Riddle of Steel Double DVD Just 40 This Week!
 

Bits & Pieces Vol. 1: Daggers & Disarms
Dagger seminar, knife passing & disarming progressions and more
filmed down on the ranch Comtech style. (20)

Riddle Of Steel Night Training Drill

Howdy all! this week I want to share an exercise that we did at the Riddle of Steel as part of our night time training. It is an excellent way to develop both line familiarity as well as tactile sensitivity.

You will need three things:

1) A training partner

2) A glow-stick

3) Knowledge of basic knife passing / knife tapping (as shown on the Legacy of Steel DVDs / Bits & Pieces 1)

I think you can see where this going already...

You want to do this somewhere DARK as in pitch black. The less ambient light you have the better. ideally the glow-stick should be all you can see.

Set yourselves up so you're in medium range and work through the knife passing / tapping exercise. Because you can't actually see your partner, just the line of the weapon, you have to relate to that alone initially, but the moment you make contact forearm to forearm you will also have the tactile feel of where they are.

As simple as this is, it's a very cool experience and offers much benefit!

Learning to read lines of attack and follow through are of course much easier with the glow-stick than with a real stick or a blade, and this in turn speeds up your learning curve.

One training tool that we use to develop line familiarity with longer weapons is the lightsaber. Even in a well lit room it is easy to track the motion of these illuminated blades.

You can find mass-produced sabers very cheaply online these days (under 40 bucks) and while not as good as the custom sabers they are a fraction of the price.

Most of the cheap ones out of China use 3/4" blades that are 1mm thick so you have to treat them with some care or you'll shatter the blades. They simply can not compare to the custom models that sport 1" blades either 1.5mm (basic grade) or 3mm thick (combat grade).

But the trade off is these lighter blades are faster and pose much less risk of injury. You will get a slap, not a bonk, on a hit so lacrosse or hockey gloves and a fencing mask are sufficient protection for controlled free play. The blades can also easily be cut down to the length of Kali sticks if so desired.

Many of these sabers can change color and we've found the green and blue to be the most visible colors over red, yellow, etc. This is no surprise as the human eye can detect more variations in the color green than any other color, hence it being the color used for night-vision equipment.

All the very best,

Pete Kautz

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