Year of the Snake Weapon Form

My weapon form that I’m creating this year is using Reindeer Antlers! 

When I asked, the zoo and the keepers were kind enough to allow me to take a pair of antlers from one of our reindeer home to develop my form with! The ones I want are from my favourite reindeer (see photo) as she is the first animal I trained a brand new behaviour with at the zoo so she has a special place in my heart. But since she is female and won’t drop her antlers until the end of the winter season I have a stand in pair of older antlers from 2 different males to use in the meantime. 

When selecting my weapon for this year I had a few requirements:

1) no blades - so far all of my weapons have been bladed and I think I have a lot to learn from a weapon that does not use slicing or slashing as it’s primary strikes 

2) ideally, something smaller - I wanted something a bit more compact so I could have an easier time practicing outside of the kwoon (now that I have them in my hands I’m not sure if I fulfilled this requirement, I always seem to forget how large two-handed weapons can become)

3) I wanted either this year or the next to choose something weird, not a typical weapon because I think there is a lot of value in learning how to weaponize something made for a different purpose, after all that’s what Kung fu is!

So far it has been very challenging to start to create my form because I’m not even starting at Level One: I’ve never touched this weapon in my life and I’m not sure how to use it, I’m starting at Lever Zero: how the heck am I even supposed to hold these?! I have tried six different hand positions but I am starting to narrow down which ones I like, and I am trying to find ways to smoothly switch between them and use that as the base of my form.

I have been working on building a library of strikes and blocks so that I can get a better understanding of how to use this weapon and then I have some basics to pull from once I start to put them together into a form. In building my form also want to draw inspiration from how reindeer actually use their antlers (fun fact: when male deer fight with their antlers it’s called sparring!) I know I want to incorporate lots of stabs and forward strikes, but I also want to keep in mind how a reindeer could fight as a whole, not just with their antlers, but how do they use their bodies and legs to attack as well, how they move and how they turn that movement into force. I would also like to incorporate other uses for antlers into my form; Another fun fact is the reindeer are one of the only deer species where the females also grow antlers! They keep them through the winter (long after the males have dropped theirs at the end of the breeding season) and use them to protect their young and uncover food hidden under the snow using the scoop shaped prongs at the front of their antlers! I want to use these motions as sources of inspiration for my own movements in my form.

It has been challenging developing my weapon form this year, but I am excited for all the lessons this weapon has to teach me!

	Current Total	Should Be At
Push-ups	3065	3240
Sit-Ups	2020	3240
Hand Form	16	60
Weapon Form	19	60
Blogs	3	3
Sparring	22	60
AOK	69	60
Steps	143	93
Repair Relationship	1	3
Mastery Blogs	0	2
Digital Journal	0
Jaw Exercises	0	35
1-on-1's	2	3