I will be releasing a chapter of my book–paraphrased–one section at a time, in 5 separate posts (excluding this one).
The reason I wrote the chapter: to break the Philippine Martial Artist out of the habit of taking another’s words as gospel and think for onesself. This is a major problem with the Philippine Martial Arts. In the last 20 years or so, the FMAs have undergone a major reconstruction (DEconstruction?) because of the introduction of FMAs into the media, the need to be “complete” as a martial arts style, the idol worship that began with the martial arts icon, Bruce Lee, and the chosen method of transmitting the art.
Philippine martial arts were nice and pure when they arrived to these shores in the early 20th century. Unadulterated, non-commercial, honest, and practical. In the last 30 years that the world began to learn that the Philippines even had a martial art, what happened? Why has the simple, practical and deadly arts of Arnis, Eskrima, Kuntaw and Silat become the new “McDojo”? How did we end up going from Southeast Asian Killers to the art of choice for middle -aged fat guys and has-been martial artists? Why have the FMAs become the recipe for monetary success with shopping center dojos–along with Tae Bo, Krav Maga, Tai Chi and After School Karate? Today, one can learn entire systems for a few hundred dollars, get certified with fewer than 10 seminars, and recognized as a blade/stick/street defense expert without fighting a single round?
The answer is that the Classical Filipino Martial Arts have become “classic” FMAs. Before I get into why I make this distinction, let’s define “classic”. When Bruce Lee wrote his famous article “Liberate Yourself from Classical Martial Arts”, I believe he had Wikipedia’s definition of the word “classic”:
The word classic has several meanings. In general, these meanings refer to some past time. Something that is classical is a classic, but the word classic has more meanings, often more closely associated with popular culture and mass-produced goods.
Basically, the Philippine Martial Arts have sold out. Too many generations of Filipino Martial Artists have learned impractical arts, incorrect and completely fabricated styles/histories/techniques/philosophies, and been told to look down on the rest of the martial arts community that doesn’t do their version of crap-maga. Excuse the bluntness, but the FMAs are failing most of you, and you are too blinded to see it. So a few of you step outside of the box and actually do some real fighting, and believe that this is giving your commercial, drills-based theoretic hodge-podge some credibility. So, actually engaging in fights gives the martial artist credibility for being a fighter, but connecting the fighter to the methods of training and other practices does not. The Philippine martial artist needs a functional, logical method of training and instruction that will build strong fighters by the merit of the system–not just the courage level of the fighter himself. Without the proper martial philosophy, the system is a failure and will continue to fail future adherents and proponents of the style.
The Filipino martial arts has become a mass-produced machine. An income-generating tool for shopping center dojos to add to their bottom line. A multi-level marketing business venture for Filipino masters to get rich. We certify the old, the young, the weak and uncommitted faster than a Tae-Bo certification course. We join Krav Maga and CQC as arts that you can be certified in a day, in masse, and you don’t even have to prove you can fight with it. It has been tailored so that anyone can learn… despite the fact that the real thing in the Philippines is not for just anyone. Arnis masters at home would put money on any of their advanced students any day, anytime. Does your FMA grandmaster have that kind of confidence in every Black Belt certificate he signs? I don’t think so. Half of your grandmasters can’t even name every damned certified instructor he’s taught.
So, why did the Philippine martial arts of today fail? Let’s take a look:
Influence of the Media onto the FMAs
So little was known about the Filipino Martial Arts, that even most Filipinos were unaware that their country even had arts. I will spare you the myths about secret family arts and techniques hidden in dances, but limited information allowed most of the knowledge we had about the FMAs to come from mainly one source: Dan Inosanto’s The Filipino Martial Arts. From this book came waves of stories and magazine articles that aligned their “facts” with the “facts” presented in his book. The problem here is that most of the history and traditions passed down through the martial arts are oral traditions, and that Master Inosanto’s book presented inaccurate information that he was given–inaccurate information he acquired through oral tradition. When Remy Presas arrived in America to bring his Modern Arnis, he used Inosanto’s book as a springboard to build his organization, along with the misinformation. This pattern repeated itself over and over, as each new FMA leader arrived, he read “facts” about the Filipino martial arts that he most likely did not have in his own style–and added them to his own style and story in order to look more “authentic”.
The truth is, that Dan Inosanto was, at first a Kenpo Black Belt. Later, as Bruce Lee’s partner and co-founder of his Jeet Kune Do, Master Inosanto saw and expressed his FMA through Kenpo eyes and JKD hands. Future generations of FMA teachers would mimic Inosanto’s template and style, until this became the “accepted, authentic” FMA history and curriculum. Those who dissented were seen as jealous or less knowledgeable… or even–dare I say it–frauds.
The 1970s and 1980s saw the martial arts magazine become the second most influential force in the spread of information about the martial arts. Reputations as credible martial arts masters were built in these magazines. Teachers who appeared in them were seen to this day as “experts” regardless of their level of skill. New systems and ideas in the martial arts needed only to be seen in the magazines to be accepted as authentic. Almost no attempts were made by the magazine editors to verify claims, as frauds such as Ashida Kim and Maung Gyi were able to carve a place for themselves simply by being seen regularly in the magazines. The same applied to claims about the FMAs. As articles such as Paul Vunak’s “How to Recognize Authentic FMA” circulated, authentic FMA teachers from the Philippines who knew nothing of Inosanto’s version of FMA scrambled to add the qualities the article (and similar articles) claimed they must have:
All phases of the FMA: Single Stick, Double Stick, Knife, Sword and Dagger, and Empty Hand
Limb Destructions/Gunting (which does not mean “limb destructions” in Tagalog, btw)
Dumog grappling
Kinomutai / Biting and scratching (Does not exist in the FMAs from the Philippines)
Empty Hand “translates” to stick, which “translates” to knife, etc.
Other FMA groups and authors contributed to the misinformation; however, as the most influential character in American FMA history, Guro Inosanto certainly led the pack as the originator of most of the information presented. I will add this: Inosanto has not been to the Philippines and received his information from other older masters who were from the Philippines. The information is not to be blamed on him; he was merely the messenger. But as the presenter of this information, and the teacher of most of the people who presented more in the future, he is seen as the “Father of American FMA” and must be seen as responsible for its growth–the good and the bad.
Is Your FMA Complete?
During the Golden Years of the Martial Arts in America–1960s through the 1980s–”authentic” became the word of the day. No martial artist wanted to be seen as unqualified and anything but the real deal. Few martial artists dared to venture into the world of creating new styles and presenting new ideas. Perhaps because Americans were the foreigners to the arts and Asians were the gatekeepers, instructors in America would strive to appear as Oriental and connected to the Orient as possible, to authenticate his position in the martial arts community. In the Filipino martial arts community, waves of Philippine-trained American military members arrived home with their new skills and began teaching their martial arts. Most learned from small schools and relatively unknown Filipino masters. Without a doubt, after reading about some unique biting style among other training methods they had not even seen in the Philippines, many of these American arnisadors connected with a more popular American FMA group. Most abandoned what was learned earlier for the more seductive, sophisticated style packaged so well in America. Most likely, the ex-Navy or ex-Air Force member learned a single stick Arnis style that consisted of not much more than a few drills and fighting techniques. Perhaps after seeing the “complete” arts presented in our FMA community–stick, knife, stick and knife, and empty hand–the GI felt the art he learned in the Philippines was inferior to the simple, single stick art learned from the guy in the province…
Now enters that Filipino guy from the province. However he did it–daughter marries an American, saves his money to come to the US on his own, he is sponsored by a relative–the Filipino arnisador arrives and shortly thereafter reads that “every FMA style must have these characteristics…” He begins to believe his art is baduy (country, unsophisticated) and feels he needs to take on the characteristics he sees in the magazine. Rather than teaching in an actual school, he compacts all his information into several two-hour seminars and certifies new arnisadors in a short amount of time. Hey, he may even start calling his art “Kali” to make it sound more “authentic”…
After twenty years of magazine articles fantacizing about a version of Filipino Martial Arts that does not exists in the Philippines, there is a terrible division between those who accept the alternate reality of the FMAs and those who know the truth. Much of this has damaged the integrity of the arts and those who were misled by the misinformation–causing them to choose between standing by the inaccuracies or turning one’s martial world upside down. The poison has spread to even the Philippines, where Filipino masters who want to capitalize on the Western market will assume and adopt these traits and practices in order to play the part for unsuspecting foreign students looking to validate their version of FMA. A good example is the great Master Leo Gaje, who has capitalized off the image drawn by Inosanto’s book of the “mother art”. Take a look at this video:
Yes, I’m sure Filipinos back home are laughing, saying, “WTF?”
I apologize in advance, my PTK brothers (many are friends of mine), but let’s call a spade a spade….
