Interesting, I've never seen the Portugese style before. The way the weapon is used reminds me of sword fighting a bit. I wonder if it's methods dervied at all from the two handed sword of the renaissance era.

Hi, that isn't actually possible to prove, but many people believe that.
I was told by my masters that it do probably derives from medieval sword fighting, where the poor people didn't have swords or even the sword techniques for that time swords(not very sharp and relying on smash hits) make alot of sense with jogo do pau techniques of today.
And there are actually some books of that time that resemble in some way the jogo do pau technique, as other European sword fighting books of the time register.
As far as we can trace it was an usual weapon for shepherds, and was used and developed for many years in as a self defense/dueling weapon. Then groups of people started to join and practice together and that made the art really flourish and refine, without losing the real final goal of self defense and effectiveness because it was still used in real situations.
It makes all the sense that the link between medieval sword fight wasn’t broken and that jogo do pau developed from that period’s fighting techniques.

Hello,

here is a nice video of Yamanni-Ryu Shuji-no-kun:

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=ypVvFb3TVnI

and two ohter bo katas:

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=CmDIEItYzfs
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=yVNf84L0oaQ

at his channel you find some nice bo fighting videos:

http://de.youtube.com/results?search_query=bo+shiai&search_type=&aq=f

Thomas

staff fighting competition example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFucsRevxCw

Thanks for sharing the videos! I love training with the staff!