Headlocks and Hierophants

The Writings of WW Stevens

Tag: Weapons

Hammer and Whip

September 4, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Over the years, I have been lucky enough to train bataireacht from a variety of sources: Doyle, Antrim, even some smaller family styles. While these methods may hold the stick differently, the mechanics and origins of their methods are more similar. So when it comes to how we strike with a bata (aka shillelagh), there are two major energies to get down first.

These two energies are the hammer and the whip.

The Hammer

When holding a shillelagh, we don’t often rear back the stick. This is, in part, due to faction fighting. Shillelagh’s were not used solely for one-on-one self defense, but also in defense of your community or clan. When you’re fighting in a mass, close to your friends or family, you can’t often pull back and swing wide. If you do, you risk hitting your own allies. So one way to handle this is to keep your stick tight to you, with a relatively stiff wrist. “Relatively” is the operative word here. We are not looking for a death grip. And different styles will have a different level of stiffness. Doyle style fighters have a more limber wrist than how I first learned.

When you swing, you do so in short, sharp strikes. This hammering energy can be seen especially in closer range striking where you may not be able to utilize the full range of the stick or your arm. You may still turn your hips to create a full line of power from the foot into the stick, but it will be tighter than with a whipping motion.

Hammering strikes may also occur after a deflection or block that leaves your stick directly above or the side of your opponent. From this position the most available strike is a hammering shot, either with the butt of the stick or the top third, depending on your angle.

The Whip

Many shillelagh are lighter fare and it’s often effective and easy to snap our stick towards the target. By extending our arm, through the elbow and wrist, we are able to cause the end of our stick to snap into the target like a whip. It not only is fast, but it can extend our range beyond that available with a hammering strike. While bataireacht requires looseness as a general trait, being able to stay loose and snappy is especially important for whipping strikes. Most whipping strikes utilize the hip for a full line of power in the Doyle stick and Rourke stick.

Some styles, such as the Doyle stick, utilize the whipping energy more than others. The whip is like their jab and multiple may be pumped out in rapid succession. Antrim fighters often use whipping strikes to clear shots and ‘bounce’ back around to hit their opponent.

Other methods use the whip more often as a secondary attack. For example: when the opponent ranges out of the way of a heavier swing, a whipping strike can be easily added to the attack. Alternatively a small whipping strike can be used when you’ve deflected an attack by swinging first on the back of their stick. From this inside position, a quick whip to the nose or temple will stun the opponent.

To be able to whip effectively (as well as hammer), you need to practice sufficiently and take good care of your hands. The strength and flexibility of your tendons will dictate how well you can utilize the bata.

Using these Energies with a Two Handed Grip

Some methods of bataireacht switch between a one-handed grip and a two-handed grip. Both hammering and whipping can be used with the two-handed grip. The two-handed swing can be used when reinforced power is needed to break through a heavy guard. Breaking a heavy guard can be done with two hands at the lower third of the stick, or with each hand on either extreme of the center. 

By taking both hands of the lower third of the stick, you can create a longer lever with a whipping force. This can be used at a long distance to make contact, or at a closer range to hit spots that may seem out of reach like the back of the head, a knee, or the weapon hand of a second attacker.

Since the Doyle style holds both hands near the middle third of the stick like a boxer uses their hands to guard, there is a lot of striking using both hands on the stick. Hammering can be done with either end, ‘rowing’ into the attack with one end or the other. As well, breaking the nose can be done using the center of the stick by snapping the wrists up and cracking into the opponent’s schnoz.

The Antrim style uses a similar technique but hammers down with the middle of the stick. I have heard this called ‘hooves’ or ‘hoofing’, which I believe refers to the fact that your downward facing fists look like a pair of trotters.

Using Different Ends of the Stick

Typically, a bata will have a heavier end and a lighter end. The classical idea of a shillelagh is a walking stick, cut from blackthorn (and occasionally hawthorn) with a root knob at the top of the stick used for the handle. These sticks are light and quick, but deceptively dense. While they can snap and splinter like oak or pine, they wield much like rattan. And historically, bataí could be made of heavier woods like oak and white ash. But as more and more of Irish forests were cut for British lumber, hedgerow trees like blackthorn became the accessible option for the working class.

So what does this mean for fighting with the stick? Well, even though one end is heavier, you can whip either side out. The end result of the whipping energy is different. With the tip (floor end) of the stick, the whipping strikes will tend to welt and cut the skin, which can be very effective against the face, ears, and fingers. Whipping with the handle as the striking surface tends to create more bruising and potential breaks, making it a better tool to target the temple, jaw, elbow, wrist, and fingers. 

Hammering with the tip can cause the same kind of cutting and welting that whipping can, however it can be done in closer ranges. As well, if the tip is treated as the pommel, it can take out an eye or bust teeth. Hammering can also be done with the middle third of the stick, which can be a shot to the nose or simply a shove that makes space for your next shot. Hammering with the knobhandle can break bone. While the tip concentrates the force in a smaller area, the rounded shape of the knob can really impart force more thoroughly for breaking power. As well, it is a larger tool, which means that you can be a bit less precise with your shots.