Idol Worship in the Martial Arts
One of the main principles of the Philippine Martial Arts is that the fighter can only stand on the exploits of his own experiences. Where teachers of other cultures tend to speak about lineages and tell stories of past generations, in the FMA the teacher pays homage to his teacher but possesses a wealth of experiences of his own. Because of the Chinese connection to Dan Inosanto’s JKD/Kali (these two arts are often paired, as is Kali and Silat), the practice of quoting Bruce Lee as one quotes biblical verses is commonplace in Western FMA. While JKD/Kali members tend to worship Bruce Lee and Dan Inosanto and their philosophies, FMA people today give this same level of idolatry to their masters.
FMA were taught hand-in-hand with JKD for so long, their principles leaked over into each other to the point that Jeet Kune Do technique is almost synonymous with Filipino Martial Arts, and non-Dan Inosanto FMA is often dressed up to look like his version of FMAs.
Question: Is this a bad thing?
Not necessarily. Dan Inosanto was the boyhood hero to many a young Filipino martial artist. He is still one of the most skilled martial artists around–of any style. However, he has made some inaccurate claims and generalizations about the Filipino arts that actually hurt public opinion about many authentic Filipino arts that do not resemble the arts he describes. In addition, many of the aspects of his art and tradition have actually hurt the growth and effectiveness of the Filipino arts. And finally, his influence has changed the arts to the point that FMA teachers can no longer guarantee potential student that their arts will make them a force to be reckoned with on the street. AND he is not alone. The late Master Remy Presas and his practices had contributed almost as much to the detriment of the Philippine martial arts, and to fix these problems will take a major revolution and overhaul of the FMA community. The emphasis on drills and quick certifications, and the motto “the perfect” add-on art, has pushed the Filipino arts over the edge of the cliff of instant, just-add-water “partial” arts. Students and teachers today hold their teachers in such high regard, many are not capable of improving their art–even when faced with the brutal reality of how their arts have failed.
How the Art Is Passed On
Finally, we reach the worst problem plaguing the Philippine Martial Arts–the preferred method of obtaining the art: video and seminar.
The explanation 20 years ago why we did not see Philippine-only style schools was that there was not enough interest in the FMA to warrant the opening of a school dedicated to the FMAs. The students’ excuse was that there were no full-time schools around to study full time. The answer was that teachers would teach by seminar. It was the “logical” thing to do:
No overhead expenses
Reach a large audience
We just want to introduce the art to people; they can search out a full-time master
Spreading a little-known art to the masses
Teachers passed on trying to open a school, hang his shingle and accept students. Students could then pick and choose who to study with and what arts to add to his or her resume in a one-day class. A teacher could hit a city, teach two or three seminars in a weekend, make $1,000 or more, and move on to the next city. HERE’S THE PROBLEM: Who is training these students in the art full time? At what point during these periodic, one-day seminars does a student advance his level of knowledge and his rank? How many seminars do you suppose will be attended before this student becomes a certified teacher of the art?
Come on, you know!
Student of the seminar arts learn bits and pieces of the FMAs, and most of the time, the teacher is performing a song-and-dance in order to entertain students and maintain their attention, classes are generally pretty easy in order to make students want to return, and very little serious training is taking place! The learning, then, become academic learning, and students are simply learning a few tricks to add to their collection, and everyone from the teacher to the students to the students who become teachers–to their students–become drill masters and master demonstrators of the art. That’s right, exhibitionists. It becomes such commonplace, that when one or two students breaks away from the mold and (God forbid) fights with his sticks, he is seen as different!
Okay, I am getting emotional.
So, the bottom line is that the Classic Philippine Martial Arts have become commercial–yet those who study them believe they are (lol) hardcore. Hardcore posers. They are bypassing striking power to see who has enough coordination to ad-lib a pre-arranged drill. Who has the neatest, coolest way to disarm an opponent. Who talks the toughest on the internet, strikes the toughest poses on his video cover and magazine articles and websites. Who has the biggest muscles, can take the most licks during sparring. Who has the most students, the biggest organizations. Who lookest the cutest in those army fatigues/traditional moro costumes/streetfighting gear. Who has the best connections with prison guards, military units, and law enforcement agencies. Who gets into movies and magazines. Who has the most articles and videos out. Who has the grandest titles, the best whoppers about knife fights and secret family secrets and special ops missions. Who had the ear of the dead grandmaster, his wife, his successor. Who has the most complete, unadulterated pure art passed down from generation to generation and only I have it. Who has the balls to fight to the death… or at least till one of us has broken a bone or requires stitches.
The Philippine arts have become this generation’s Ninjitsu. So bad, that even the McDojo Tae Kwon Do guy down the street requires more training out of his 9 year-old brown belts to qualify for instructorship than the 10th degree Punong Guro who is teaching the secret art of Kali Take Yer Do Jitsu in this weekend’s seminar at the same Tae Kwon Do school.
Liberate yourself from this classical mess, FMA people. Your art is failing.
I have been asked many times about my stance on the Instructional Martial Arts Video industry.
It would appear, by reading the surface of what I’ve written over the years, that I am completely opposed to producing, buying, even learning by video. I am not. I understand that the video/DVD industry allows for quick glimpses into another’s training methods and style; one can even learn from a well-put together video! I am not denying the usefulness of video. But what I am opposed to is the fact that most of some teachers’ learning comes from the video market and seminars. Fine if you want to learn that way, but I believe it is irresponsible to teach others “self defense” if this has been your primary method of learning.
Let me qualify that first.
If you have spent the last 5 years learning karate/tkd/kung fu/etc., but your FMA training has been mostly from video and seminar, you cannot call yourself a Guro and teach… I don’t care who signed the certificate.
If you spent the last 5 years learning karate/tkd/kung fu/etc., and you trained with a group of guys who learned from video and seminar, you cannot call yourself a Guro and teach… I don’t care how much “experience” you consider this might be.
(FMA people, it is time to put our foot down and stand for what’s right. Yes, it will hurt some feelings and even offend some of our friends.)
Video training and especially video certification does not make one “qualified” to learn an art. So you don’t have a Guro near you… travel! So you don’t have the money to travel to a teacher…. you are not being trained properly. It’s not a matter of “this is your path” or “this is our culture”! Just as you cannot get an MD through a correspondence course–I certainly wouldn’t want a self-taught (which is what that is!) heart surgeon working on me or my mom… would you?
Back to the video thing, it all starts with a knowledgeable and ethical teacher. You cannot have a good video/dvd if the teacher is bogus. When people buy videos, they usually look as how popular a guy is, or how exotic the art is packaged or marketed. Put these clowns in traditional Moro costumes, Kulintang music, new fangled Tagalog terminology, pose on the cover with neat chokes and threatening poses and BAM! We’ve got ourselves the next thing in the FMA. Now flip to the back, and make up some BS history about where the art came from…. “Pacific secret combatives from the Archipelago” , Navy Seal washouts, MMA wannabes, survivor of death matches, revamped-practical-combat FMA repackaged! You too can look like the guy from Ong Bak! If the teacher on the video is looking to make money first, teach second, it’ll be obvious (though it may not be as obvious to the customer). An ethical teacher will tell you exactly what the hell he’s teaching you, and not try to rename it. For example, the big trend right now is to teach Pa Kua/Hsing Yi but call it “Silat”.
But you wanna see what Silat looks like IN INDONESIA?
not quite what you see in those videos, huh? But you can’t get more real that Indonesians, at an Indonesian Championship tournament.
How about Silat in the Philippines?
Sorry, but that’s not exactly put on video either. I once referred a gentleman to the INDONESIAN EMBASSY, where Silat classes have been going on (in Washington DC) for almost 15 years, and you know what he told me? Those guys don’t know Silat, they’re doing Karate. Poor guy, he doesn’t wants Silat, he wants BaGua/HsingYi dressed up by some Dutch guy who use to live in Indonesia. He wants to look “exotic”…
Back to videos (again).
The second thing is that a video has to have practical technique on there. Is this information useful? Is it something you believe the instructor has actually used? Can he use it? A well-produced video by a well-known master is pointless if the stuff he’s teaching is crap. There are very few tapes out there giving good information. Most of the people are doing what the next guy teaches: disarms, the same stupid drills, the same give and take drills, the same neat take downs and chokes with the stick, and the same Wally Jay Jujitsu techniques with a stick. Then you have the all blade guys… we don’t do stick we do only the blade. No wait, we do do stick, and empty hand. Okay, I’m digressing again. But now, we have blade “experts” who have never fought with a blade. Oh then there’s the prison guys, ex correctional officers, and ex cons, teaching their techniques. Hmm…. minus the cussing and the sloppy bellies, it looks like the same stuff on my FMA video. Oh, but this is real streetfighting, not FMA. Come on! I just want to learn some technique, good, practical technique!
After all of that, you need to practice. And here is my big beef with the video industry: it has created a generation or two of arm chair martial artists, who can demo the hell out of techniques, but still don’t know how to fight. So much that they won’t travel across town to train. So much that they can hide behind knowledge (too deadly… yes they are still saying that!) and cliches, like tournament fighting is not real fighting. We have guys who have learned so much through Youtube, that they think they know more than the ones teaching. Yuck.
