Cane for Self-defense DVD

Buy This Item Cane for Self-defense DVD by Turtle Press  Available from Amazon  $26.99  on 11-16-2008     The cane is the only weapon you can legally carry with you everywhere you go and on this comprehensive DVD, Gordon Oster shows you exactly why the common walking cane is one of the most effective self-defense weapons you can learn. <P>Begin with the basics of selecting a cane for training and understanding how the various parts of the cane can be used for blocking, striking and pain compliance techniques. You'll learn grip, footwork, targets and even a warm-up to help you avoid injuries during training. <P>Once you have the basics down, Master Oster teaches a series of self-defense applications beginning with the most effective blocking, parrying, stabbing, flailing and striking techniques then progressing to partner scenarios in which you'll learn to defend against grabs, chokes, strikes, kicks and armed attacks. Finally, for advanced practitioners, there are a number of pain compliance techniques designed to take down and render an attacker harmless without permanent damage. <P>As a special bonus, Master Oster teaches a cane kata with self-defense applications, giving you an excellent way to practice your new skills with or without a partner. Each skill on this DVD is explained in detail by Master Oster and demonstrated from several camera angles to make learning easy and complete. Reader Reviews This DVD actually starts off decently with simple techniques. Where Oster begins to fall down is in teaching set sequences rather than teaching to apply and combine the simple techniques according to how the attacker is positioned. This dogmatic approach ill-serves the novice and wastes the time of anyone else watching. The kata is likewise as stupid and pointless (but hey, aren't they all?). Oster does make a good case for avoiding the wide-crooked, "weaponized" canes such as those by CaneMasters, but overlooks three obvious advantages: 1) narrow-crooked canes are usually easier to find, 2) are usually far less expensive, and 3) look nonthreatening, something CaneMasters' canes, with fangs, eyes, "raking points," shaft grips (if these served a useful purpose, they'd be on regular canes!) yin-yang-based logos, and other such nonsense do not. He does teach effective power generation with the cane, but wastes time on pain-compliance techniques (another reason why he prefers standard-crooked canes). Someone attacking you will either be drunk, drugged, deranged, or determined. Any person falling into those categories will either be highly resistant to pain or temporarily impervious to it. Use of pain compliance techniques only serves to put the defender at needless risk. Instead, go for structural compliance--if he can no longer stand, he can no longer fight. The final section of the DVD, the so-called advanced techniques, are for the advanced students who've willingly drunk the Kool-Aid--they're completely useless. They go beyond the structured and unrealistic intermediate techniques previously shown by leaps and bounds. Worst of all is a sequence detailing cane use against an attacker with a handgun: instead of closing distance enough to hit the attacker, a disarm is taught that has the defender taking the gun from an unresisting opponent. The defender then leaps further into Fantasyland by tucking the pistol under an armpit and "covering" the attacker with the cane. What this is supposed to accomplish is left to the viewer's imagination. Oster should take a tip from Alain Burrese's "Hapkido Cane" DVD set--when Burrese teaches similarly impractical techniques, he tells the viewer that they are for demonstration only, not something someone should try to use for real. One other thing--Oster's recommending that the rubber tip be glued onto the cane makes sense if it's only used for practice. In the real world, the tips wear out--supergluing them in place makes replacing them difficult at best.

Cane for Self-defense DVD Available from Amazon Price: $26.99 Updated on 11-16-2008.

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