Throwing weapons is a concept that is pretty old. As most advanced weapons (guns,missles,etc.) are simply better ways to throw, I feel it is an important concept to learn. Any weapon can be thrown and most advance to the stage where throwing becomes part of the techniques. Before this stage, most styles will have you learn the skill with weapons specifically designed to maximise the throwing skill. Darts, short knives, and shuriken are some of these. The list goes on until we run out of cultures. While many Cultures stayed with heavy and somewhat large thrown weapons, like the throwing axes of the vikings and africans; Asian countries tended to go the opposite way. The Asian Martial Arts liked small, easy to conceal weapons. Most of their thrown weapons are almost delicate and look like small squished animals. The throwing frog and throwing lizard are the types that most catalogs have.
The Skills developed by these weapons are focus and precision. Obviously arm strength should have been developed long ago. These skills lend themselves towards pressure point striking and any other techniques that use or depend on precision. Often the throwing technique taught by the style will be the eye poke or(if different) the point strike. Ironically enough, The candle meditation that many Masters take out of their styles, is the first level of this training.
Some of the health benefits from this training, aside from basic coordination, improves the eyes and finger/wrist dexterity.
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This page was last updated Saturday March 17 2001