Developing These Kinds of Strikes

Get a heavybag or tire. This will be a solid striking surface and help you develop the basic movements.

For the whip, practice snapping the stick out and back. Imagine the power flowing up your arm and out the stick fluidly; whipping is about being ‘soft’ and quick, like an eel or a snake. At first, it can be best to practice from whatever ready position your style uses, but since the whip is a fluid motion, don’t be afraid to start trying to ‘whip’ hits from odd angles. Deceptiveness is an important aspect of bataireacht and working from odd angles also teaches you how to get back on the offensive from a bad position.

For the hammer, hold your stick in a ready position, extend through the elbow and swing hard into the bag. Try to dent the bag with your hit and bring it directly back to your position. Find how to hit hard shots and maintain control of your wrist and the stick. The hammer, at first, will feel very rigid. But with sufficient practice, hammering will become quick efficient and a little fluid as well. In blacksmithing, when you strike iron with a hammer, you let the hammer bounce back a little bit for the next strike. This keeps your wrists from taking too much damage and makes the motion of hammering more efficient. As you practice hammering the bag, takes this image with you and think about how we don’t use 100% of the force available. We only use enough to propel us to the next strike. Look for many angles of attack and to hammer from multiple ranges.

So go ahead and start giving these drills a try. Hopefully they will help your stickfighting and if you have any questions, be sure to let me know. If you can’t train with me, I highly recommend checking out Rambling Kern and Strange Fox Fighting Arts for more education on bataireacht. 

Losing the Long Pole and Cutting the Swords

August 20, 2024 / / 0 Comments

In Wing Chun’s current zeitgeist a question or two surround the two weapons. Do we keep them around? How do we train them in the modern day?

Wing Chun has always been primarily an empty hand system, but its two weapons are also deeply entrenched in our art and are symbols of it to this day. Yet, due to the popularity of combat sports, and dangers of weapons fighting, some Wing Chun schools have started to move solely towards kickboxing.

Many schools do not place equitable emphasis on the weapons vs the fist. When I say “equitable emphasis,” I don’t mean you have to train weapons as much as the fists. But maybe in equal measure to the forms. Typically, Wing Chun has three hand forms, the wooden dummy, and two weapons forms. So theoretically, you should be training the Lok Dim Boon Gwan or BakJom Dao at least one sixth of the time. Yet many Wing Chun schools do not even come close to this.

As someone who comes from a school that actively trains the weapons, I find this very apparent. I travel a bit every year and find other schools to train with while I’m out there. Some schools practiced the weapons, others only practiced the blades, and some only practiced the empty hand techniques. So why do we have these differences in training and curriculum? One answer that I have heard is simply space.

A lot of schools don’t have a ton of room and since Wing Chun hand fighting takes up even less space, a lot of sifus will go with a smaller space to save money on rent. And if you’re in a big city with little space (like Hong Kong or New York), you may have little choice about where you can train. Wong Hong Chung even discusses this issue of space in his interview with Wing Chun Origins.

Other schools have a different approach to the weapons, which is to see the weapons as beautiful relics. Important to the development of Wing Chun in its past, but not necessarily needed for its future. Yet, these two weapons in particular are so important because they are truly Southern Chinese weapons. The long pole and the butterfly swords found in Wing Chun are common in other Southern Chinese systems like Hung Ga, Choy Lay Fut, and Lung Ying. And while the fundamentals are the same, each style has its own method of these weapons, including power generation, defensive tactics, and just the forms themselves.

One way around the space issue is to train shorter versions of the pole. For example, while I am certified under Michael Valenti, I have also trained with Larry Rice during my time in Asheville, NC. With Michael, we use the traditional length of staff and practice with care. Only a few people are ever training the weapons at a time and if we need to, we’ll go outside to accommodate the space. When I was at Larry’s, we trained using six foot poles probably 80% of the time and would practice with traditional weapons when there was room. While I prefer the traditional length, I think the six foot pole training was also valuable.

Practicing the form and techniques with a variety of lengths and weights taught me to understand the details of this weapon more thoroughly and how to apply the concepts more broadly. And this helps me apply the weapon’s lessons in a broader context, as we are taught to do. I use lessons from both weapons in my grappling and kickboxing. They teach a surprising amount about body mechanics and distance management, if you are willing to train them.

But what options do we really have as practitioners and teachers?

Option 1: Train the Weapons as They Are

The first option is the most apparent: simply keep training Wing Chun in its entirety. Wing Chun is an historical martial art. This does not mean it cannot be used for sport or self defense. It can be. But it is a solidified system that is not prone to changing that much. On top of this, the traditional structure of Ip Man Wing Chun has only certain lessons in certain sections of the curriculum. For example, the Lok Dim Boon Gwan has the only major examples of level changing. It would be a much weaker art without this lesson.

If we want to truly preserve the lessons of Wing Chun then we should be willing to perform all aspects of the art, even the ones that are difficult. And it may not be the most lucrative, but if we were worried about that, we would just teach Tae Kwon Do in a strip mall.