Videos have their place. Those who learn by videos have their place too. As long as they don’t cross over the boundaries we’re all good. Just remember that they are not a substitute for training, and training is the key, not the side dish, to learning. I will be adding a video review section to this blog, as students and friends are always asking my opinion about youtube clips and videos they have purchased. So I thought, why not? I am negotiating with the folks over at Goldstar Video to get a deal. Soon I will be reviewing instructionals based on three things:
Is the information practical?
Is the guy teaching legit?
Is this good overall information, or just rehashed garbage for some guy’s ego and resume?
As always, I promise to give only the truth, never sell out to commercialism (even if it offends), not to sugar coat anything, and give you pure thekuntawman.
I’ve written a small book, which my editor calls a “mini-book” because it’s only 22 pages long. I wrote it for the Masters of small, independant martial arts schools who would like to feed their families with their schools. These are not men who want hundreds of students and million-dollar high-tech dojos. They are true to tradition, in both skill and business practice, and the most they want is to open a humble commercial location that pays the bills and puts food on the table and their kids through college.
I have invested thousands of dollars trying to learn the business side of the martial arts. I’ve been talked into offering a belt system, utilizing contracts, teaching in day care centers (seriously), teaching seminars on tour, even opening satellite classes across the country. I have taught in the middle east, in central america, as well as in sober living homes. All this, in pursuit of wanting nothing more than to afford teaching the real art to my most dedicated students while these other ventures paid my bills. My ultimate goal back then was to offer my training for free. I learned a lot about business, and learned a lot about how I can market and run my business without doing what everyone else does.
Anyway, the one thing I noticed was that I could not find business information that was directed at a guy like me–who teaches full contact; who uses profanity in my classes; who yells at students; who has ex-cons and gang bangers in my classes; a man whose students (including children) leave the school bruised, banged up, bloodied, and sometimes in need of stitches. Yes, I have insurance. Yes, I pay taxes. And yes, there is a market for my type of martial arts. I have a website, I’m in the Yellow Pages, occasionally I am on the radio and on cable TV, and I don’t promise good grades.
I have seen many good friends and good martial artists who have closed shop because they did not have the business tools to stay in business. One of the painful reminders of this, was last year, when I had refused several students of a friend’s dojo who attempted to join when they saw the writing on the wall. 6 months later, they were there after his school closed, and then he stopped teaching out of his garage. I’ll say this here, and some of those students read this blog, but I thought as traditional Karate teachers in Sacramento go, he was absolutely the best… even better than me.
So I wrote this book for you guys. The guy who surfs the net looking for ways to keep his school going while his wife urges him to “get a real job”. The guy (who, like I once was) working for minimum wage on a graveyard shift job in order to keep a school. The guy (like I was) who used money from tournament winnings to pay bills because his enrollment was too low to pay rent and eat.
I was asked to make it at least 40 pages, but I had a message to give, and it came out to 22 pages. Sorry Mike! I didn’t want to fluff it up or pad with filler just to make it seem “worth the money”… I know people who teach their martial arts that way. You’ll find that the other books I write will be the same way: short, to the point, but full of good, useful information. And I am not some young, wet-behind-the-ears MBA who knows nothing about what the real business world is like. Just like I am not some 50-something millionaire Karate clown trying to convince you that you’re not legit unless you’re selling belt exams and birthday parties. If you want to really put bread on the table with good, quality martial arts, this book is for you.
Look at our “Offerings” page off the main page, and you’ll see ordering information there. Please, leave comments or at least email me to give me feedback after you’ve read it!
The main reason most people say they come to the Filipino Martial Arts is for practical fighting skills. But are you really getting that through your FMA? I don’t think so. On the surface, the way FMAs are practiced today are somewhat more practical than the more traditional, mainstream martial arts. But FMAs today have evolved to the point there are mainstream FMAs too! Let’s look at the characteristics of a mainstream martial art, and you tell me if the arts have become this way:
nothing unique, styles all seem to look the same. teachers do not stand out from one another
a high number of poorly skilled teachers and certified “experts”
“found on every corner”, a style so popular almost every city has a certified teacher
easy to get certification
teacher cannot name every black belter he promoted from memory
you can find the same style being taught in its entirety on video
the commercial version of these styles become the majority
Now let’s look at some mainstream martial arts!
Tae Kwon Do
Wing Chun
Jeet Kune Do
Kenpo
BJJ
MMA
Krav Maga/the rest of the Israeli arts
Ninjitsu
CQC and the like
Modern Arnis
Doce Pares
Now this isn’t to say that there aren’t good fighters representing these styles. Of course, every style has members at the top of the food chain. But they certainly fit into the above defintion. When you are not nearly guaranteed a well-skilled fighter each time you walk in a dojo, I’d have to say that style has become mainstream. The cause of this phenomenon is that a good style and its Master can become so popular and demand so high, that everyone flocks to it and the teacher and his organization is not disciplined enough to keep up with the influx, or to turn unworthy students away.
I had a similar experience when I was in my mid-20s. I was just starting to get out on to the Lumpia Circuit, the FMA circuit, and had invitations to teach seminars. My first seminar was in Sterling, VA, at a Tae Kwon Do school run by a Vietnamese friend (whose name I’ve forgotten). In exchange for me teaching him to spar (he was an Arnis teacher already, but didn’t know how to fight), he set up these seminars and let me keep 100% of the fees collected. After only a few, he started bugging me about issuing certificates, and one day just made some and asked me to sign them. I never returned to that school again until years later, for a scrimmage, but I never taught for him again. I had a similar experience with almost every “seminar” I’ve ever taught.
So, what can you do when you are in a mainstream art? You are in a commercial FMA, and you want to break the mold? I have been asked this privately by many forum members who never speak up out of face, and I can understand. Here is my advice how:
learn how to attack. most FMA styles only focus on defense and countering, and this is not learning how to beat people up. if you want to learn to impress people, stick with the defense, but it isnt much good for fighting. you will need to change your method of training to something more combative, not just to do what the heck everyone else is doing
develop a practical striking system and think about what damage you are actually capable of inflicting on an opponent. for example, a modern arnis strike #5 to the top of the head? you must be kidding! this is the hardest part of the body to injure and you want to strike it with a stick! LOL! change the target to the collarbone, everytime you practice, and you’re doing practical Arnis for fighting.
don’t teach beginners disarms. these guys are learning to try and take a stick and their forearms are too slender to generate any striking power! beginners should be focusing on building a foundation, not learning neat stuff to show the guys at work. one thing at a time, teach them to move their feet, build their strength and power, teach them to hit, and how to evade. once they have the skills to spar and the physical ability to inflict damage, then we can start learning to do all that fancy shmancy stuff!
work bodyweight conditioning into your training. i am not talking about weight lifting, i am talking about developing strength. see arnisadors and eskrimadors are some of the weakest, poor fighters I know. they like to talk tough, get tatoos and body build, and look the part, but most of the people doing all the fighting are the young, little skinny guys. yeah there are a select few who really get out there and bang, but most are really afraid. if you develop your destructive power and your body, this will help build your courage to really do something. your workouts are too soft; too much stick tapping, too much dancing around a triangle, too much concept (well if you strike me here, i can… do this… or i can do that…)
spar. yes the tournaments have a lot of flailing going on, but that’s what you’re seeing on the surface. once you get involved you’ll see that there is a science to what they are doing, and its much more difficult than it looks, and its much more combative than you realize
and speaking of tournaments, STOP MAKING EXCUSES ABOUT WHY TOURNAMENTS ARE BAD!!! all you do when you blurt those excuses… yes, excuses, is showing how scared you are of fighting. of course it’s similated, Herman, all fighting is simulated. if you’re agreeing to fight, neither of you is trying to kill the other, there are rules, and people will stop you if one gets a bad injury, you’re in a simulated fight. MMA is simulated. full contact stickfighting is simulated. your argument is weak, and shows your cowardly side. if you want fighting skill, you need to (simulate) fight. i supposed sparring is bad, so the better thing to do is drills? you’re kidding
the next time you are tempted to do a seminar in another style you think is cool, fight with some folks from that style. if you don’t do well, find a weakness and a way to beat them with the knowledge you have. if you really believe there aren’t superior styles out there, just superior fighters, prove it. make yourself superior. adding more techniques to your arsenal won’t help you beat them, increasing your skill will. the worst fighters i know, have resume’s long as a convict rap sheet. too much adding salt, sugar, betchin, bay leaf, not enough simmering…
Well, there you have it. There is more to it, but I need to send this off and get to bed. Ramadan is coming in tomorrow! All praises to God!
Thank you for reading my blog, and please! Leave comments!
That is the question. Banging sticks, stick-tapping, cross sticks, whatever. To me, they’re nothing more than code words for those ”stick guys” who are not interested in really learning how to kick someone’s butt with their sticks.
