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The FlexKnife
I have been studying Goju-Shorei since 1971, and
one of the things that we always strived for in our training was, reality. We
tried to make the techniques as practical and street-wise as possible. During
practice an attack was made at full speed, full power and on target, so the
blocks and countering techniques had better work. In the interest of safety,
protective gear was worn by both the uke and the tori. Safety gear aside though,
if you missed a block or a parry you could still count on getting your world
rocked.
We trained just as hard when it came to knife defense or offense, but the
training knives all seemed to fall short somehow; if we used a rubber knife it
was flopping all over the place and did not allow for many of the disarming
techniques that we do, if a wooden or aluminum training knife was used the
potential for getting an eye poked out, or a serious contusion was very real.
Also, in the case of the hard training knives, the knife attack was
unconsciously slowed down because of the safety concerns. So, whether training
knife against knife, or empty hand against knife, we were not fulfilling our
passion for realism.
The FlexKnife is the long sought after solution. This product does not look like a
knife with its round, padded “blade”. But you soon get over the looks of it when
you understand how the safety issues have been addressed. The FlexKnife is
designed in Japan and made in America. The FlexKnife uses a patented
piston-system, covered with high impact foam and a nylon sheath. The round
handle offers a very secure gripping surface, and the rubber guard gives
protection to the hand. The overall length of the FlexKnife is 11 inches. The
blade is 6 inches long. The handle has 4 ½ inches of usable gripping surface
because of the ½ inch round guard. The padded blade is 7 inches in
circumference.
The FlexKnife allows attacks to be thrown with
full speed and full power, which makes all of the previous knife training
obsolete. I can’t stress strongly enough how steep the learning curve has become
with the advent of the FlexKnife. All martial artists think that they have been
training at full speed with their training blades, and until they have a
training session with the FlexKnife it will be hard to convince them otherwise.
At a recent American Jujitsu Institute gathering, I paired a Jujitsu Black Belt
against an Aikido Black Belt. First the Aikidoist defended against an overhead
stab (the easiest attack to defend against) where the aluminum training knife
was used. The defense was successful. Next the FlexKnife was employed in the
same attack. The Aikidoist got hit. The only instruction that I gave was for the
attack to be carried out as fast as the Jujitsu practitioner thought safe. This
experiment has been repeatedly carried out using Black Belts from different
styles, and all types of attacks. The results have always been the same; the
faster attack with the FlexKnife always got through, demonstrating that training
with any other kind of training blade was not realistic.
The Goju-Shorei Weapons System has adopted the FlexKnife as the training knife
that will offer the most realistic training available.
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