Introduction to the Shaolin Staff

Full Video Transcript

Okay so a little introduction to the Shaolin staff. Well. The staff must be one of the most basic weapons that mankind has ever used. Probably one of the first ones too. The staff, more or less, can be a branch off a tree.

Yeah

It doesn't take any great deal of technology to come up with something like this and as we've evolved, this is a a pole that has unlimited uses on, in farms, buildings, I mean how many things do you use a pole for? So it's an everyday commonly found Implement and just about every culture in the world has used a staff as a weapon.

Yeah, there an interesting question, 'why do we need a long pole that we wield with two hands, when we could simply use a club?' Something maybe about that long, nice and heavy, and you can belt people with it. Why do we need to use something more complex like this? Well because we're using two hands and a lot of body movement, we are going to get more power into this but, it's a bit more difficult to use. So I suggest the answer is, instead of thinking about swinging a staff, think about piercing with the staff - piercing and jabbing.

And the advantage of that is it holds someone back, it holds someone away from you. Maybe you're using it to hunt a wild animal, you don't want the animal coming to too close, so jabbing out gives you range. Stop someone getting close. You got someone with a club, you can pick them off before they get close to you. So it's seen that as one of the main advantages with the staff. That you have that reach. Reach out, hit, hit, reach, reach, and you can hold someone off.

I remember one of my teachers Master Tan Ian Hawk in Singapore telling a good story about the staff. And I had three of them, uh, involved in a big set to in a coffee shop in Singapore, and they stood kind of like one facing this way, one this way, one this way, triangle shape with their backs to each other, and they managed to hold off a whole load of guys, big crowd, using their staves and just kind of jabbing out, holding people back.

The staff is a weapon, very much, associated with Shaolin. Um, some people consider it to be the, the characteristic weapon of Shaolin - the classic Shaolin weapon.

It's not the most effective weapon, but that can be a good thing. It's not too lethal. And the story goes, it was a popular weapon with monks, because monks take a vow not to kill

So maybe you don't want a tiger fork or, or horse cutting knife, something as lethal as that. If you use just a simple wooden staff, then you can defend yourself without necessarily killing somebody. And that can be a good thing, and it can be a very good thing in, uh, modern times when the penalty for killing people can be quite severe. if you want a weapon that's, uh, not too likely to kill somebody - this is a good choice, yeah.

This is something that Master Tan used to carry in the back of his van just in case, and he didn't want anything too lethal he referred the the non-lethal weapon like the staff.

This one here, bought in Singapore in the late 1980s, think about 8. And it's really heavy really hardwood - Indonesian hardwood - you can't get them anymore. Yeah you can't buy these anymore. Ah, it's really heavy and it's thick. You can see how thick it is. And this is the old style staff that they used to fight with, yeah, and I tell you what, you get hit with this and that is going to it's going to make a difference. Yeah

It's heavy, it's hard, uh, it makes it a little bit difficult to swing but is certainly effective. Yeah, this will break bones. Some of the modern staves, I think you hit some of the they just break. And you see people now they're using these kind of carbon fiber staves. What good would they do?

You're not going to knock anybody out of one of those. Um, to understand how you use a staff, you have to really understand what a real staff is like.

It's a great big heavy hard bit of wood that you can knock people out with.