I grew up without Sinawali. Yeah, I learned what is commonly known as “Heaven and Earth 6 count”, or simply “Double Sinawali” when I was about 9 years old, but my Eskrima training did not involve them. In fact, I did not learn Sinawali from my grandpa until I was 20 years old, after learning 10 Sinawali drills from Ernesto Presas in the Philippines. I came home thirsty for more, and then my Papa taught me the ones he knew, never to repeat them again minus a few conversations when I asked about them. You don’t need them, he use to say. But stupid me, reading the magazines and exchanging ideas with martial artists who mostly couldn’t “hold a stick” to my fighting ability…. I was convinced that “complete” FMA must have them. Why? Well, the experts say that Sinawali drills give you coordination to weave your hand in intricate patterns for fighting. As if you couldn’t learn how to deliver a knockout punch without using Sinawali drills. As if you would never have the speed and timing to stop a punch without them. As if you could never grapple, clinch, take a guy down without them.
Hey, just like forms… the only form you need is perfect form. Likewise, the only punching ability you need is punching ability. The only blocking ability you need is blocking ability. You get it.
If you recall, I understand the saying, that when a martial artist can’t fight, he will spend all his time emphasizing the importance of everything else to distract you from the realization that he can’t fight. So, he’ll talk about how fighting isn’t real fighting. WHAT? That’s right. He will confuse you with theories and demonstrations and explanations about how the MMA guy’s ability won’t “translate” to streetfighting ability. He will give you a very convincing and scientific argument about why Eskrima knife fighting isn’t real knife fighting and will get you killed on the street. He will show you all these demonstrations and lectures about how to stop a punch, how to immobilize an opponent, and basically how dangerous he is without actually fighting. The sad thing is that most martial artists will eat this stuff up. Not just eat it up and believe it, but adopt these ideas and drop his own, and start repeating this stuff to his own students.
Honestly, have you ever really seen Sinawali used in a fight? I’m not just talking about some dude wailing away in padded sparring with a stick in each hand, but someone seriously sparring using Sinawali? I don’t deny that one can use the patterns as striking patterns in fighting–let’s not be stupid–but I’m talking about the way those sticks are swung, but in a serious stickfight? How about Sinawali while empty handed? Of all the things that turn my stomach about commercial, watered-down FMA, empty handed FMA is one of the most embarassing innovations. Even white belts at McDojos are looking at Youtube laughing their pants off, it’s disgusting.
You see, we have gotten so far into making FMAs look exotic and different, that we are now trying to force-fit logic into our FMA in order for everything to tie together (the stick is a knife, is a machete, is the empty hand and everything is preparation for everything else). I’ve even had a well-known Grandmaster (friend) try to convince me that the Sinawali develops staff sparring skill. But you know me, I’m a “hands-on” kinda guy, and we shut down that argument real quick. But guess what, he is still teaching that garbage in his classes! The bottom line is that Sinawali–the way they are practiced–do nothing for fighting ability. The best fighters in the Philippines do not train them for their fighting ability. Beginners do not need them to learn how to hit or defend. They don’t even do a good job developing forearm, wrist, and hand strength like plain old striking practice does! They don’t “translate” well to empty hand. And if you ever tried to use those techniques against a guy determined to knock your head off your shoulders, well, he’s going to knock your head off your shoulders! The way most of you are taught to practice them, the distance is wrong (sticks usually meet in the middle of you and your opponent, so the distance is unrealistic), you don’t practice with any amount of power (striking power, that is), and once you “get” the rhythm down, it is no longer beneficial for you to practice it other than just having more coordination to do it faster or ad lib your drills. The only benefit I see is that it kills time during class when you don’t have much practical shit to teach. Oh, and some people like to decorate their school with frayed up sticks and the smell of burning rattan… Makes you guys look like you’ve been kicking some ass in there.
The bottom line, Sinawali are a waste of time, and a waste of valuable training space. On top of all that, a waste money from busting up all those $10 sticks.
If you want to learn how to fight–really learn how to fight–hang around; I’ll teach you the secrets….
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One of the strongest images I have of my maternal grandfather is his claim of being a martial arts “hermit”. Those who have met him walk away with the impression that he is unfriendly and introverted. Not just because he didn’t speak English, but surprisingly he was a walking contradiction: my Grandfather was a very giving man, but when it came to his martial arts he was very selfish; he was fiercely patriotic, but didn’t seem to like many Filipinos (just like my mom, more on this later); was a lifelong martial artist, but really disliked martial artists. When I speak of old-school martial artists looking another up and down, thinking “I can take this guy”, my Lolo takes the cake. As a young man, he taught me to train hard and out do my peers and to look down on them as inferior martial artists. Does this make you uncomfortable? Good. That’s what warriors do. If you’re looking to get along with someone, go hold hands in some seminar somewhere…
I begrudgingly complied with many of his requests to keep my distance from most other martial artists. After attending a few FMA seminars with my old friend Billy Bryant, I stopped going when my grandfather objected. Although I was somewhat rebellious and independent thinking as a youth, I was obedient when it came to martial arts, because I really did look up to him and I truly believed that my grandfather was better skilled, more knowledgeable, and could make me into a superior fighter if I followed his lead. Now in my 40s, I am a spitting image of my Lolo in looks, build (he was actually leaner), lifestyle, and outlook. I hope that in the next 30 years, I am equal to who he was as a Master and as a man.
At the heart of this old man’s philosophy was his belief that in order to gain martial arts mastery, one needed to become a martial arts “hermit” in order to grow–even if only for a short period of time.
The hermit is one who has isolated himself from the rest of his community. For whatever reasons–religion, art, intense self-reflection–a man who lives this lifestyle is destined for wisdom or insanity. Our greatest human minds have lived the life of a hermit at some point in their lives. By disallowing distractions and frivolous activity to enter our lives, we enable ourselves to develop, reflect and perfect whatever it is we focus on during our solitude. Many of the things martial artists do, such as rub elbows with other teachers in the political world, put on demonstrations, write meaningless “look-who-I-am-and-what-I-know” articles for the magazines–do nothing at all for one’s skill in the martial arts. The true martial artist has no interest in such things, which has no place in one’s martial arts path. You want respect in the martial arts? Then make your skill unrivaled by most, and then you will earn respect. This is the old-fashioned way of building one’s reputation: standing on the merits of actual ability.
I consider myself an “Eskrima” hermit because I did not have classmates, family or friends in Eskrima while I was learning (besides my brother). In Kung Fu and Karate training, I had schools full of classmates, friends on the tournament circuit, and other school owners as friends. Even in Kuntaw, I had friends from all over the world who practiced Kuntaw and Silat; but my Eskrima experience is all to myself. This would seem odd, because my grandfather was not an “eskrima guy”, he was an empty hands guy, and his second weapon of choice was a bolo. But I took to the stick because this was the weapon we sparred with, and it was also the weapon I had the most difficulty learning. As I started to get out and meet other arnisadors and eskrimadors, I learned that–like my grandfather–I found most of them weak, sheepish, into politics, poorly skilled and I simply tended not to like them. In fact, most of my friends in the martial arts are Tae Kwon Do practitioners and boxers. I find martial artists egotistic, insecure, poorly skilled and undisciplined. This is not say that I am a monk either; but I treat my martial arts with much more respect than most martial artists. Confidence and antagonism seem to frighten most FMA people, so they seek strength in numbers or to simply avoid any forms of in-person confrontation. This is very disappointing because I know that back home, Arnis practitioners are not this way. Most have no rank and are happy with that. But most Filipino Arnis fighters are highly capable of defending themselves and will try you out at the drop of a dime, and you have to respect that. I consider anything less than that to be a weak representation of our arts. What I see of Filipino FMA people in America is that most of us have bought into the commercialization of the West–we like money, nice cars, rank and things to show off. This is what my mother and grandfather never let us become… coconuts. It is no wonder that we find that many Filipino FMA people look down on FOB Filipinos and many FOB Filipinos look down on western Filipinos. There is a lot lost in these arts when you lose the culture. The practice of isolating oneself–the training and the secrets we hold–is a very old-school, cultural thing for Filipino masters. Many of the benefits from practicing the art of seclusion cannot be duplicated in a classroom or seminar.
If you look at my school, I have the windows boarded up and covered with a mural. We do not allow visitors during class times. We only attend tournaments and scrimmages, rarely social events. I do not put on demonstrations for strangers; in fact, I rarely even demonstrate for my own students. My personal training sessions are alone–as they were when I was younger–and I am usually only seen in uniform when I am fighting. If I ask another martial artist to train with him, I am only planning to spar (not show, explain or hang out). My martial arts are for my students, so I rarely guest-teach in other Guros’ schools… even in those schools owned by my friends. I do not post Youtube videos. My skill and my reputation are all I care about; I could care less whether I am a popular teacher, or if people like me in this community. To be known for skill, knowledge and teaching ability if all I care about. In my community, you will find three groups of martial artists who know me: those who have seen me fight or teach (competitors or former students), those who have never seen me but have only seen my students fight, or–the majority–those who have heard of me but never seen me or my students; you would be hard pressed to find folks in my martial arts community who do not know who I am. And of those people, they either admire me (whether or not they’ve met me or seen me), or they loathe me (whether or not they’ve met me or seen me). Me and my school’s reputation have traveled long and far, without the use of magazine articles or advertising. And this is with me being isolated from this local community.
