“Secrets” of the Filipino Fighting Arts
Words from a Modern-Day Warrior

Change the way you think about your FMAs

If your martial arts is to ever be combat ready, you have to look at your arts as true combat arts. The trend in many exotic arts (not just the Filipino arts) is to try too hard to make one’s art look “exotic”. To paraphrase a Bruce Lee philosophy, a punch in this case is not “just a punch” or a defense is not “just a defense”, but everything is modified and stylized to stay to the theme of this art being an “exotic” one.

A good example is to look at how the DeThouars have taken Silat. The DeThouars brothers are Hsing Yi/Ba Gua/Tai Chi guys… don’t be fooled. In many ways, Silat and Kung Fu share similiarities and appearances, including a related histories. But in the effort to spread their arts, they have basically repackaged their Kung Fu as Silat and taught many impractical techniques just to keep their Silat “different” from any0ne else’s style. Is it interesting to look at? Yes! Is it “deadly”? Hell no. But here is the painful thing:  Is it Silat? No. Sorry, but while their arts have Silat in it, those men are teaching their Kung Fu as Silat, and it’s just wrong. So what does that do for the Indonesian bringing real Silat–which looks much less like an exotic art than it does Karate–is make the one carrying true Silat look like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. I tell the story of a guy who came to my school looking for “Kuntao-Silat” (what da???) and ended up being somewhat argumentative with me. I was telling him that there is no such thing, unless someone just assumes the name “Kuntao-Silat”. We ended up talking about his education in the arts, and he admitted to having never studied Silat, Kuntaw/Kuntao, or any other Southeast Asian art, and his basis for arguing was basedon some crap he read in the magazines. (this was before the internet; after the internet, I’ve met tons more)  I referred him to the Indonesian Embassy to look up the Silat class taught by a friend. About a year later, I ran into him again, and he informed me that he had joined Mike Krivka’s school (a local JKD/seminar junkie) because the Indonesian teacher knew “nothing about Silat”. Sad.

Back to my point, your FMA must be functional in sparring, and it must be functional in hard sparring. Go ahead and add in all that patty-cake crap the JKD/Kali/Seminar FMA guys are doing, but you need to have something that can do some damage in your system. Too many people believe that true FMA cannot be practiced (ahem…. too deadly for sparring?) and that is just a bunch of hogwash.

“But how to do I practice my limb destructions in sparring?”

You can’t. Not with any power at least. Of course there are techniques that really are “too dangerous” for practice, but how are you going to defend against a punch when you can’t even throw one? There are many ways to counter a punch, and you must have practical ways to do them. If you rely on only techniques that you cannot use in sparring, you will never be effective in a fight. This is why I advocate having a “combat system” within your system. The Combat System is a barebones set of techniques and skills within your art comprised of things you know work because you’ve actually used them. At a minimum, they could be boxing punches, a few destructive kicks, some simple defenses and at least one or two takedowns. You would be surprised how many FMA people don’t even have basic skill at these things. But they can show you ways to “translate” Sinawali to empty hand and knife disarms all day long.

Whether or not you like sparring, you will have to do it. This is where you temper your ability to hit a focus mitt and punching bag, and develop the ability to chase and evade an opponent. No amount of drilling or target hitting can teach you what a few rounds of sparring will. But as a teacher, you have to do enough sparring that anyone you spar with will be easy. I cannot emphasize this enough; you can’t say you’re teaching people to fight, if you don’t have simple effectiveness against a resisting opponent. In the Filipino arts, we have men who can stick fight (maybe, it’s not many of them) or they know hundreds of drills and techniques, but no empty handed skill at all. Now, if you call yourself just a stickfighter, no problem. But if you purport to teach empty handed fighting, you better at least know how to spar. I know Grandmasters who have the equivalent of a White Belt’s skill in empty handed sparring. I’ve also met FMA Guros who have never empty hand sparred in their lives.

Think like a streetfighter

Finally, as a martial artist, you have to think like a streetfighter.

How does a streetfighter think? He thinks about kicking someone’s behind. He thinks he can kick anyone’s behind. He physically readies himself for the next time he gets the opportunity to do it.

What about the FMArtist? He says things like, “Martial arts is not just for fighting” and “This art is the equalizer, you don’t need to be physically fit to knife someone in the belly”… excuses. What many people have done is removed all elements of power training and physical training out of their arts, and made the FMA a test of coordination–stick twirling–rather than plain old fighting. He sometimes  appears to be PROUD of his belly, than embarassed because it’s too difficult to admit that if you ever engaged in a real fight, you’d gas out if you didn’t kill this guy in 30 seconds.

At least, the FMA fighter should utilize strength training for his body into his regimen, and impact training for his skills. Pushups, squats, dips, and bagwork. It’s not that difficult (not that simple either, but at least it gets you away from FMA/Kenpo crap). You must train as if you were going to fight tomorrow, and develop your body to handle the stress and burden of fighting.

The mental aspect is usually a by-product of physical training. I believe that most FMA guys are sissified by the absence of physical training in their classes, so they are only tough when on the internet. If their Guros had made them gain 20 lbs of muscle mass through their training, mentally these guys would be much tougher, because their bodies are tougher. It is the one gift you can offer your students… the one weapon you can arm them with that can not be taken away.

I’m going to end this article here, because I have a headache, and I want to lay down. Hopefully, you’ve benefitted from something I’ve shared with you today.

Thanks for reading my blog.