Difficulties in traveling and training.

Discussion of Chinese historical swordsmanship from all styles.

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Aidan O'Brien
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Difficulties in traveling and training.

Post by Aidan O'Brien » Mon Jan 17, 2011 11:59 pm

Hey everyone, I thought I'd make a new post for the New Year.

So I just spent the last two months travelling. The first month was purely for work (and in the navy that's not exactly fun), the second was what it was paying for. But the core point of this post is that I spent essentially two months without a reliable training jian. At sea, there's no room to train so I didn't even bother with anything other than stance work, the second month, I bought an el cheapo "Tai Chi Jian" for the month I was overseas. I started training properly again with my mujian from Graham yesterday when I returned (only light training sessions at the moment, since I'm shaking the end of a cold off) and am trying to decide whether or not the training with such a light and flimsy SLO was worth it. Even knowing and self correcting for the light weight, when I hefted the mujian and moved through the 54, there were extra wrist snaps that had snuck in. Things that doing with a real weighted blade is rather... uncomfortable.

But coming back up from training today where I managed to get a good couple of goes through the form, I felt a lot better about it. The lack of jetlag also helped a bit with that too. But the sheer pleasure I get from training in jianfa was back in full force when training with my mujian (I was simply going through the motions with the lightweight blade in South Africa).

So in closing, how does everyone else deal with training while travelling? Go through the motions to simply maintain the knowledge of forms until you get home and can train properly? Take a break? Travel with proper swords at all times?

taiwandeutscher
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Re: Difficulties in traveling and training.

Post by taiwandeutscher » Tue Jan 18, 2011 10:56 pm

Well, I mostly travel between Asia and Europe, normally once a year, for some 20+ yrs already, and in the meantime, I have all training equipment in both places. Very convenient, indeed!

On short term travels or holidays on the beach etc., I don't bother anymore, just do solowork and jibengong. If I want to do weapons, I found that a simple brench of a tree or the stroke of a coconut is as good as a bad sword/sabre, lol!

The real weapon work has to be done at one of my 2 homes, sharp blades also don't suit my holiday state of mind, lol!
hongdaozi

Scott M. Rodell
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Re: Difficulties in traveling and training.

Post by Scott M. Rodell » Thu Jan 20, 2011 1:19 pm

I'd suggest getting Graham to make a duan jian for you. This winter has been colder than usual, so I haven't been outside training as much. Stuck inside it is hard to use a full length jian, but I find the hefty duan jian I got from Tiger's Den fills in perfectly. Besides, this is actually an import part of training from an historical perspective. After all, much of the time, on a day-to-day basis, people who need to carry a sword, carried a short sword (this is clearly evidenced by the large number of Qing duan jian encountered today), just as today today those who need to carry a pistol carry a small frame handgun.

BTW, we'll be adding Tiger's Den Mu Jian to our catalog at http://www.sevenstarstrading.com/site/ shortly...

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