Walk into almost any martial arts school in the world, you will inevitably see a wall full of ancient style weapons that were originally not developed as a weapon.

Early in the 1600s, Japan conquered the Ryukyu Islands whose main island is Okinawa. Okinawa is located some 300 miles south of the southernmost tip of the mainland of Japan. Fearing an over throw, the emperor of Japan forced the people of Okinawa to give up all weapons.

Thanks to trade, the nearness of China as well as the Shaolin monks and nuns who helped them, the Okinawans developed a means of self-protection by using common farm implements for weapons. Most of what are now traditional martial arts weapons are still used for farming to this day.

Master Chris Davis teaches the wepons classes at Blue Tiger Martial Arts. He has studied traditional Okinawan, Japanese, Korean, and Philipino weapons.

The weapons class is offered free of charge to any student who has achieved the rank of Purple Belt or higher. This is to ensure that they have enough basic martial arts knowledge to understand the complexities of the weapons that they will be working with as well as the saftety rules that are involved with weapons training.

The weapons class usually consists of 10 to 12 week units on a single weapon along with a few "review" classes to refresh everyones memory on previous units. Some of the weapons covered in this class include...

• Bo
• Kama
• Sai
• Tonfa
• Nunchaku
• We also cover the basics of Arnis and Escrima.