WCMA Annual Weapons Training Camp April 2016- An Article by Mr Russell Suthern, Chief Instructor WCMA

Ardingly college is a beautiful place. A sprawling mass of towering historical buildings set in beautiful countryside, surrounded by dense forest.
It always reminds me a bit of Hogwarts & I always half expect to see Harry Potter flying around the turrets on his broomstick!
Recently a group of WCMA students made the trip to Ardingly college to spend a whole weekend immersing themselves in the mysteries & excitement of Oriental medieval weaponry.
As always at these camps, I was very excited & looking forward to showing my students the wonders of White Crane weapons & to teach as much as possible in the two short days available to us.
We covered a lot of ground over the weekend. There was a real mix of students, from advanced instructors to senior students, to complete beginners who wanted to use the camp as a springboard to start their journey into weapons training. The new guys really had to have their learning heads on!
We started with the two person staff form. This pattern is first taught slowly to get the correct impact points, as even a light tap in the wrong place can lead to a broken knuckle, but as the students became more comfortable with the pattern they were allowed to speed it up & use more power.
The pattern performed at full fighting speed & power is a real sight to behold, as well as being an assault on the ears!
Next I taught the Da Dao pattern. The Da Dao (literal translation- “Big Knife”)
is a heavy, two handed machete like chopper, with a wide, flat, heavy blade. It is not as widely practised as the Dao, or regular broadsword nowadays, but in actual fact was a very common weapon in China, right up to the China-Japan war of the 30’s.
The pattern involves many brutal slashing & chopping techniques & is quite basic but very exciting & visceral to perform.
The two other weapons we practised on the camp were the polar opposite to the Da Dao. They were the straight sword & the fan. Both of these weapons are called scholars weapons as they are smooth, fluid & graceful & require many years of practice to perform well.
Most people equate these weapons with the soft styles such as Tai Chi because they are performed in a similar fashion.
The number one consideration is skill & control, NOT speed or power.

Because we were outside I was able to teach a couple of disciplines that I love, but don’t normally get the chance to indulge.
The first was sword cutting.
The principle is simple. You simply line plastic bottles filled with water on a stand & try to chop through them with a razor sharp sword. This is actually a lot more difficult than it sounds. A row of water filled bottles provides considerable resistance & if the angle of your cut is not perfect, the bottles do not cut but simply bounce off the stand.
Technique is more important than power. You have to slice through the bottles, not just chop at them like an axe. This does not produce a cut, no matter how hard you swing the sword!
But if you get it right, the sheer thrill of slicing through four or five large coke bottles as if they were nothing is indescribable!
I would however caution readers that if you have not used swords before, please don’t pop out to buy a live bladed sword & start chopping up the contents of your kitchen. A live blade is a deadly three foot long razor blade. It is not a toy but a highly dangerous weapon. Please only ever use sharp blades under the supervision of an experienced instructor!
Finally we spend a lovely afternoon in the sun practising clout archery. This is warfare archery where you fire up into the air & your arrows drop down onto the opposing army.
This year there was an added twist, as one of my students, Jamie bought some helium & balloons, so we sent a load of balloons (what is the collective term for a group of balloons? A Flock? A barrage? A bunch probably…)
Anyway, In a scene reminiscent of Pixar’s “Up”, we sent a huge bunch of balloons swooshing up into the air & tried to pop as many as possible with our arrows.
Again, this was a lot more difficult than at first imagined. If you didn’t hit the balloons with your first volley, the wind just carried them away until they looked like colourful dots in the distance.
Let’s put it this way, a lot of people would have woken up the following morning wondering why there were a load of balloons in their garden!
Once again, it was very exciting & cathartic to let rip & fire our arrows into the wide blue yonder. Another memorable experience! Again, please remember that arrows are not toys & you should only practice archery under expert supervision.
As always we spend the Saturday evening having a few drinks, chatting, talking weapons & getting to know each other a bit better socially.
All in all another great camp, albeit one that left us all feeling very worked!
Our next event is a one day Tai Chi seminar on Saturday 14th May.
Hopefully we’ll see you there!

Russell Suthern
Chief Instructor
WCMA