There are many ways to do this, like the shorter staves for practicing in close spaces and padded foam weapons for sparring.

Option 2: Turn the Weapons Forms into Hand Forms

One way to maintain the lessons of the weapons is to practice the weapons forms as hand forms. I personally do this already, even though I still practice the weapons as they are. Since the hands and weapons inform each other, it’s not that far of a stretch. While this would maintain the major lessons of the forms, it would turn Wing Chun solely into a kickboxing art.

Even though beimo is historically the primary focus of Wing Chun, we would be losing certain aspects of the art if we move forward in this manner. It would result in less well rounded practitioners. Weapons training improves you as a martial artist in ways you often don’t realize until after the fact.

If you’re worried about self defense, you have to know how to fight in Stand, Clinch, Ground, and Weapons. Wing Chun is only missing ground fighting. If we cut the weapons, we’re left with only the first two. Wing Chun’s weapons are not as dynamic as Kali’s, or as broad in scope as Kobudo’s, but few things beat a big ol’ stick.

Another issue with losing the weapons is the loss of conditioning. While basic hand and leg conditioning would still be apparent, the weight training, precision training, and core training of the Lok Dim Boon Gwan would have to be supplemented with other drills.

And if one decided to be rid of the blades as well, certain wrist and forearm conditioning drills would also be lost. You can’t go around fighting with weak hands. Wing Chun is not that internal.

Option 3: Lose the Weapons but Keep Their Drills

This one is even more austere than option two. If we plan to lose the weapons forms, we could keep the drills of those forms to maintain some of these lessons. For example, the arrow punching drills from the Lok Dim Boon Gwan are essential to Wing Chun’s explosiveness. The pole also is the only area to teach the sei ping ma and cat stances. Using these footworks makes your Wing Chun more fluid and quick.

But depending on your school of Wing Chun, you may not have that many drills for each weapon. Many schools of Wing Chun mainly focus on the forms for the majority of their training and may only have two or three drills for each weapon. The Bak Jom Dao form is so different in order from school to school, in part because it is just a series of drills.

So you may have to add some of these lessons into other forms. This leaves you with a system that begins to shift outside of the tradition. But this isn’t necessarily bad or wrong.

Each generation has changed Wing Chun to fit its needs. Leung Jan originally taught Wing Chun with a strict curriculum, but later boiled it all down to techniques with the Kulo style of Wing Chun. Ip Man taught the forms in different orders at different points of his teaching career.

Option 4: Teach Different Weapons

This one is a “Thanks, I hate it,” option for me. I’m discussing it here because this does happen and it can go well or poorly. I have seen Wing Chun from a school where the instructor was not required by his sifu to know the weapons to open his own school. He taught Wing Chun, but taught Eskrima solo baston as a weapon during his Wing Chun class, and frankly not very well. And I love FMA, I train it constantly, but it’s not Wing Chun. Nor is it wrong to train Wing Chun and another art. That’s often good. But there was a disingenuousness to this instructor’s decision.

To me, this plug and play mixing, it doesn’t show respect to the art as a whole. He couldn’t be fucked to learn the traditional weapons, so he throws some basic stick fighting into his Wing Chun class. I’m not saying you can’t cross-train, obviously you should do that. But there is the issue of misrepresenting Wing Chun to the next generation. There is the issue of not having all the tools and concepts to discuss Wing Chun and even how it relates to an art like Eskrima. And not fully understanding Eskrima and trying to add it to Wing Chun.

Wing Chun is not the only art I train. So I think it is fair for me to say that it is not a large curriculum, especially not for a Chinese art. So it seems impatient and immature to add a weapon to a system you have not completed.

And I treat that situation differently than instructors who have completed the curriculum and then added weapons or other techniques. I have been lucky enough to drop in during my travels on schools where the sifu has added weapons. One simply taught the blade techniques with machetes. The other kept the traditional weapons and forms, but also added cane fighting. They know what Wing Chun is and they have made a conscious decision to adapt it. There was intention about what they were adding and how it affects their student’s learning.

They are not incidentally severing their students from resources, the traditional weapons are still there. Or if they take out the traditional weapons, they have a good reason for it. They’ve done the work and they understand the choice they are making, and I respect that. These teachers took the fourth option, but applied Wing Chun to these weapons. In my limited experience with these teachers, many of the lessons are still there. And it is in a sense, an extension of what we already do with the weapons: view them not only as the weapon itself, but also as a prototypical signifier of any weapon you may pick up. So, while I may not personally enjoy it as Wing Chun, I have to respect it as an option.

So what do we do? Where do we go with this? Personally, I say go with Option 1. If you need, add what you feel is necessary, but don’t cut away the weapons that our kung fu ancestors saw as essential.

As the decades pass, arts will change and what we do now is not what Wing Chun will be in the next 50 years. That’s okay. That’s not a bad thing. But we do have to ask ourselves what is right to change and what must stay. When the art changes, does it continue the fighting spirit of Wing Chun or mute it for the next generation?

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