Gatka - a weapon based martial art
Gatka is a Sikh martial art that has a unique and efficient use of weapons. Gatka warriors practice randori, shiai and the instructors practice too. Many places in India host the Gatka dojo in the Sikh temple grounds.
For us in AKBAN the background upon which the system rose is not the main issue. The main issue here is the superb method. Martial arts that originated in the Indian sub-continent have been poorly researched in comparison with their Chinese and Japanese counterparts. We begin to remedy this with a special section in our martial arts encyclopedia, the AKBAN-wiki.
In the video Ran mixed we can notice some interesting points:
- A perfect Tai sabaki for rough surfaces.
- Control and techniques using many weapons, just like in our school
- Working against many opponents, special use of vision and flow
- Amazing techniques that don't necessitate a cooperating training partner
We at AKBAN can not adopt all the Randori methods because it diverts a bit from our safety protocol. But we will continue analyzing the video footage Y. has photographed in India to incorporate it into the AKBAN-wiki and our weekly syllabus.