The real scoop on Bartitsu

[Carol the Dabbler]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzn61h6lWOM&feature=player_embedded

 

 

 

Bartitsu is the eccentric "mixed martial art" founded in London in the late 1800s as a combination of Japanese jujitsu, Swiss/French cane fighting and British boxing. It was famously written into the Sherlock Holmes stories (misspelled as "baritsu") when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle needed a deus ex machina device to explain how Holmes had defeated his arch-nemesis, Professor Moriarty, in their battle at the Reichenbach Falls.

 

Although Bartitsu was forgotten for almost a hundred years, it's been experiencing a revival since the early 2000s, most recently spurred on by the success of the Robert Downey, Jr. movies.

 

>Read more<

 

[Truthhunter]

I see there is a booklet available on this art of self-defence, favoured by Sherlock Holmes.

 

Anybody got it ?

 

More than that, has anyone learned it on a practical basis ?

[besleybean]

I have the booklet and went to a talk on the subject.

Quite interesting.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

I have the dvd giving both history of it and fighting techniques. Haven't made an in-depth study of it yet.

[Truthhunter]

I do own a wooden walking stick, acquired when and since my lower back pain persists.

 

Never thought of using it for training to do the Bartitsu fighting techniques though.

[besleybean]

Ooh, you're in Scotland too.

We could train!

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

On YouTube thereEast ty are vids showing a Middle-east type dance based on a self defense style using the walking stick.

[Carol the Dabbler]

There are bunches of stick-fighting techniques.  I studied one briefly.  Near as I recall, it was called Chinese Wand Exercises, but the "wand" was a straight bamboo cane roughly my height.  The method was taught as just a series of graceful moves, but it was clearly related to a self-defense technique.

 

And as I recall, Robin Hood and Little John first encountered each other in a good old-fashioned English stick fight.

 

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

The quarter staff...yup.

[Ultragonk]

I found the stick fighting vid interesting but was surprised to see so many movements from the elbow and the shoulder. What you tend to find in European fencing is a straighter arm and the vast majority of the cuts, especially with a single handed weapon, were delivered with the wrist in a moulinet fashion. Of course I've never had any training in Bartitsu so I'm talking from ignorance on the subject. I would like to take on a Bartitsu stick fighter though, if I had a saber it would be interesting to see how the techniques mesh.