Sword Camp June 2024
The first full-day training camp of the year was held in Worthing in late June, hosted by Chief Instructor Russell Suthern. It was a fun and relaxed day of practice and learning about Chinese swords.
During the morning we focused on the straight sword, practising the form, learning some applications and applying them through some partner work before finishing with sword chi-kung.
The afternoon session was curved swords, with students practising the dao, miao dao and da dao forms. This was followed by more partner work and then curved sword sparring. Firstly, the more traditional one-vs-one before upping the stakes (and fun) with some all-against-all!
The day finished with a demonstration of two of the more advanced sword patterns by Josh Haigh and Joe Jones.
Josh performed the double broadsword, a rare and difficult pattern using a sword in both hands:
Joe performed the two-handed straight sword, much larger and heaver than the single-handed version:
To find out more about all the different weapons taught at White Crane Martial Arts, check out the weapons gallery page.
Article by Joe Jones.