Martial Arts Video References for Overgrowth

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0:29, 2-man staff drill (staff vs staff)


0:20, also a 2-man staff drill, but in this one the "defender" backs away all the time


1:21, overacted and clearly choreographed taijiquan moves. For once, it shows a series of punches instead of the attacker freezing in place after the first punch.




Here are five FINISHER! moves, about 3-5 seconds long. Just in case you want to add in some FINISHER! animations.

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Two rats challenging each other for dominance. No fighting, but they stand upright and have a "staring contest". I understand rats usually don't do this for nearly this long, but it would be nice if sometimes, when two Overgrowth rats are fighting, they spend few seconds in a similar pose before continuing the kung fu.




Slow-motion cat jumping up to catch a ribbon or some other toy. Replace the ribbon with a throat for a "fun" scene. Also the cat jumping up to high places, then down, then up again.


Over four minutes of two cats wrestling with each other, in HD slow-motion. Wall-jump at 4:17.

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6:47
Counters against EVERYTHING.
I found the link on Finnish martial arts forum (potku.net), where the style was identified as Xing Yi. The title and description are in Russian. One guy wears chest armor and helmet and gloves, and tries to attack the other guy (who is crazy skilled). Everything he does is promptly countered. Punches, kicks, jump kicks, "sword", staff, dagger... The dagger play at 5:30 or so was one of the best demonstrations I've seen, ever. Seeing this guy in a bar-room brawl would be ugly, but I can't (and probably don't want to) imagine what it would be like in a battlefield. Wow.

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From Russia,
тай цзи цюань
TAI CHI CHUAN!

I can finally resume to my ongoing quest, to make people run away in a flash of panic whenever they see old people doing their morning workouts!

3:53, unarmed counter-attacks


2:43, the "form-appopriate" move, followed by the application. Most pairs take perhaps five seconds, so there's over a dozen moves. Since they're shown without the opponent and with him, the moves that don't change much between form and application should be easy to analyze.


6:55, another video which first shows part of form, then application or several. Some applications just throw the opponent to the ground, others could cause real damage.

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6:48
Stick training from Philippines. I don't know the terminology myself, but the tags include 'eskrima' and 'doce pares'. The old guy makes his student look like a young fool who should get out of his lawn. It's pretty cool, and could be used for some ideas about grappling with weapons (grab his weapon arm, do stuff with your free arm (which has a weapon)).


So, I started wondering who this other guy was, this younger dude with graying hair. I found another video featuring him (jump to 1:38 if the link doesn't do it automatically):



What is that old guy made of?

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Taekkyon, a Korean martial art with very flashy kicks.

A match:


Showing off those flashy kicks, and some training:


It's easy to find more videos just searching for the name.

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All of my posts have been edited and the videos embedded. If you notice some video is still just a link, or that a video is no longer available, feel free to comment.

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EDIT: I hope the spam post above this one gets removed soon...

[toby154]

Looks like your right, but all I could remember at the time was the tiny curve in the blade, so I thought it's either a scimitar or a katana.

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More western martial arts weapons. The user that posted these videos has lots of rapier and longsword videos, mostly duels with identical weapons, if you're interested in those. I found the the two spear videos most interesting, but I posted two of the duel videos as well.

spear (no shield) vs longsword (2-handed sword):


spear (no shield) vs sword and shield:


"Highlights from the AHF club longsword tournament in June 2009."
Lots of goodness for all two-handed swords, despite the slow shutter speed blurring the blades.


Rapier vs rapier, nice duel and good quality. Note: every time a thrust has enough force to make the blade arc, a real sword would have penetrated skin.

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I just subscribed to Alex Tsu's Youtube channel. He has so much AWESOME stuff there, I must've seen like a dozen weapons I've never even heard about before. Many of them are variations of weapons I've seen used in forms or sparring before, but still, there are so many variations...

This "Sun Moon Kin Quan Dao" (quan dao is a halberd or similar) is a prime example. It would fit right into an over-the-top Japanese RPG. It has TWO swordblades, with EXTRA HOOKS for the hands... It's custom ordered, I have no idea if it's a custom design, or just very rare design. It looks like it probably should be a custom design, but the guy looks like he knows how it would be used...



So, the other weird weapons. Like these two daggers. With a chain between their pommels. The chain is used for offense: for hitting the enemy, for throwing one of the daggers and then pulling it back, etc. There's a student doing it at the beginning, but from 0:52 we get a man (I think he's Alex Tsu's main student) who is much better with the form.


In use, the above bears some resemblance to a weapon I actually had heard about before (one of the few in this post): the rope dart. It's a spike tied to a rope, and it's use is a lot more complicated than it sounds. Can you imagine a rope dart being kicked at a head-sized target? This is the FOURTH lesson. Imagine what he could be like after four YEARS. Once it's gone it's most probably gone, but who would know how to defend against this thing?


Snake spear, or a spear with a curvy, wave-like blade:


Snake spear with extra hooks, and then "fong tin gi" or "long lace", which has a straight blade but even more hooks.


