Tres Espadas Curriculum Shift

 In 2021 I mentioned how the availability of sparring gear was impacting our training at Tres Espadas. Since then we have done a lot of experimentation on making our own free sparring weapons. Our conclusion is you want a light, thin, ratan arnis-stick core with boffer-style padding, but where we have gotten stuck is what to use as a skin, something that will work against a fencing helmet. The closest thing we have found is gaff tape:

But gaff tape, long term, doesn't stay in place, and additional glue adds too much rigidity and weight to be safe. This means the only reliable weapon in the "padded stick" category that meets our standards is the Nihonzashi Padded Wakizashi (their padded Katana is also nice.) This means that our stick sparring in the future is likely to be done with non-padded ratan arnis sticks. THAT means that our stick cirriculum needs to be the last and most optional stage of training, because it will be the most risky and painful stage of training.

Historically we have been hard rubber knife first, then padded flexible stick, then larger and more rigid weapons. What is happening now is we are still knife first, but then we are going straight to the Nihonzashi padded weapons, and then Stick will be optional at the end for those who want to get into stick fighting specifically, just as our unarmed fighting is optional and late stage.

Since our saber fighting is Tai Chi based, this will be the first time we returned closer to our training roots with Doc Fai Wong's system since we officially started Tres Espadas. That said Tai Chi saber is very late stage training in most Tai Chi systems including Doc Fai Wong's system, were as with Tres Espadas we only have two Tai Chi forms, and the first one is Saber (the 2nd one is open hand.)

Tres Espadas officially has no curriculum besides the Knife Badge, but inevitably people seek training from other members to become better weapon fighters. I expect this Tai Chi orientation at our Bremerton club to be local to Bremerton, I do not expect this to catch on at other Tres Espadas clubs as they arise. Keep in mind our Tai Chi is sparring oriented, for example here is some Tai Chi open hand free sparring for palm strikes and eye gouges that we were doing recently: