Shane,
Thanks for your tips. It's especially helpful when we don't have a tutor here. I'll pass your advices to Ben as well.
Some background info for the video for those who are interested.
The previous week before the video was taken, an invitation of sparring was issued by a newcomer on the local martial arts forum. He claimed to have practiced Chinese, European and Japanese swordsmanship and self-invented some. I questioned him particularly on the WMA parts and he turned out to be talking trash.
On the day of sparring, we gave him an interview on his self-invented style before the duel. Although I've had many challengers before (note: it took me 2 to 3 years to establish the credibility of WMA in Hong Kong by defeating the challengers of various style one after one), he was the first one who claimed to have self-invented a style. Thus we gave him an interview beforehand. During the sparring, he refused to wear helmet and chose a chinese long sword to fight with, as he thought european swords should be much heavier (ya, the myth again) than the ones I got there. It turned out to be almost a one-side slaughter anyway.
After the video was released on the local forum, it stirred up a lot of discussion and people began to take side, either on my side for anti-trash talking or sympathizing the slaughtered challenger. As a result, a subsequent meeting was arranged for those who have not visit my activity before to try full contact, full body targeting, full weight and balance weaponry sparring for themselves.
That's why you can see so many audiences on the background. I and Ben were demonstrating how we spar with european swords here (and trying to show some WMA as well, though I doubt we did a good work on the ARMA standard heheh).
Many of them gave it a try too. Since we have a wide range of padded weapons of different cultures, there were many cross-style sparrings. I'm glad that it was a friendly day. It's not always that way unfortunately. <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />
