Episode 889 - Martial Arts and Thrown Weapons

Today Jeremy and Andrew (and friends) take a visit to the Axe House in Keene, one of the many sponsors of Martial Summit. 

Martial Arts and Thrown Weapons - Episode 889

Today Jeremy and Andrew (and friends) take a visit to the Axe House in Keene, one of the many sponsors of Martial Summit. While there they discuss the growing popularity of axe throwing as a recreational activity and its connection to martial arts. They highlight the similarities between throwing weapons and martial arts techniques, such as the importance of distance, technique, and adaptability. They interview the owner, Jamie Dyer, and he emphasizes the value of constructive criticism and open-mindedness in both axe throwing and martial arts training. They encourage listeners to try axe throwing as a fun and objective way to improve their skills. It was a ton of fun and conclude by emphasizing the social aspect of axe throwing and the importance of having fun in martial arts training. Be sure to watch the video of this one!

Keene Axe House, 116 Main St, Keene NH 03431 (413-352-1355)

The Keene Axe House - New Hampshire's Premier Axe Throwing Venue!

Show Transcript

Andrew Adams (00:03.34)
Hey Jeremy, how's it going?

Jeremy (00:04.705)
Good, good Andrew. If people are listening to this part versus watching, they might not realize that we're recording this at a completely different time.

Andrew Adams (00:14.924)
Yeah, yeah, we did the Axe House. We went, we threw all kinds of fun stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I came home and started putting the episode together with video clips and everything. And I realized you, the person perhaps listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever.

Jeremy (00:19.489)
It was so much, a lot of different things, yeah.

Jeremy (00:27.679)
Hmm.

Jeremy (00:36.513)
Most of our audience still listens versus watches and just as an aside Folks we we put the video version. It's on youtube and then we embed that that's in the page in the show notes At whistlekick martial arts radio .com. So if you go over there Again, that's why I keep saying go to whistlekick martial arts radio. But anyway, andrew back to you

Andrew Adams (00:56.556)
So we, you know, putting it all together and I'm like, you know, the people listening to this episode and not watching are, if I put it together the way I had envisioned initially, they're gonna hear what they've already heard. You know, the intro, we interviewed Jamie, which was great. He was so great and just so supportive and it was awesome to have him there. And then they're gonna hear us throwing axes at a wall and that's gonna be really boring.

Jeremy (01:13.857)
Yeah, so good.

Jeremy (01:24.577)
Yeah. Thunk. What just happened? Thunk.

Andrew Adams (01:26.508)
Thunk, thunk, thunk. So my thought was, you know what, to make this episode a little longer and to give a little more feedback now that we've had a week to think about and what we did, I thought, you know what, let's get together again, record just a little short thing like we're doing right now. And for those watching the episode, you will see that at this point, I'm gonna put in, there might be some video footage of stuff hitting the wall, but you're listening.

Jeremy (01:33.407)
Mmm.

Jeremy (01:38.729)
Hmm.

Andrew Adams (01:56.524)
If you're only listening, you won't see that. And that's okay.

Jeremy (02:01.217)
So where do you want to start? What should we talk about first? I know you had a number of things that you wanted to cover for the benefit of the audience.

Andrew Adams (02:06.828)
Um, yeah, I mean, I didn't, not things that I had to get out, but one of the things that I found interesting was the different items that we threw were all unique and some of them were similar, but they, they reacted in different ways depending on how you threw them.

Jeremy (02:18.465)
Mmm.

Jeremy (02:30.401)
Yeah, I had on that same vein, one of the things I found really fascinating was you had to be at a slightly different distance for everything that was thrown. For the most part, you could not stand in the same place and throw different things and expect a good result. And that made me, you know, because I'm always thinking, how does this apply? Right. We did this fun thing. It was cool.

Andrew Adams (02:45.332)
Mm -hmm.

Jeremy (02:58.945)
How does it apply to martial arts? How does it apply to training? And while thrown weapons are not part of most people's curriculum, probably because in the modern era, one, firearms have made that less practical, so we don't see it as valuable, but two, it's difficult to practice throwing things. If you don't have something like the axe house nearby, how are you gonna practice that? But it suggested to me that if I was in an era pre -firearms, I might have some different knives.

and some different pointy things that I might be throwing because, oh, okay, you're 20 feet away versus 30 feet away versus 40 feet away. I'm throwing a different thing.

Andrew Adams (03:38.124)
Yeah, yeah. So as an example, if we were throwing the shovel or what we all affectionately called the zombie apocalypse tool, people watching, I'm going to insert right now a clip of us throwing those things, you will have had to...

Jeremy (03:55.265)
Yeah. The zombie apocalypse tool was a small baseball bat with a saw blade cut into it. It is, yeah. If you, if you imagined a zombie apocalypse tool, it probably was that.

Andrew Adams (04:02.188)
Yeah, a circular saw blade.

Andrew Adams (04:07.404)
So when we threw those, they were weighted very differently. So we had to stand a little closer to get the rotation correct. But when we threw the little itty bitty hatchets, you stood a little further back because they would get more rotation.

Jeremy (04:12.831)
Yeah.

Jeremy (04:24.481)
Yeah. And understanding how that weapon is going to throw was the difficult part, right? You know, being able to go, okay, that didn't work here, but it works here. And it sounds like, okay, Jeremy Andrew, why, why is this martial arts related? Even if I go with you on the ride where, you I can imagine throwing a sharp in the shovel could be martial arts adjacent. Well,

Andrew Adams (04:37.292)
Mm -hmm.

Jeremy (04:54.113)
Is that not what happens with everybody who learns how to kick?

Andrew Adams (04:57.516)
Mm -hmm.

Jeremy (04:59.041)
Right? They kick and they try to kick when they're too close or they try to kick when they're too far and they have to identify, okay, this kick works at this distance. This kick works at this distance. If I take a small step forward and spin, the kick changes the distance, right? And that's something that I think for a lot of us becomes very natural to see through repetition. And I could imagine the same thing happening. In fact, you know, I don't know that we have footage of Jamie throwing things, but as the owner,

Andrew Adams (05:18.826)
Mm -hmm.

Jeremy (05:25.729)
He spends a lot of time throwing things and teaching people how to throw things. And he just knows instinctively, if I'm throwing this, I've got to be this far away.

Andrew Adams (05:33.196)
Yeah. And, and even throwing the same thing in a different way. Um, you know, we experimented, you know, that that's one of the things that, that you do when you're there, you're trying to throw things, what's working, what's not working. And we would take weapons and throw them. Uh, we did some where we threw them underhanded and that changed the direction. And, and, and Jamie even came over and gave a little, okay, if you're going to throw it this way, make sure you do your arm here.

Jeremy (05:50.655)
Mm -hmm. They change everything a lot.

Andrew Adams (06:00.242)
And I'm probably inserting a clip of him doing that right now You know make sure you don't go here because if you twist the wrist it'll spin too much Or you're gonna throw up behind you like as you're walking away from the target You know like you have to change how you're handling the actual weapon in order to get

Jeremy (06:17.761)
or even those little axes, if you threw it with initially the blade facing out versus kind of the back point, if you think of like the claw of a hammer, there were axes that were shaped sort of like that, that completely changed the way it threw because the balance was different. So the rotations are different.

Andrew Adams (06:35.052)
Yep, yep. And I think the only thing that we had that we threw that you could throw at any distance were the cards.

Jeremy (06:45.119)
Yep, because they were sharp on all four sides.

Andrew Adams (06:48.126)
Exactly. So it really didn't matter a whole lot. And they were really fun because they were really fast. And you could just you could just fling them. You could hook them, as I would say, just. Yeah, and we had some fun with that. We had some some, you know, we I think I said, we're not doing anything dangerous over here.

Jeremy (06:59.841)
Chuck it.

Jeremy (07:10.145)
I think we've got footage of us throwing, you know, multiple things at the same time and really getting kind of creative with it. I don't know if we captured that, but it, it lent, it lends, it lends itself to thinking about techniques and ranges. And I think even if you, it's, you know, the idea of throwing things doesn't fit within your definition of what your martial arts training is and what you're interested in.

Andrew Adams (07:18.124)
We did, yeah.

Jeremy (07:37.313)
going outside, just picking up a few things and throwing them against something else, you know, a tree or, you know, a big rock or whatever, obviously be safe, you know, disclaimer here. But it makes me think differently about how I use my arms and legs. What technique do I have that works the best at all distances? Well, it's probably a punch or maybe it's a sidekick. Or what do I have that has the best likelihood of doing some damage at?

slightly longer range as well. It's probably my roundhouse kick because if I connect with the top of the foot or the ball of the foot or the shin, right, those are all great surfaces. So it's, I just think it's fascinating the doors that doing this opened in my brain for my hand to hand stuff.

Andrew Adams (08:27.372)
Yeah, and there are ways that you can bring this into your own school and your own training. Jeremy, we actually know someone who has a section of their school for throwing weapons. And it's kind of sectioned off as kind of a lane. And I'm sure it's not every single class, but the class we happen to see, they took the last five minutes of class and he had some really cheesy throwing stars.

Jeremy (08:40.553)
Yeah.

Andrew Adams (08:57.164)
and the kids were loving it. It was so much fun. And I don't know that he has zombie apocalypse tools there to throw, but the concept is there in terms of working out your distance and how to do things.

Jeremy (08:57.439)
Mm -hmm.

