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star wars - Why Do Jedi Use One Lightsaber in Combat?


While I've seen Ahsoko Tano, in The Clone Wars, fight with two lightsabers (one in each hand), this seems to be extremely rare for Jedi. We've seen Sith do this frequently, like Asajj Ventress, with two lightsabers. Darth Maul used a dual lightsaber against Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi and then there's General Grievous, who uses multiple lightsabers with his multiple limbs.


But most Jedi use just one blade, and their lightsaber hilts tend to be simple, just a straight cylinder without much adornment, while Sith sometimes use curved grips or other more exotic stylings.


Is there a reason Jedi stick with the simplest lightsaber designs and why the vast majority (at least in the movies and in The Clone Wars series) use only a single lightsaber?



Answer



The limiting factor is not open hands - it's the agility of the mind to move them, and the efficacy of the training involved. I did some fencing back in college, which is light-years, if you'll pardon the expression, from a lightsaber battle, but does share some things in common, and I've studied a number of martial arts.


What you're contending against in a confrontation is not the attacker's hand, foot or sword, but their coordinated will. "Coordinated" is the key word there - if the hand and feet are not moving together, you can't attack effectively. So putting another sword in someone's hand doesn't make them twice as effective, any more than trying to kick and punch someone at the same time does...it's more likely to make you fall over, or at least be off balance and open to attack.



Consider the difference in footwork between kendo and fencing. In fencing, the body is high, light and fast, moving rapidly (potentially) up and down. In kendo, the movement is more lateral, with the center of gravity lower to the ground. Kendo movement is crossovers with feet, fencing is more like natural stepping. Why?


Kendo (generally) adopts a two-handed grip, while fencing has a one-handed grip - the other hand is available for balance:


foil with hand extended for balance


Having said all of this - the key to using multiple weapons in this context would be kata, a coordinated and heavily pre-practiced set of movements which allow the performer to coordinate those motions in a way which has been determined in advance to be effective. But there's nothing to say that these kata will, per se, be more effective than single weapon kata.


It's all about the coordinated will and training of your opponent. Whether they have one weapon or two is not the question - if I started out with a weapon in each hand, I would literally toss it away (out of the reach of my opponent). I don't need the additional brainspace of managing it, and I want my hand open for balance.


While some kendo practitioners do use two swords (nito) in matches, it is rather rare because of the difficulty to focus on two points effectively:


nito


UPDATE:


One more point - Count Dooku defeats a dual-wielding Anakin in short order. Obi-wan defeats a MULTIPLE-wielding General Grievous in short order. I think the real question is - why do the Sith tend to dual-wield when it doesn't seem to confer any significant advantage?


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