It’s always healthy to step out of your comfort zone and try something new. Xande Ribeiro is currently touring Europe for seminars and he recently was in Slovakia where he visited his student Tomas Bilishich.
Whilst there, Xande Ribeiro, took off his BJJ Gi and black belt, put on an aikido Gi, a white and tried out Aikido weapons training.
Weapons training in aikido traditionally includes the short staff (jō) although its techniques resemble closely the use of the bayonet or Jūkendō, the wooden sword (bokken), and the knife (tantō). Some schools incorporate firearm-disarming techniques. Both weapon-taking and weapon-retention are taught. Some schools, such as the Iwama style of Morihiro Saito, usually spend substantial time practicing with both bokken and jō, under the names of aiki-ken, and aiki-jō, respectively. (source Wiki)
Xande on the experience:
Just had an amazing experience learning traditional martial arts with weapons. My affiliated @tomas_bilishich is a master in Aikido and weapons. Can’t wait to learn some more.!!! Oss
Xande is known for his open mindedness in martial arts. A few years back he published a video of him doing Judo randori with some top Japanese Judoka at Tenri Judo dojo in LA. Although Xande is also a Judo black belt and has some of the best takedown games in BJJ, it was humbling to see him do randori against elite Judoka:
If you want to be un-submitable, you need to check out Tom DeBlass’ “Submission Escapes” BJJ 3 volume BJJ instructional from BJJFanatics.com . In this series, he shares multiple escapes from all of the hardest to escape positions. Soon your training partners and opponents will be calling you Houdini.
