Shastarvidiya video

[fearn]

Hi Lew,

Good to see a new martial art, and thanks for providing that link. I was smiling through most of it, because the capoeira soundtrack in the back was a cheerful non-sequitur.

That said, I would have been more impressed if they had brought out some rolled up mats for cutting, sides of meat, ballistics gel, or something else to show how deep many of those cuts would be if the demonstration was run at full force.

As a for instance, I've got a couple of very sharp khukuris, and I'm not sure whether any of them could be used successfully for those draw cuts the master mimed. Given clothes and such, I'm not sure they'd make it to skin, and I'm not sure how deep the slash would be. There's the same issue with many of the other attacks, such as the points of the axes, the tip of the khanda, and so forth.

Anyway, I'm not saying that I would want to fight that guy. The point is that we can't tell how effective the art is when he's miming blows without much force. If he had some sort of body simulators in the ring, I would be interested in seeing whether he can hit, say, four of them with full force at full speed, or whether he would have to slow down and follow through to make each attack work. And if he did slow down, would it be enough to make him vulnerable? I don't know.

That's the other reason I was chuckling. For a little while I did capoeira, and we always mimed the blows. The music of the capoeira roda in the background wasn't a total non sequitur after all.

Best,

F