A weird polearm called "three points fook". Probably should be called a "fork" instead of fook, as I've seen the "military fork" used for various thrusting weapons with more than one sharp point. It's nothing like a trident, and the blades don't really seem that good at thrusting, but who knows what this was designed for.


Perhaps the above was some kind of an agricultural tool? Many agricultural tools have been used and even re-designed as weapons. Like flails (morning stars and nunchakus) and sickles - and a hoe?


Just how big is that axe? And what kind of a birthday party is that?! It's a real pity that the video quality is so poor...


Wind and Flame wheels are, well, pretty much what you'd expect with a name like that.


Monk's Spade, which looks like a stylized spade (or shovel) with Extra Hooks on the other end.


3 points 2 edges sword, which is not a sword but a polearm. The first part of this clip is from an old wushu movie where Alex Tsu fights with it, the second part (1:45 onwards) is where his student demonstrates a form.


????? A Mysterious Long Weapon?????
The form is demonstrated with a wrong 'weapon'. The form is meant for Hook Spear, but since they didn't have one available they had to improvise...


Hook Spear is a spear with a hook pointing back towards the user. Here's a form demonstrating the weapon.




See what I meant about lots of weird weapons?

As if that's not enough, there are also many videos with really weird weapon combinations. Like saber and tonfa.


And straight sword (jian) and its scabbard (!!!):


And twin tonfas (this probably isn't that weird):


And here's a two-person form with a saber and a nunchaku (or at least a flail very similar to the Okinawan/Japanese counterpart). Not a pair of nunchucks vs a saber user, but a sabre-and-a-single-nunchaku used against a spear!


And there's more! How about two spears?! They're very short spears, but still... who came up with all of these!


The above should not be confused with double (headed) spear:


Mandarin Duck Hook seems to be another name for bagua's Deer Horn Knives.


I might've posted these two before, but he's also behind the twin hammer (mace, club) and twin axe videos:




Oh, and I almost forgot! Here's a twin weapon form called Killing pen of the Hell Judge. The weapon is shaped like a fist holding a brush (the "pen"). Basically, It's a more sophisticated version of the old nail-through-board, with one catchy name.

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Renaissance Sickle Fighting.

Part 1, Explanation of Paulus Hector Mair's book's take on fighting with sickles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6UumBR7Fzc

Part 2 "completes the first sickle play and then shows examples of sickel sparring":

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One-handed European swordsmanship:

"Silver's Short Sword", probably based on George Silver's thoughts on swordsmanship. Cutiing and thrusting at a long range, good movement out of and into range.


To get an idea of how the above might continue, here shorter swords are used in medium-range, with movement mostly to even closer range and then disarms and throws:


"Prizefight 2009"
I don't know who these people are, but they fight duels with quarterstaves, swords, two-handed swords, sword-and-bucklers,


One thing I'm starting to notice while watching these, is the rhythm inherent in different kinds of "playfighting". Boxing and other martial sports where a hit doesn't stop the action would probably be the closest you could get to the rhythm of an actual fight, but I have only seen very few of those.

Teacher and student:
Student attacks, teacher blocks and initiates a counterattack, but stops it half-way so that the student has time to realize what's going to happen. The student quickly starts acting in response, but the teacher moves on to another attack that nullifies the original response. This goes on for a while and ends in a throw, a lock, a disarm or something similar. There isn't always a clear pause between the movements if the student reacts quickly, but there are clear pauses where one waits for the other to get back on track. "Combat trainer" AI, anyone?

Demonstration:
One attacks, the other doesn't respond. One attacks, the other blocks, no other movements. One attacks, the other counters, no other movements. No fight plays like this. It just shows how the movement technically goes, but the context is missing. "Silver's short sword" video, the first in this post, is like this. Add

Playing combat:
Action looks good, but it goes off in phases. The Prizefight video is like this, sports fencing is like this, etc. Hit-parry-counter-parry - and then the players go around each other. There's no pressure to end it quickly. Some fights may have been like this, but the fights in Lugaru weren't - you were almost always worried that someone else would hear or notice you, or that the opponent would go get help. If you wanted to have a pause from battle, you ran away and the enemy pursued you. The fights where one or both of the players instantly drops his guard when even one hit goes through might count as this - several rapier duels ended with both duelists dead or injured because while thrusting your sword through the other guy's chest was nearly always fatal, he still had several seconds to put HIS sword through YOUR chest.

Dirty combat:
Once the action starts, it goes on until only one is left standing. Some people end it on first real hit, some end it on a disarm; Arme Antica guys (sickles in the previous post) make it a point to continue the fight until there's "an ending". This has almost as much to do with being able to think violence as with knowing techniques; even if you do it slowly. When you push and the other guy loses his balance, you push him into a wall or until he falls over.

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French guys swordfighting. 3:42. Some pretty good "slow-motion" stuff.

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Here's more crazy French people, 5:12 with spears and shields and short swords. That stab at 2:25 is just fantastic.