"Chinese hook sword"

ah i see , nice to hear actually (about the fact that it is practical and possibly historical)

its a real bummer that i probably wont get my hands on a carbon steel hook sword...

oh hey can you show me a pic of a smaller hook version ? for curiosity's sake I've just never seen a small hook version (that i know of...infact this is the first time I've even heard that another version exists )

Hmm... can't find it on the net... must be a specially made one in my school.

The set we use in our kung fu san soo, is in the same manner as a tiger sword (or hook sword) but the blade comes to a pointed tip and the hook is shaped like this...



So imagine that hook but forged to a tip rather then a round half loop. This gives our sword the ability to thrust and stab, and because the hook is small but shaped in a ripping manner, when we pull the blade out of the opponent.... well, whatever it's hooking on too is coming with it.

Also, at the handle ours has an addon extended guard I think it's called. Anyways, it looks like the butterfly sword guard like this: www.jamesthejust.com/images/Butterfly%20Swords%201.jpg this gives us the ability to quickly swing the sword in a reverse grip so we have more play with the knife like butt end of the sword. Also protects our hands a little bit better then an open area like the traditional hook sword.


Next time I go in, I'll get some pics.

thank you everyone , i'm going to try to get my hands on the tiger swords
gotta contact the site for a price on them tho i guess. i am going to ask around a bit and make sure the site is legit

i have had no true formal training in the art of weilding tw oswords however my brother took Niten Ichi Ryu and has helped me with some basics (of weilding a katana and a wakazashi) while i will not call that training i will call it a tiny bit of know how, yet i thank you for your words of wisdom and i will keep them in mind , i wont dare try anything advanced with the tigers

ah yes it is Gin from bleach. i found the icon here actualy cuz i did not have an avatar saved to my cpu that i wanted to use so i looked the the avatars offered by SBG and found gin =P

true i didnt mean to say that i would be using niten with the tigers just mostly saying im not too new to holding two swords but regardless i sure as heck wont be hooking them to each other and swinging them and rolling ...thats just asking for it , im a total noob lol

Hey Ronin, where did your brother train Hyoho Niten Ichi Ryu? I'm curious, at what dojo did he train and who is his sensei?

Hahah, thats funny cause I'm in the reverse situation. I've been taught to use all kinds of chinese weapons, including the tiger swords and yet my passion is to learn niten ichi ryu but there's no teacher in south cali... or the western coast for that matter. So all I can do is watch videos and read book of five rings. So absorb everything your brother teaches you because that style or ryu is one of the strongest styles in history, in my opinion.



Well, it is wise to start training with a single weapon first, and most schools start you off with a dao, funny thing is that the dao is the most effective and practical weapon in the chinese weapon system and it's the first and easiest to learn. But once you get the basic idea, it's not that hard... there's no mystical crap behind it where you need years and years before touching two swords. I should know because I specialized in twin dao forms.

Anyways, using the tiger swords in that manner is so impractical and only meant to show off, and the ridiculousness of walking/running in all that space is astonishing. A real chinese art practices economy of motion and practicality, a better example of a chinese form using two weapons is this:

Now that same form can be easily translated for the tiger swords, just got to know how to maximize each strike in effectiveness.

It was the best example that was on youtube, san soo doesn't make it a habit of showing off in competitions or attaching crowds with flashy forms, so we have limited video's of others on youtube. And being static or rooted has 10x more power that dancing around off balance like a typical wushu form plus our flow comes from small distance travel between each move. We may not look pretty but our art is effective and very applicable in reality, which is all we care about.

We use white gi's because we actually do combat training, so when we throw each other at full force we dont rip the uniform. We tried this with the traditional kung fu uniform but they rip too easy... and yeah, we use black uniforms too but could care less if it's white or black. Here's a demo of our hand to hand techniques:

and with that, I'm done.