High Mountain Wooden Bench

[Sagacious Lu]

If all goes well in my practice pretty soon I'm going to start training to use a wooden bench as a weapon. Apparently at one time it was a standard piece of furniture in China so fighters developed techniques for wielding it as a weapon. It looks a lot like a saw horse. The idea is that by getting proficient with it you get to the point where you can use other seemingly cumbersome objects (like chairs and bar-stools) to defend yourself. Does anyone else have any experience with them?

[Tom Yum]

Question

Hey man, most chairs are bent around 90 degrees, right?

It would seem better for using things like tables and small desks. I don't know jack about wooden bench techniques though, other than what I know from WWE...

[Shard]

This is where adaptation of one's art come in very importantly.
Yes i agree it would be a good idea to learn wooden bench techniques. If not only for the exercise and the exprimentation of something new.

But here is where TMartists tend to falter. They stop at the learning the bench, then they start thinking "Yea! now i'm the bench master MT ppl Ph34r me!" Only to later realise that you almost never find benches like that anymore. Once you got the main idea of the "bench work", you really gotta start implementing that into modern day objects. Practise your bench techniques using a bar stood/coffee table. Never Stop changing and evolving.
Learnt to use a Sword? Great now practise your sword techniques on an umbrella/cane. The Stabbing motions are almost identical with the only exception being you can't slash with your umbrella.

[seanyseanybean]

yea the bench is awesome. Watch 'Young Master' (greatist KF movie of all time) to see Jackie Chan fight Yuen Biao in a bench dual. Its awesome.

[Sagacious Lu]

This is where adaptation of one's art come in very importantly.
Yes i agree it would be a good idea to learn wooden bench techniques. If not only for the exercise and the exprimentation of something new.

But here is where TMartists tend to falter. They stop at the learning the bench, then they start thinking "Yea! now i'm the bench master MT ppl Ph34r me!" Only to later realise that you almost never find benches like that anymore. Once you got the main idea of the "bench work", you really gotta start implementing that into modern day objects. Practise your bench techniques using a bar stood/coffee table. Never Stop changing and evolving.
Learnt to use a Sword? Great now practise your sword techniques on an umbrella/cane. The Stabbing motions are almost identical with the only exception being you can't slash with your umbrella.

This is what I was thinking. When you pick one up for the first time it's awkward as hell, but you def. can learn to use it to parry attacks and deliver strikes if you take the time. Once I got half-way decent with the bench I'd want to work similar drills with the chairs at my kitchen table, small tables, bar stools or whatever else seems appropriate. Personally if I ever had to face a knife or broken bottle I like the idea of picking up my bar stool and trying to keep the guy at bay with it a lot better than using my hands so it makes sense to me to spend some time on it.

yea the bench is awesome. Watch 'Young Master' (greatist KF movie of all time) to see Jackie Chan fight Yuen Biao in a bench dual. Its awesome.

I've seen Jackie Chan use benches, but they were a lot smaller than the ones we use. Also, they must have been made out of something extremely light (balsa wood?) because he was able to twirl them around like they were nothing. The bench I train with is a big heavy chunk of wood so the way we use it is pretty different.