Thursday, September 23, 2010

Bart Jarm Dao

There's an old saying about swords:
"Practicing 3000 cuts a day will make you an average swordsman."

By my count the Bart Jarm Dao (butterfly sabre form) contains 71 cuts (plus all the blocking etc.).  Can be counted as more and can be counted as less depending on how you count define a cut.  The exact number is less important than the fact there's a ripe amount of technique in the form.

71 is a nice number numerologically as it can be summed to 8 (7+1), which is a good Chinese kung fu number.  If I can't have a tidy number like 50 or 100, then I want a good esoteric number!  So the cuts counted shall be 71.

So the maths is 3000/71 = 42.25352112676056338... I was hoping it would be 42 sets because that's the meaning of life. But it's a bit short, 71 x 42 = 2982. 
Let's try 43 sets.  71 x 43 = 3053. That's about right.

This afternoon I did 43 sets of the Bart Jarm Dao, and now I am one step towards being average.  The only flaw I see in this plan is that the old saying gives no clue to how long this will take...

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