I once ate with my family in a restaurant in San Francisco, when the waiter noticed my school’s name on my credit card. He returned with three fellow employees (all FMA students), asking to take pictures, sign an autograph and promising to visit my school 100 miles away. As usual, they commented on how young I was, thinking I was some old man with along beard, lol. I get that a lot, because my ideas are old school and my attitude came from old men. But I tell you, I would not be the man I was had I joined the rest of the community.
Being a hermit does not require you to go live in a mountain or in the marshes. All it does is have you focus on yourself and your martial arts 99% of the time, and reject everything that lends nothing to your skill and knowledge: publicity, rank and ego, affiliations, unnecessary attention. My students fight in tournaments every month, but I am almost never in attendance. Why? Because I am at the school teaching, and that is most important. It’s not even necessary for me to attend and coach, because the preparation was done in the gym. When I am in attendance, I am sitting with my family and school, not walking around passing out business cards. You must keep your arts in your school and keep to yourself when you are away. The time to get with other people is when it’s time to test out what you’ve been doing. My students are allowed to attend seminars and train in other schools, but we keep our information in the house. As a teacher, I cannot focus my attention outside our circle because it takes away from them.
I have rejected several offers to write articles about my school. We attempted to get some articles published years ago through Black Belt and Inside Kung Fu magazine, and all were rejected because my views either offended or were contradictory to what the rest of the community believed. While I originally thought my philosophy could help some in the community, I realized that most of them do not want to listen. I still have an email forwarded from my old student that he received from Inside Kung Fu magazine:
articles
Sunday, January 4, 2002 3:10 AM
From:
“Xxxx Xxxxx” <XXXXXXXX@cfwenterprises.com>
To:
“Xxx XXXXXXXXXX” <XXXXXXX@xxxx.com>
Xxx,
After reading your articles several times, I find that “I Am Now FMA”
would be too harsh for our magazine. While the points made may be true,
they are presented in a way that probably would offend many of the
Filipino styists. I still have not made a decision on the other article,
but I’m leaning toward not printing that one also. Sorry for the delay.
xxxx xxxxx
ikf
I guess as they say that the truth hurts. But what probably hurts more is if you piss off some their most consistent advertisers. Some folks really don’t want to know the truth, and this is why they don’t fight… it is better to sit back and think you can protect yourself than to throw on the gloves to see if you are right. After I had experienced this treatment from the magazines and even some of the forums, I decided that it was time to keep my martial arts close to home. I realize now that the magazines are not there to share knowledge or teach, but to advertise and brag.
But I digress.
The same way a husband is only here for his family, a teacher is only here for his students. I think back to when Bruce Lee was acting, his students must have felt neglected. Perhaps many of them were there just because he was Bruce Lee the actor, they are certainly benefiting from being able to say, “Bruce Lee was my Sifu” when in fact their Sifu was Dan Inosanto. And excuse me for making this observation, many of those students couldn’t hold a candle up to Masutatsu Oyama’s students. But Mas was there for his guys all his life, and there you have the difference. Did Oyama go out and politic? Sure he did, after a lifetime of hermitage. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a lifetime, but he preceded his teaching career with perfecting the art himself by training in the woods. By the time he was ready to take Kyokushinkai to the world, he had focused on himself and his art enough that it was perhaps the “strongest Karate” on the planet. And how many people around can argue with that?
So, my question to you is, are you in pursuit of making your martial art the “strongest” of the styles? Are you attempting to make yourself the “strongest” teacher? Training your students the “strongest” fighters?
I have once heard that if you can’t be the best, get out of the business. We should all be striving to be the best; at least if we are serious martial artists. Casual training should not be in the vocabulary of the Guro… we are training people to be able to defend themselves and their families. You can’t promise them protection with mediocre, unambitious martial arts training. But it all starts with you, the Master. This has nothing to do with who has abs, who can run a 3-minute mile, who holds the highest degree Black Belt, who is world-famous or not. All that matters is the knowledge, skill, and experience level of the teacher, and how he passes that down to his students. Isolating yourself from all that does not matter in the effort to perfect oneself is a good way to get started on that path.
Thank you for reading my blog. Please come and visit us again!
I would just like to give everyone an update on the progress of the book. The book is complete, and is being edited for the second time. Within the next week, it will be sent out for printing, and returned to me within 5 business days of receipt. As soon as I receive the books, I will send them to the folks who have pre-ordered.
Simultaneously, we are working on a training DVD for building power and strength for martial artists. This project will take a little longer, and I estimate that we should be done by summer 2010.
Thank you for all your emails, comments and support!
This is what I’d like you to do… please go to your personal email and send the link, www.filipinofightingsecretslive.com, to your martial arts friends and associates! Invite them down to take a look at what we’re doing here, because if you like it they’re sure to love it!
Then again, if what I write about pisses you off… still send them! I am not above being corrected and have been persuaded of the “other” view plenty of time–just through a good debate, I’m not hard-headed! But, don’t be one of those guys who just get mad and talk trash from the safety of your dojos, websites and Facebook pages. Come on over, leave me a comment (or send email like most of you do) and let’s engage!
I have some books and other products coming, so stay tuned. And if you haven’t gotten a chance to read my book, get a copy! It’s a lot better information than this stuff you’ve purchased through Panther or one of the “if-you-seen-one-you-seen-it-all” DVDs.
Well, for a limited time, you can purchase my books as a PDF file at an affordable price!
You may have already heard about these two:
Make a Living with Your Backyard/Garage/Community Center Dojo
Mustafa Gatdula’s How to Build a Dominant Fighter in 12 Months
Well, here are two more!
Eight Tips to Boosting Your School’s Income
In this book, I share 8 simple steps (note: I say that they are simple, I did not say they were easy…) to making more money out of your school. You update your knowledge base by purchasing books, attending workshops, classes and seminars–why haven’t you pursued any education to help your school become more profitable?
If you are planning to open a school, then why wait? Get this book now, and have your plan in place when you’re ready to hang your shingle!
Filipino Fighting Secrets Live: Philosophy of the Martial Arts
This book is a collection of articles from this blog and a few essays I wrote addressing my ideas about the philosophy of the martial arts. Many of you have said that you agree with much of what I say. While it may seem that we are a tiny minority in this difference, there are actually many, many more like you and me. Here is one place that you will be able to go and read thousands of words about this unique approach to the martial arts.
Face it, these seminars that make up the bulk of the learning in the FMA community do not dig deep into the traditions and mindset of the FMA man. They are mostly technical classes on how to strike with a stick, slash and stab with a blade, and take a weapon away. This book deals with how you interact with the martial arts community, how you live as a modern-day warrior, and how this art affects you as a practitioner and community trainer of warriors. This book will talk about things your Guro does not have time to talk about in his classes.
Philosophy is the first in the series “Filipino Fighting Secrets Live on Hardcopy”. Don’t wait until the price increases to get your copy–you won’t regret it!
“So, how much is it?” You may be wondering…
Ready?
Soft copies of “Backyard Dojo” and “Eight Tips” are $7.
Soft copies of “Dominant Fighter” and “Philosophy” are $15.
If you check out the Offerings page, you will see that my books are considerably more. But if you purchase them now, you will get them before the prices double!
More books coming soon, we are editing as we speak!
This weekend I was talking to a young man who was around 25 and had been studying various martial arts since the age of 6. He is a huge MMA fan as well as a great spokesperson for the Filipino Martial Arts. After hearing him talk to his friend about the martial arts, I couldn’t help but to slide into that conversation. He is currently studying Jeet Kune Do in the Bay area and picks up FMAs whenever he could. Looking at him, he is in good shape and I wondered if he had done any fighting.
Of course not.
And I knew it. See, he is a dabbler, and while you may find some dabblers who do engage in fighting, most dabblers, if they do anything, just train. They rarely have a strong core of training partners because they don’t belong to any community of martial artists. And what’s worse than not having a community to pull training partners from, he has no master. That’s right. He is a patient with a fool for a doctor. A client with a fool for an attorney. A student trying to “create his own path, just like Bruce.”
That really irritates me when people call him “Bruce” as if they know him.
But I digress.
We talked about his vast background, his long trail of impractical and incomplete martial arts styles, and his many masters whom he only learned a little bit of shit from (my words), and how he is combining the best of the systems to create his own fighting style. And right now, he is only skimming the surface of Bruce Lee’s art. Let that one sink in…
Okay for those of you who are a little slow: This guy took Bruce Lee’s philosophy of create your own style by taking a little of this and a little of that (btw, that is NOT what Bruce Lee did)–which he considers to be the best of the fighting systems–and not only will he not commit to fully learningany martial arts style, this stupid young man won’t even fully learn the art Bruce Lee created! In other words, this guy thinks he knows better. He knows better than every master of every art that he’s ever studied. Better than Bruce Lee Himself. I am not one to mince words, but this young man doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.
