Weekly video update

[Lance Chan]

Hello. I've decided to open an area for the videos of our weekly event to be downloaded. Not all of them are subtitled with scores like the ones I used to show though, in order to save the processing time. Here's the URL:

http://lancelot.servehttp.com/gathering

The videos here are updated weekly and the old ones will be gone when the new ones appear.

This week 3 of the videos are worth mentioning, including the one where my ass was whooped completely by the guy using a Zulu War Spear (in a not so traditional way).



The Zulu War Spear was made after this piece:

http://www.therionarms.com/antiques/com311.html

Another one showing a lot of throat thrusts by the spear:


There is also one new video showing Kalun and Parke exchanging heavy hittings... Some binding work, hanging guard parry and counter, etc.


These three videos can be found in the weekly video update location, or here:
http://www.rsw.com.hk/videos.htm
As of our product status, we've successfully improved 2 aspects that were raised by Mike Edging. The first one is that our sword guard is now reinforced in it's fixation and will not grow loose along the time. Please note the little piece that lock the guard piece in place in the picture below.



The second one is that the guard's material has been improved and won't be bent even used with the Kron. I abandoned the whole old stock and replacing them with higher grade stuff that is stiff enough to receive full powered strike and resulted in no deformation at all.

[Anthony Boyd]

Lance, I watched the clip of you facing the spear. Good long clip with lots of rounds - I like that. It actually looked a little chilly there!

What was it about this weapon that threw you off? You seem to get back into form for the last few rounds in the match, but at the beginning it's just not like you.

[Lance Chan]

Winter is here but I did sweat so bad inside that. I worn that thicker cloth for the sake of my own safety. It acts like gambeson with padded weapons. hahah.

I was employing the tactic against longer spear like the Chinese one when going against this weapon. The Chinese spear has a smaller blade section and it would be easier to use half swording to deflect its mainly-thrust attacks without getting my hand that is grabbing the blade hit. It's also true that from the last video where Rock sparred, he used thrust to open up an attack most of the time when the opponent is out of his two-handed grip mode's attacking range.

However, I found that he didn't thrust at me much, maybe knowing my ability in deflecting fast thrust. Instead, he did what I like to do when facing other swordsmen: False edge upward cut targetted on hand.

So I died many times.

In the later rounds, I changed tactic to regard my opponent's weapon as a huge, light (the spear is 2lbs) and very long sword. It worked much better that way.

[Anthony Boyd]

This week's [March 21, 2005] sparring clips are long, but there are some gems. In particular, Lance proves himself to be truly heroic with some great anti-polearm work. The exchange I mention is in the clip entitled part 1 and begins at the 10 minute 33 second mark and continues to the 15 minute mark.

[Lance Chan]

First, thanks for your compliments, Anthony. <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

I didn't really think there would be anybody overseas getting those clips and you surprised me with your kindness.

Yesterday was a crowded event. We got a guy called Sam from USA coming to watch us, who's a capoeira coach. He comes with his Hong Kong gf (nice and pretty). And then there was a Taekwondo young associate coach coming to watch as well. In the first fight of part 2, I was fighting a guy who has various martial arts background, including weaponry. Although I kicked his butt 6 rounds straight and he gave up, I invited him to fight my other partners and some of us agreed to lend him different weapons to try. Once he got his hands on some more familiar weapons, besides the blade alignment issues that many suffered for, he actually did fine and kicked some butts. Good for the first time!

At first I denied the well-dressed spear-wielding guy's request in using the polearms on my rooftop because of the limited place. However, since he insisted and despite he dressed very well for the evening wedding event (he came with a sharp yellow tie and a nice coat), he still came to spar. So I took the polearms and let him use it against me. He was trying to test his "two-headed staff" techniques in Chinese style, which could be a bit similar to the half-staff fighting. Yet, once he shortened his reach by gripping at the middle of the polearm, I could out-reach him with the spring. Otherwise, I just keep closing in and hit his neck/shoulder with the blade, or his head with the pommel when I really got too close. There were times where his spear got entangled by the wires and attenna above our heads and I didn't let that chance pass to give him a strike. Also he got distracted by Simon who was arriving once, and I just rushed in and pommel his head slowly to show that he was dead.

It's been a long time since I last fought a long spear and I enjoy that dose of adrenalin boost to push myself to the limit when doing so... occasionally.

p.s. BTW, Anthony, that spear guy was the guy you killed with killer move!