.

Yet the full range of Bando stick technique can be done with it.