I am not an enemy of innovation. The greatest of every field you could think of were all innovators. Bruce Lee was an innovator. But here’s the difference: Bruce Lee was not a novice at a whole bunch of stuff. Those who think they know better will one day get old to become either self-proclaimed masters or they will become nobodies in the art who still can’t fight. And here, we arrive to my original point: This self-guided (not self-taught, he has teachers, it’s just that he leaves before he learns anything) young man doesn’t fight because he doesn’t stay in anything long enough to get the skill or confidence to last in a fight with well-trained fighters.
That’s not to say that you can’t do it. I’m just saying you have to have a foundation in something to build on while you “create your own path”. So you learn a little bit of boxing, a little Kenpo, a little Jujitsu, a little Muay Thai, a little Eskrima… so basically that means you suck at 5 different arts. Plenty of martial artists do this. It is my main issue with teachers who “dabble” in arts, get certified (which means nothing when we’re talking about proficiency) and then teach side classes. However, a guy who takes the art seriously, doesn’t get any particular advanced ranking, but trains like an animal and logs plenty of sparring rounds with superior opponents can “create his own path”. Creating one’s own path is a valid martial arts philosophy, but it is not for the dabbler, it is not for the know-it-all, and not for the guy who refuses to accept advice and learning.
The one creating his own path must have an open mind to learn whatever he can, but he must equally be willing to test his theories and accept feedback from those with more wisdom than himself. For a beginner to read Bruce Lee’s story, or watch MMA on TV and hear the rhetoric about being “well-rounded”–and then go forth to recreate what those experts have done, is foolish. Those men put a lifetime of research, training and testing together and some 25 year old who only watches real fighters duke it out on TV will never be able to duplicate this in TWO lifetimes. The blind leading the blind only find themselves lost. All men who were innovators began with a guide or mentor.
And almost all experts fine-tuned their craft by doing their craft hundreds of times more than his peers. Doing a little of this and a little of that will get you nowhere.
Or you could just do what this young man does, and lecture non-martial artists. Let me say this. Anytime you form a strong opinion or revolutionary theory about a subject, and you express this opinion around your peers (or around REAL experts), be prepared to be challenged on those theories and be capable or proving it. No man unwilling to put his art to the test, aka fight, should be creating his own path. Leave that to the dedicated.
One of the my favorite, most telling quotes from the martial arts movies is a scene from Bruce Lee’s “Way of the Dragon” (also known as “Return of the Dragon”). He goes into the back of the restaurant where the staff is practicing martial arts, and they ask him for a demonstration. He politely declines, and when they press him, he genuinely warns them: You might get hurt…
I love that.
See, when the martial artist is properly trained, he cannot fully do his martial arts because of a sincerely concerned for his opponents. There is a joke in the arts, that when a martial artist is unskilled, he avoids sparring because he doesn’t want to maim or kill his opponent. Yet for some, this is a real concern. It’s sort of like when you spar with kids, how you play around and tone down what you are capable of doing 90% because you don’t want to hurt him. When the skilled martial artist is sparring even with other Black belts, he must hold back because of safety. It’s not in your mind; this is a reality that some martial artists must live with when he is of the highest caliber.
To illustrate, take a look at the following video:
Had this been any other man being interviewed, the dynamic between interviewer and expert would be completely different. Size is irrelevant; I am speaking solely of the differences between their skill levels and ability. Even if the interviewer wanted a match with Iron Mike, he could never oblige or fight him as if he were an opponent.
Here is my point. I have seen some martial artists who fight with novices and people on the street, and defeat them easily. These men are not of the caliber I am speaking of. Although they may dominate their opponents, they are of the lowest level of “experts” because of the quality of opponents they choose to accept. Can you imagine Mike Tyson accepting a fist fight from a random drunk in a bar? How stupid is that? In fact, Tyson has more to lose by fighting such a man, as it will ruin more than his reputation–he could be sued or have to carry the guilt of killing a man over something insignificant. The martial artists of the highest order does not accept such fights because they are beneath him, and for him to beat an unqualified opponent is a waste of energy and time. This is why any Black Belter who comes into my school and asks for a match with my students is automatically treated as a beginner, because he is either mentally or physically inferior to me or the instructors under me. The Black Belt who sees beginners as possible opponents either has poor skills or he lacks the maturity to match his ability.
The martial arts expert of today, however, is often not cut of this cloth anyway. He is rarely skilled and knowledgeable enough to have the need to warn others of his skill. He often lacks the confidence a man of his level should possess. I blame this is on the impatience many teachers have in promoting new Black Belters and certifying “experts”. Most so-called instructors have spent less than 5 years studying their arts and have neither the strength nor the experience to dominate his peers. He boasts of multiple fields of expertise, and often is not much better skilled than most of his advanced students. He has never had the pleasure of being proven the top fighter in his community. So many others carry the same rank he has, that the title “expert” or Black Belt, in his case, is meaningless. In some styles, grown men have the same certificates from their masters as 12 year old boys–yet they want to be respected as equal to the real experts.
The first thing a martial artist must do is to train his skills to its limit. I have a suggestion on how to accomplish this:
pick 10 techniques and 10 attack or counter combinations
train those 10 items 100 repetitions per training session
give yourself 100 training sessions to develop basic ability in those 20 items
at the end of the 100th session, change to another 20 items
do this with everything in your arsenal
I consider this to be necessary for one to be considered an intermediate in the art. When you’re ready, get with me and I’ll give you my ideas on the advanced and expert level.
But wait! Mustafa, didn’t you say “train to your ability’s limits”?
Yes, I did. But I am positive no one reading this blog has ever done this first step, and you damn sure can’t expect to start at the top, do you? LOL. Yes, you DO…. And that’s the problem, my martial arts brothers. You’re in too much of a rush to call yourselves Black Belts and experts, but you haven’t achieved the skill level of an expert yet. I know some of you personally, and I have seen you bypass learning the hard way and opting to take easy classes from seminar trained experts or just taking seminars yourself. What I want you to do, is give yourself 100 workouts to improving your skill level to a point that 99% of your peers will never arrive to. 100 workouts. Train every day, and you will be there in a little over three months. Do it 4 days a week and get there in about 7 months. You were in a huge rush to strap on the title “Instructor”, so how much of a rush will you be in to have the skill to accompany that title?
And I haven’t even touched on the fact that you purport to be an expert on fighting, but remind me again of how many fights you’ve actually had?
Yeah, exactly. So, when some guy asks you for a match or a demonstration of your martial arts ability–and you warn him that he might get hurt, you don’t really mean that, do you?
But you know how dangerous you really are, don’t you? Take 100 workouts, and call me when you’re done. Thanks for visiting my blog.
I recently reconnected with an old friend from the DC area who is planning to begin teaching the martial arts soon. We had not seen each other since the late 90s and have been catching up with each other, in between classes and the time difference. A few weeks ago, we were discussing what I was doing before coming to California and we ended up talking about how my school transitioned from an FMA school that fought in point tournaments to one that did full contact, to Muay Thai and MMA, then my present focus–the traditional martial art. He said something that offended me slightly, but it inspired this article:
“I remembered you as a serious martial artist, but then everyone said you got so much into sport fighting. I’m glad you returned to the traditional arts…”
As if one couldn’t be a traditional fighter and still fight in the ring.
I agree, that many teachers go so deep into the tournament style of fighting they lose focus on real combat, but my question is, what is REAL combat? What are ”traditional” martial arts? Martial arts without rules? Question, have you ever fought someone without rules? I seriously doubt many readers here have ever fought without rules. That would be a life-or-death fight. Even those masters you love to tell stories about had some type of rules in those “death matches”. If any Eskrimada master told you he fought a real death match, I’d say that master lied to you. The Philippines was not the Old West, devoid of law and order. I know it sells books and videos, but it simply isn’t true.
Here is my point, all fighters need some type of fighting experience. the more fighting experience they get while learning and developing the art, the better prepared and more knowledgeable they will be in order to teach someone else to fight. None of us who teach Eskrima have ever really killed someone with our sticks and knives. I’ve met quite a few Eskrimadors who claim to have had real live experience with their weapons, and I have yet to meet a man who makes this claim who will fight a match with me. Yes, we all spar with our weapons, but no halfway intelligent martial artist will be stupid enough to engage in the criminal act of pulling out a real blade and testing his skill via mutual combat with another Eskrimador. I am not referring to a real self-defense situation–I have done this myself. But all matches–with my students, with another teacher, with challenges I have accepted or issued–all had rules. I won’t disrespect you by asking to be so stupid to believe that I have done anything more.
