Designing Knives and Random Flow training, with Maija Soderholm

Episode 24

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to https://swordschool.com/podcast/designing-knives-random-flow-episode24/ 

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Maija Soderholm lives in the United States, but grew up in England with Finnish parents. She trained with the late Filipino master Sonny Umpad, and she has taken this multicultural approach in her designs with her company, SoMiCo Knives.

In this week’s episode we discuss how Maija got into martial arts and designing knives, including the most important use for a knife in Finland.

We also discuss the Random Flow technique of sparring, which uses constant movement and no choreographed drills or pre-set patterns.

Maija’s first book The Liar, The Cheat and the Thief: Deception and the Art of Swordplay, came out in 2014. Her new book The Hustler – Swordplay and the Art of Tactical Thinking is also out now, and in this episode we discuss the tactics of fighting, why we should aim to be more like pickpockets, and how fighting for real is, more often than not, a lose/lose situation.

In the podcast, Guy mentions a smallsword treatise where the writer recommends taking a blade into the palm of your hand, sliding your hand up the blade and grabbing the handle. This may be one of those times when memory plays tricks- he's looking for the book but hasn't found it yet. Have your bullshit detectors set to high alert!