C.S.'s "Fighting with Sabre and Cutlas" dvd

No, but you work with what you can; I've got nothing but belt factories for Karate, Tae Kwon Do, and MMA for 60 miles, so DVDs, here I come.

The thing that bugs me about the Cold Steel videos, all of them, is they're basically to some degree massive advertisments for CS products. I mean, that should be obvious, coming straight from the company like they do, I just wish it wasn't quite so overt. "Look, here I'm going to do a moulinet with this 1798 Light Cavalry Saber! Now watch as this guy comes at me with a Pipe Hawk!"

Of course, I'm sure the training videos are a little less egregious in this regard than the ones that basically consist of Lynn Thompson and assorted CS staff chopping random things up with their product line, but it still bugs me. They have some really silly-seeming videos, too; who the heck would pack a Sjambok on a regular basis? It might be nice to know how to fight with one, but honestly. The worst one, to me at least, is 'The Fighting Sarong'. In which Ron Balicki teaches you how to fight with a sarong. Might be useful... if I wore a sarong on a regular basis... which I don't, and I certainly haven't seen many people going about in sarongs lately...

And then let's not get into the videos that're basically hunting documentaries of Lynn Thompson running about in Africa and Australia to shoot water buffalo, warthogs, whatever. In "Death Down Under", the advertising says he shoots 100 animals... in a 1-hour video. Clips I've seen show him helicoptering in and then basically walking up to the animals and shooting them down. That's just something I can't wrap my head around; it's pretty repugnant to me.

I do agree that the majority of CS products are perfectly fine, and I imagine most of the training videos are decent enough (though I question the logic of learning how to throw a saber...), but the rest of CS's videos are far better off left well alone.

I've been wanting to get a hold of this DVD set for ages. My brother tried to get me it for Christmas, as was apparently even in contact with Kult of Athena, but they were sold out.

Success! I managed to get a hold of it now! Seen about a quarter of it, and so far I think its a pretty good introduction to the basics and I've already picked up on techniques I didn't know about before.

I particularly like the little tips and explanations Anthony de Longis tosses in once in a while.



I don't really mind the ill-concealed advertisement. Far stranger is Thompson's heavy implication that this is an instruction video for using a saber or cutlass for self defense. He seriously makes it sound as if this is a great fighting style for when you are jumped on the street or need to fight off a burglar.

Now, I know it takes all kinds, but I seriously doubt anyone who wants to learn to use a cavalry saber does so with self defense in mind. Not unless you are freaking John Carter, anyway.

There is one thing I found really odd about the advertisement aspect, though, that it's that they are clearly implying you should use Cold Steel products for this, but they also specify that they are using aluminum training blades. This is despite the fact that, as far as I can tell, Cold Steel do not sell such trainers.

Heck, where do I get an aluminum replica of a 1830 Napoleonic cavalry saber? I haven't really seen any of those around. :?:

In fact, Cold Steel doesn't sell any training weapon that corresponds to the weapons used in this instruction video, not even in that fancy polypropylene waster line of theirs. So even if I have both this video and one of their sabers, how am I supposed to actually train?

You can't argue it'd certainly make a great self defense weapon if someone came at ya with a knife. If you for some reason had it on your person.

You wouldn't have to worry about the cops, unless you refused to lay it on the ground when instructed to do so.

Even then you wouldn't have to worry about them too much, assuming of course that you dont mind 50,000 volts of persuasion. The voltage of the Stun Gun, if the probes hit your blade, may mess up the temper though, so I wouldn't risk refusing.

I wouldn't refuse, either. 50,000 certainly seems enough to ruin a temper and I wouldn't want that to happen to any of my swords; mind, I'd never have the great sword in the first place, but that's hardly the point.

It's a lovely Tulwar, I'm sticking with my shamshir and my customized 1796 light sabre.

This is something that bugged me as well. I'd much rather they take a general approach and talk more about fighting a skilled opponent.