In order for the martial artist to properly learn the art he has been taught, he must have the experience of using this skills with another combatant. Not a partner. Not a classmate. An opponent. It’s the only way he will be able to fully understand his martial art. And ring fighting is the safest way to find a multitude of opponents and gain a lifetime of experience. Once a fighter has had so many fights that he cannot remember how many opponents he has had, he cannot remember how many wins versus losses he experienced, he has had more matches with no winner/loser declared than he can remember–he has had “enough”. When a martial artist is engaging in refereed matches with rules, he is doing what is traditional in the martial arts: He is finding opponents to test his art on, and is discovering all those fine points that his teacher could never teach him, and he would never discover on his own. No master has arrived to the true level of mastery without it. One could spend a lifetime teaching and innovating to his imagination’s limits, but without these ever-so-important matches, he is no Master of fighting.
I would like to share with you the basic differences between training for the ring and training for the street. They are vastly different, and so I consider them distinct, but equally important, stages of development in the martial arts student’s education.
When training for the ring, stamina is extremely important. We want to be prepared for a lengthy, multi-round fight. When training for the street, stamina is important as well–but a different type of stamina. We are not preparing for a long fight, however, you will train to exert yourself 100% of speed, power and intensity for the duration of your altercation.
For the ring, you will focus a lot of calisthenics on the midsection, in order to take the body punch and kicks to the body. On the street, you are unlikely to be hit in the body (although it is a good idea to use body shots. You will likely destroy an opponent without risking killing your opponent by hitting him in the head). Street fighters must perform a lot of pushups and dips, to develop punching muscles.
Street fighters focus on power, point and full contact fighters focus on speed and timing. Speed and timing are good for the street as well, but in the ring they are extra vital. You must be able to out point your opponent in the event you cannot knock him out.
Ring fighters fight from a further distance than streetfighters. Most likely when fighting for self defense, your opponent is not experienced and will not utilize position, distance and faking. In the ring, the fight is more of a chess match. Footwork is more relevant in the ring because you have the advantage of the clock.
Streetfighters must learn to improvise with using walls, tables and objects to their advantage. Ring fighters enter with only themselves. The most a fighter may use for his advantage are the ropes of a ring (if he fights in a ring)
Streetfighters must be aware of additional opponents and hidden weapons (self explanatory). Ring fighters do not.
Streetfighters should work on attack combinations of 4 or more strikes, and be able to utilize them to end their fights. The ring fighter must fight in short bursts, between 2 and 5 strikes and kicks.
Ring fighters spend at least 50% of their time on defense. Streetfighter training should be attack-oriented. (This is the #1 reason I say that Modern Eskrima is out of touch with reality for Street Self Defense!)
If I keep going, I will reveal the secret of Mustafa Gatdula’s FMA. Take this information and absorb it. And don’t shy away from the ring. You will benefit greatly if you learn it’s lessons. If you like this article (or if you *don’t* like it), please share! And you may also enjoy my books as well. Take a look at my “Offerings” page for more information! Thanks for visiting my blog.
I have read, with disgust, many stories of teachers molesting their students, bilking students out of money and creating cult-like schools. People fall for this and are easily misled because they believe that a martial arts expert is automatically an expert in everything. To misquote Bruce Lee, “We are not all wise men…”
Both martial arts students and teachers all seem to think that martial arts education imparts wisdom. The teacher is many things to his student, when in fact, he may not be qualified to play some of those roles. The martial arts teacher may be in the arts for several decades and the only expertise he has is in the technical side of the martial arts. Martial arts knowledge does not bequeath fighting skill, fighting skill does not lead to teaching skill, teaching skill does not lead to wisdom. Teachers and Masters must know their place, and be disciplined and humble enough to stay in that place.
I have two good friends, one Chinese and the other African American, who had been friends since the 1970s. In the mid 80s, the Chinese friend encouraged a group of his students not to leave for college, and instead remain in town to complete their martial arts education. My African American friend was terribly offended by this and voiced his opinion. His complaints:
YOU aren’t making a good living at this, why would you lead these young men away from the path where they would make a living?
They won’t be accepted as a teacher like you; they are Black. What future would they have doing what you do, in a Chinese-dominated industry?
How dare you convince young men from pursuing an education when they fought so hard to get college acceptance letters? They already have two strikes against them: they are poor and they are Black. Now a third, they’ll be uneducated.
Twenty years later, both my friends still teach, they are actually prospering. But the young men? There were four. Only one is teaching and doing well. Fortunately, he used his winnings from competition and teaching, and completed his education. He is a master chef with a good job with Hilton, and has income to open a nice school in a downtown area with wealthy clients. The other three? One drives a cab. One drives a truck. I hadn’t heard about the fourth. None of those three are involved with the arts.
I agree with my African American friend, but for a different reason. First, the martial arts is a difficult business. However, there is good money to be made in the arts. I just don’t measure success in terms of financial rewards. Secondly, social acceptance in the art, being amiable or popular have NO bearing on one’s ability to make a living. Take me, for example. I am disliked greatly in the FMA world. I don’t have many FMA people I do like. I am seen as a troll by some, jealous by a few, and unqualified by others. But none of those things hurts me or my reputation as a fighter or teacher. In the Chinese martial arts community, I am seen as a senior teacher and I’m not Chinese. One thing I have that many don’t have is skill. It goes a long way in the martial arts community. College education? Irrelevant.
I know the four young men, and none were exceptionally talented. And that is why I thought it was a bad idea to talk them out of a formal education. A martial arts education, in my opinion, is just as valid, however. These young men were decent as martial artists. They just weren’t die-hard expert material. They had to think about what they wanted to do. The path to instructorship in the martial arts is not a decision or a career goal; it is a calling. If you have to be convinced, it simply isn’t for you.
My point of all of this is this: My Chinese friend, while an expert in the art of fighting–is not an expert in life. He is not wise. Without getting into his personal business, Kung Fu is the only thing he had going for him. He is not an authority on finding a spouse, he is not a spiritual leader, he is not a guidance counselor. He is not a family therapist. He is not qualified to turn misbehaving children into obedient soldiers. He cannot teach anyone the value of life. If you’re depressed, he is no qualified to hear your problems than the pretty librarian at the local library. He can teach you a form, he can show you how to generate power out of a kick, he can teach you to prevent getting your butt kicked by three guys. But he does not have the wisdom to guide young men into anything but the martial arts. And apparently, he is not even qualified to recognize teacher material either.
The martial arts teacher must understand this about himself. He is not that old monk from the Kung Fu movies who tells the young fighter to make amends with his father. He will never have to tell a student to forgive an old enemy and not kill him. The way martial arts are taught, I doubt if any of the masters of the past possessed this kind of wisdom. They had a high rate of divorce. Most were broke. Many were alcoholics, used drugs, and without their martial arts legends to keep their story going–most were by our definition, losers. The martial artist, if he gave his art what it needed to rise to the level where he would be dominant in his community, probably ignored everything in his life in order to master his art. Therefore, the martial arts master is most likely only a master of the art he teaches. Hate to burst your bubble, but it’s true.
Most of the martial artists I have known over the years have been womanizers or woman abusers. Few were “normal” guys. The ones who were “normal guys” weren’t all that great at the arts. Something about the arts, if you hadn’t noticed…. it keeps us looking fit and trim and young. We are good looking men for our age. We are vibrant, and we have healthy sex drives. You know what happens when you combine a good looking guy, with a strong drive, a gleam in our eye for a dream school we will never achieve? Um, yeah. We divorce because our wives don’t support our dreams. They want us to close our schools and get “real” jobs. We, in turn, become single men who run businesses where our kids’ moms are single and looking to us to fill in where their Dads won’t. Don’t shake your heads, I’m speaking truth right now…. Few of us who struggle are still married.
On the other end, the martial artists who excel in the art are a little more high strung than most guys. We have hot tempers–forget all that calm crap you think we’re supposed to represent, I’m speaking about fighters–so we are prone to arguing and fighting. Our up and down relationships. Other teachers. Guys at the bar. Cops. I don’t know about you, but in my circle of martial arts friends, most of my friends who are good fighters and train regularly seem to all have legal histories, myself included. I sure hope you didn’t think you were coming to FFSL to get lied to. There is a disproportionate percentage of people in our field who have had fist fights past the age of 25, and you can blame the training. Hot temper is a by-product of good training. Yeah, put that in your “Back-to-School” advertisements. Want to curb it? Stop sparring and training hard. It’s that simple.
The martial arts has many benefits. But we mustn’t act as if the arts were replacements for Ritalyn, it doesn’t cure Adult ADHD, and it sure as hell won’t solve relationship woes. We are not training to learn to be honest men. Our arts do not make us better citizens, just because we practice 1,000 punches a week. There have been many masters who have combined philosophy, morality, and fighting arts–but those things are not side effects of training. If you wish to be a wise martial arts teacher, study philosophy or religion. If you happen to be involved in an art where that is already done, then good for you. For the rest of us, we are not automatically becoming wise in anything but martial-related things when we train–and even then, we are only becoming wise in the fields that we pursue our expertise in. What virtues I possess outside of martial arts related topic, I achieved through reading and studying my religion. But I claim no expertise in anything but what I teach. The martial arts teacher must understand that he is a teacher of the arts, and nothing else. The martial arts student must understand this as well. Martial arts masters are not wise old sages, who impart lessons of life, love and secrets about them. If we fully understand that, we can then avoid cult-like schools and masters, and bad decisions made at the hands of teachers who don’t know their place.
