Meeting with RSW

 

So I finally made it over to visit Lancelot at the RSW office in Mong Kok in order to collect my sword. A highly knowledgable fellow, we talked for quite a bit on his background and his interest in the sword arts. Originally he had begun by studying Medieval European weapons, learning the traditional arts from weapons manuals, and over time he had also learned both Japanese and Chinese swordsmanship. However, he and his crew were more interested in applications than learning Taolu and spend much of their time training cutting and real life applications such as live cuts, many of which are detailed on his website and his facebook site / blog. 

 

As he had seen my blog, we did go a bit deeper into the discussions regarding the martial arts and he told me an interesting story about how he rediscovered one of the old secrets of Chinese swordsmanship. He had been studying European swordsmanship for a while and felt realitively proficient and could execute strong blocks. But when he encoutered his current Chinese kungfu teacher he found that this teacher could brush aside his sword with the tip of his sword with ease, even when the sword was in contact close to the guard, where one would expect the block to be strongest. While this was suprising to him, he thought that it may have been because the old man had been training for a long time and not everyone could do it. When he subsequently encoutered some younger kids who could do this, he figured that there was more to it than met the eye. This led him to ask the Chinese master to teach him and he spent significant time re-engineering the technique and figuring out a different way of Fajin or issuing power, which he believes is the way the old Chinese swordsmen used to do it.

 

When he explained it to me it was quite eye-opening and definitely a different way of using the power of gravity (and different from my normal way of fajin). We spent a little time trying out the technique. Like all things the principle is easy but I suspect that it will take a great of practice to execute well. Like some of the other internal arts masters that I have encountered, he said that of his students only a small proportion actually can "do" the technique as they are unable to relax in the face of an opponent and have a lot of unnecessary tension. (Although he does not make any mention that it is internal, only that there are some similarities to the "soft arts"). It seems to be that it may be something that works well with weapons, it may not be so easy to use with empty hand techniques. I am thinking of taking some lessons with him once I come back from Shikoku and see if my understanding of what he explained to me during the talk is correct.   

 

The remainder of the time was spent discussing my Iaito, which was forged from Aluminium. Part of the skin had buckled and peeled back from the changes in the weather over the years. I have to find a way to store it better!

Again - if people have an interest in what he does please visit his website at Realistic Sparring Weapons.