Just some thoughts on practicing lethal weapons.
In the old days, and sometimes now, there was an initial stage of wood/reed/bamboo practice swords/sticks to get the flow and angles necessary to learn the sword. This can be seen is various cultures, but more well-known in Taiwanese and Filipino aboriginal fighting. Often a sword was expensive enough to make, let alone making realistic metal training swords.
The Chinese martial artist, Shifu Kang Zhi Qiang (Mantis Boxing), was covered in scars from slashes and thrusts by dao, qiang, etc. He was born in 1949 in Shandong, so it is understandable that the PROC was in its infancy at the time and the crack down on martial artists and the subsequent acceleration in decline (was already declining) didn't occur until later in his life time. He definitely trained the hardcore way with real weapons. Interestingly his favorite weapon was the "Six-harmonies club". The only harmonies I can think of is bruise, concussion, internal bleeding, fracture, broken bones, death. 6-harmonies probably has to do with Chinese culture and beliefs...
In many of the kalaripayattu videos out there, the students learn to spar with real weapons with real speed. Granted their goal is not to kill each other with sharp weapons, only to sharpen skills. Still though, it's impossible that accidents don't occur... some kalaripayattu practitioners and most likely their gurus have scars from live training...
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