The Sabre, Staff and Spear

The staff

The staff is called the ancestor because it is the simplest weapon and because most other long weapons can be understood as a staff with something added. It is usually made of white waxwood, which is flexible and does not shatter, and is commonly cut to eyebrow height, though longer versions exist.

It is often the first weapon taught, and the reason is pedagogical rather than traditional. A staff has two ends, weight distributed along its length, and no cutting edge to distract the student. Power either reaches the end of it or does not, and there is no way to disguise the difference. A student who has been told for a year that their power is not reaching their hands will discover the point instantly the first time they try to make a staff move properly.

Its methods are few and blunt: cleaving downward, sweeping, poking with the end, flicking upward, circling overhead to clear a line, and deflecting aside. Both hands work, both ends are used, and the grip shifts along the shaft during movement. This last point — the sliding grip — is the specific coordination the staff teaches, and it transfers directly to the spear.

The sabre

The sabre is a single-edged weapon, usually with some curve, and it exists in a number of historical shapes: narrow willow-leaf and goose-quill forms used by soldiers, and the broader oxtail form that became common in the late Qing and is what most martial arts schools use today. It is heavier than the straight sword and considerably more robust.

This robustness changes everything about how it is used. Where the straight sword must avoid hard contact, the sabre can accept it, and can parry with the unsharpened back of the blade. Where the straight sword works by point and precision, the sabre works by cutting with momentum, and its movements are consequently larger and more committed. The free hand is much more involved, often supporting or following the blade, and the characteristic wrapping movements that pass the blade around the head and shoulders exist to change the direction of a heavy cut without losing its momentum.

What the sabre teaches is the management of momentum. A straight sword can be stopped and redirected almost anywhere; a sabre in motion is going to complete its arc, and the practitioner has to plan for where it will be. This is a genuinely different skill and it exposes a different set of faults — chiefly a tendency to use the arm to fight the weapon rather than allowing the body to carry it.

The spear

The spear was the principal weapon of Chinese military practice for most of recorded history, which is why it is called the king. A functional spear has a waxwood shaft, and the flexibility of that shaft is not a defect but the point: the shaft bends, stores energy and returns it, and skilled use exploits this rather than fighting it. The shaft is alive in the hands in a way that a rigid pole is not.

Its core technique is small and famously difficult. Three basic actions do most of the work: deflecting an opposing weapon to one side, deflecting it to the other, and thrusting. Around these is built the skill of circling the point, keeping it moving in a small controlled orbit so that the opponent cannot find the line. The traditional saying is that the staff takes a month, the sabre a year, and the spear a lifetime, and this is not modesty. Controlling a long flexible shaft at its far end, precisely, while moving, against someone doing the same, is one of the hardest coordination problems in the martial repertoire.

Why the spear matters to the internal arts

Of all the weapons, the spear has the closest relationship to the empty-hand internal arts. Xingyiquan is a spear method adapted to the bare hand, and its footwork, centreline habits and advancing tactics are unintelligible without that fact. Taijiquan traditions preserve pole-shaking practice, in which a heavy flexible shaft is driven with the whole body — an exercise that is nearly impossible to fake and that many teachers use as the definitive test of whether a practitioner has whole-body power or only the appearance of it.

The reason is mechanical. A long shaft magnifies everything. A small disconnection at the hip becomes a visible wobble at the tip three metres away. Nothing else in the traditional curriculum provides feedback of that quality.

What each weapon exposes

It is worth being explicit about this, because it is the practical justification for studying more than one. The staff reveals whether power reaches the end of an implement. The sabre reveals whether the body carries the weapon or the arm fights it. The spear reveals whether the hips and waist are genuinely driving the movement. The straight sword reveals unnecessary tension in the wrist and any disorganisation during turns.

A practitioner whose empty-hand form looks acceptable will usually fail at least one of these four tests, and which one fails tells a teacher precisely where to work. This diagnostic use is the substantive reason traditional curricula required several weapons, and it is a better reason than the accumulation of routines.

The great sabre and the modern period

The two-handed great sabre deserves a mention because of its role in the twentieth century. Chinese units in the 1930s used long-handled sabres in close fighting, a genuinely modern military application of a traditional weapon, and simplified sabre methods were taught to soldiers for that purpose. This is one of the few instances where traditional Chinese weapons practice has a documented and recent operational history rather than a legendary one.

It is also instructive about what happens when a weapon method is trained for use. The material taught to those units was short, plain and repetitive, with the decorative content removed. Comparing it with the elaborate sabre routines taught in schools makes the difference between a functional and a performance curriculum unusually clear.

Paired practice with weapons

Every one of these weapons has an associated body of two-person work, and it is the part most often omitted. Staff sparring is relatively safe with padding and is the most accessible entry point. Sabre and spear paired sets exist in most traditions as prearranged sequences, which teach distance and timing within a known script. Free work with weapons requires protective equipment and careful supervision and is correspondingly rare.

The omission matters because weapons magnify the gap between solo competence and functional skill even more than empty-hand practice does. A person can perform a spear routine impressively and have no idea what to do when a shaft is coming toward them at speed, because the two activities share equipment and very little else. Where paired work has been dropped, what remains is a physical discipline with a martial vocabulary, and it should be described that way.

Wudang versions

Sabre, staff and spear forms are all taught at Wudang, generally with names referring to the mountain or to Taoist themes. The honest position on these is the same as for the sword. The material is real and often well constructed, the body method behind it is consistent with the internal arts, and the claim of ancient transmission from the mountain is not documented. Some of these routines are demonstrably twentieth-century compositions, and several taught to visitors were assembled within living memory.

None of this makes them bad. A recently composed form built on sound principles by a competent teacher is more useful than a badly transmitted old one. But a student is entitled to know which they are learning, and the information is often not volunteered.

Practical notes

Weapons are heavier and less forgiving than they look, and the wrists and elbows take the strain first. Beginning with a lighter implement and adding weight gradually is sensible. Waxwood shafts need care and should be checked for cracks. A sharp blade has no place in group practice, and the sensible order is to develop the form thoroughly with a blunt weapon long before handling a sharp one.

Space matters more than beginners expect. Most weapons routines need considerably more room than an empty-hand form, and the majority of training injuries in weapons classes involve two students, one wall or one low ceiling.

Key points

• The staff is taught first because it makes immediately obvious whether power reaches the end of an implement.
• The sabre is robust enough to accept hard contact and works by momentum, which teaches a different skill from the straight sword's precision.
• The spear is the hardest of the weapons, and its flexible waxwood shaft magnifies every fault in the body method.
• Xingyiquan is a spear method adapted to the empty hand, and pole-shaking remains one of the few tests of whole-body power that cannot be faked.
• Each weapon exposes a different fault, which is the substantive reason for training several rather than collecting routines.
• Wudang weapons routines are often well constructed but frequently modern in composition, and this is rarely stated openly.