Jeremy (09:11.233)
And, and let's take a small aside here because I think one of the things that people inherently like about anything like this thrown objects, firearms, whatever, there's an element of objectivity there that exists that we don't have very often in our martial arts training. For me to be able to throw a thing, see, I got this far from where I was trying to go and to practice over and over and see it get objectively better is something that I think resonates for a lot of us. So having.

some objective or even pseudo objective metrics in your students training, in your own training, I think has a lot of value. So just be aware of that if you can find where those exist.

Andrew Adams (09:50.06)
Yeah, and if you as a group or individual go and do this at some, you know, whether maybe you come and visit Keene and visit the Keene Axe House if you're local or you have one in your town, or you're coming to Marshall Summit, right? Be prepared to have fun.

Jeremy (10:04.065)
where you're coming to Marshall Summit.

Jeremy (10:13.953)
Yeah, and post the videos and tag us. Because we want to see. Yeah, I know these things are popping up all over the place. There's one not far from me here and I just haven't been and I want to go. You know, it's a great, fun night out and you know, I've talked often on this show about the social structure within our training. You know, once you punch and get punched in the face by some people that you train with a few times, you become friends. You kind of have to because otherwise it's...

Andrew Adams (10:16.748)
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Jeremy (10:44.105)
Otherwise.

doesn't go well. Going out to do something like this, you know, having a drink, a lot of these places, which I find fascinating, serve alcohol. But you can bring it. He said you could bring outside. I'm pretty sure he said that.

Andrew Adams (10:55.628)
This one, the one we went to does not.

Andrew Adams (11:00.908)
Can you?

I don't know. I didn't think of anything. I don't know.

Jeremy (11:06.177)
Maybe I'm wrong. A lot of them do. And just the idea that you would do these things with alcohol, I think is funny. But, you know, go do it. Have a beer. Throw some stars. Throw some axes. Have a good time. Recognize that while your own unarmed training does help you understand your body and allow you to iterate, make progress fairly quickly, you're probably not going to be perfect at it when you start.

Andrew Adams (11:34.794)
Hmm.

Jeremy (11:35.713)
Just because you're trained to be a ninja three times a week in your own mind, at least if you're nine, right, that's what you're doing, throwing stars and knives is probably not second nature yet.

Andrew Adams (11:48.908)
Yeah, absolutely.

Jeremy (11:50.091)
It's a great opportunity to get better at something.

Andrew Adams (11:53.036)
Cool. I think that's all I had. I think, you know, I would encourage you if you only listened to this episode, go watch us have fun.

Jeremy (11:56.373)
Okay.

Jeremy (12:01.345)
Hmm. There's some really fun stuff in there, stuff that, um.

Yeah, there's some close calls with the cameras. Did you see those? There are a couple times I was watching things bounce and go, camera. The camera's okay.

Andrew Adams (12:14.954)
Oh, it. Yep, absolutely.

Andrew Adams (12:20.652)
In fact, I'll insert it right now if you're watching, but this right now that you're seeing is Jeremy had just set up the GoPro in the corner of the lane and Jamie had said, oh, you better be careful something to hit it. And you're like, ah, no problem. And the very first thing thrown was a sigh that didn't stick in and almost hit the GoPro.

So it was fun. It was a lot of fun.

Jeremy (12:46.241)
some good times. I'm glad we were able to do this episode and bring the audience something different and once again show that martial arts is in everything that we do. It is related to everything we do. Everything we do can be brought back to martial arts and further maybe even more importantly because you hit this point and I just want to underscore it. It's okay to have fun. It's okay to have fun with your training and I just hope people...

take this suggestion and go throw some things at some things.

Andrew Adams (13:18.092)
Yeah, yeah, and the last teaser that I'll give to try and get people to go watch this episode There I'm gonna put something fun at the end of the video and You're not gonna get it on the audio. So you're only gonna get it if you go to YouTube So you gotta go to YouTube and watch this funny thing that happens. I'll put it at the end of the episode That's it

Jeremy (13:21.545)
Mmm.

Jeremy (13:33.023)
Mmm.

Jeremy (13:39.903)
All right, well let's close it out. Thank you everyone, thanks for watching or listening. Thank you for your continued support. Remember, if you wanna support us as an individual, join the Patreon. It starts at two bucks a month. We tell you what's going on behind the scenes and we give you so much more in the upper tiers. If you are a martial arts school owner and you have not looked at what we were doing with Whistlekick Alliance, it is overwhelmingly awesome. The response has been tremendous. I am so proud of that offering.

Check out both starting at whistlekick .com as well as all the other things that we offer. If you want to reach us, Andrew at whistlekick .com, Jeremy at whistlekick .com, our social media is as you might imagine, at Whistlekick. Let's wrap it up here. Until next time, train hard, smile, and have a great day.

Andrew Adams (14:21.1)
Train hard, smile, and have a great day.