This morning I was surfing youtube, looking at martial arts videos and I noticed a few things.
Some styles are tightly controlled–who gets certified to teach it, who is called a teacher vs master, and access to learning those arts
Some arts are very commonly found, where just a decade ago they were obscure
The more popular an art is, the easier it is to learn these arts, the skill level of those who teach the art is poor
The rarer the art, the more it is in demand, and it is treasured more
I disagree with those who want to mass-market the Filipino Martial Arts. However, I have to admit that 20 years ago when I began teaching my art, I was among those who wanted the FMAs to be as accessible and respected at Karate and Tae Kwon Do. Yet over the years, I have seen the art move from just a few visible masters to “yes-my-10-year-old-has-a-Black-Belt-in-it” mainstream. Those who have known me for years can probably recall me throwing tantrums on online forums such as MartialTalk and Bladeforums about weak representatives teaching “my” arts. A local Filipino newspaper once called me a “gatekeeper” to Filipino arts, when my school was the only FMA school in town, citing my disgust with long-distance FMA course-trained teachers. In those days, I saw myself as an owner of the FMAs and disliked seeing Eskrima teachers who were misrepresenting the art (with misconceptions about techniques and false histories). I wanted to see FMA empty hand to be truly appreciated as practical forms of fighting–not just something you devoted a little time to in seminars are fancy demos. I wanted the art taught full-time in schools and for every city to have schools offering the FMAs. I wanted FMAs to be just as popular as any other style and for our styles to be household names.
Of course, as time passed, I changed that desire.
I no longer want to see the Filipino arts get as big as Tae Kwon Do, especially after seeing what has happened to TKD. Korean styles have been reduced to either a sport or a children’s activity. They are a laughing stock among “real” martial artists. Tae Kwon Do is now treated as a gateway art to supposedly more practical arts, like jujitsu and MMA. You can’t go more than 10 miles in any direction these days without running into a TKD school, and almost every adult you find today has studied it, or has a friend who studied it. Although Tae Kwon Do is a valid form of fighting (only people who have never fought a TKD fighter will swear it is not), for some reason it just doesn’t have respect. I blame this on one very real fact–This is NOT a generalization:
Most people teaching Tae Kwon Docouldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag.
And that’s the damned truth. The art has become so popular, so easy to achieve rank in, that a Black belt in this art is nearly meaningless these days. There is no way you could hold your Black Belt certificate in high regard when a 7 year old tested right next to you and holds the same rank.
But don’t laugh, FMAers. We are no different. In fact, I would say we were worse, because these days a Tae Kwon Do guy has to spend more time in class–way more time–than you do to reach an “expert” status. In the Filipino arts, most places don’t even have places to study every day if you want to really commit to the art. We are tucked away on weekends between classes in commercial Karate schools and community centers. We barely even have men who teach FMAs full-time, nor do you often find students who have devoted all of their martial arts education to FMA study. We are the ultimate add-on art, and if you are too busy to dedicate your time to it, we have convenient self-study and crash courses which will certify you in fewer than 100 hours of training time.
Many of you who tested for your Black Belts didn’t even TEST. You want to see what a Black Belt test looks like in a real kick ass school? Take a look at this video and you tell me if you’ve seen an FMA school with something of this caliber.
I’ve said it millions of times already, and I will say it a million times more: The Filipino fighting arts aren’t for everyone in its purest form. If you dilute it to make it palatable for the average Joe, it is no longer FMA in its purest form and you shouldn’t call it such. If the FMAs were to become a household name, it must grow slowly and carefully. The video and seminar markets have made these arts more commercial, more entertaining, and they have strayed too far from the source and now emit a weaker frequency. When a child can get the same thing you got in the same amount of time, when you can be certified to teach but you are not confident to take on any attacker, when you cannot guarantee that the Black Belts under you are superior to those of another teacher–your art has not been transferred properly. We can publish all the articles we want, produce the cutest Youtube clips of what our arts entail, we can tattoo our arms, lift weights and build muscles, swing knives, sticks and blades to look tough–and the art is not growing the way it should.
Real martial arts cannot be mass marketed, because real martial arts are not for the masses.
My opinion about how the FMAs should be promoted:
Stop promoting. Individual schools should promote in their areas to increase membership, but the best product on the market shouldn’t need a PR campaign. Enough of the reality shows and exaggerated displays of what FMAs are all about.
We do what we do, and we do it best. This is the “Good to Great” concept. We should not try and be everything to everyone. If you did not develop your empty hand as a specialty, don’t promote that you did. Many people have left FMA schools disappointed that their FMA empty hand was not practical. I know, because they usually come to me.
Masters don’t chase after students. It makes us look less sincere about our art. If you had a beautiful, smart daughter, do you advertise to try and find suitors for her? Or do you protect her and wait for the best young man who deserves her. We treat our arts as money-tickets, not as treasured skills we earned and paid for with blood, sweat and tears.
Our schools should be bottom-heavy with beginners. Only the best and most deserving go to the senior ranks. We don’t allow people to hold rank just because they’ve been there a long time. We make them earn the right to be among our best–trust me, they will work to show their appreciation.
Teachers must have their own experiences to teach from. FMA teachers give me more excuses than anyone not to spar and not to compete. It’s disgusting; you’ll fight to the death on the street, but you won’t fight lightly in a competition. Yeah, right. Gaining fighting experience with unfamiliar opponents must be a prerequisite for achieving rank in the martial arts, period.
Students must be given ample time to develop their skills. It appears that students test and are awarded rank almost immediately after learning their skills. This makes for men who can demonstrate, but not use, their martial arts. Solid skill is patiently built.
If your thing is money, find another way to make it without compromising the quality of the art you teach. That means do away with watered-down classes and art; and give only the best quality instruction you can provide.
Stop accepting students who cannot dedicate themselves to the training. We make it too easy for students to learn when the reality is that they really don’t want to learn. Too busy? No budget? Live too far? These guys will make a way to a woman they meet on the internet, but they won’t make a way for the art. Sounds like they really don’t want that art. Long distance learning is not learning.
We must have events to showcase our talent, i.e., tournaments. If we are superior to Karate and Kung Fu, then get your guys in front of Karate and Kung Fu and prove it. It won’t kill them. What are you afraid of?
Finally, we must respect skill and demonstrated knowledge. What is demonstrated knowledge, but skill? We rarely even ask to see a man’s skill (demonstrations of give and take and one steps are not demos of skill) before judging if he is good or not. We are so bad, we can’t even recognize a real fighter when we see one these days.
The Ninjitsu community is able to control quality because they don’t mass-market their art. If you want to learn, you must travel to learn with a master. They do not grant Black belts to kids. They do not teach by video. You don’t get to call yourself a master or expert just by writing articles about yourself. And where you find a man with a Black Belt in Ninjitsu, you find one with excellent skills. I would love to find this same thing in the Filipino Fighting Arts.
I would like to share with you my observation about the phrase “strive to be the best”.
When a martial artist says that he is striving to be “the best”, he is actually working for a goal he could never achieve. To be better than all other martial artists and fighters is an impossible endeavor, and one he would never be able to prove that he has achieved. No matter who you beat, and who you think has not beaten you yet, the man who will defeat you is always out there. I remember a saying that the moment a man says he cannot be beaten, he will soon meet the man who can and will. So in that case, the fighter should be humble but confident, lest he hasten the wait to finally meet him.
This is not to say that the martial artist shouldn’t try to beat opponents, however. Opponents, to the fighter, are not the test of whether you have perfected your art–but the tools that you use to determine if you have perfected your art. We try to find better and better opponents to cross sticks and cross hands with, and regardless of the outcome we should take that experience back into the gym to refine and retool our arts. Win or lose, we can get better and improve, we can become more efficient and more perfect. We can become stronger and faster. We can califbrate our timing to near-perfection (it can always get better). We can come up with better ways to use our techniques, or create new techniques, or find more efficient ways to apply them. Opponents, not training partners or friends, are the surprise quizzes we take to find out what progress we have made. Every criticism I have ever had of the FMA man stems from the fact that most FMA men prefer to surround himself with training partners and friends, rather than opponents. In such case, they will never approach any place close to perfection with their art. And they also happen to be the first men to strap on the title of “Grand master” or whatever.
Perfection, my friends, is a level that the best martial artists and fighters NEVER see. And those who are in constant pursuit of perfection are the ones that most of his peers believe have achieved that level.
Perfection will never be grasped by adding to one’s repertoire also. You cannot perfect a mish-mash of arts. This is why the men we know who are the best we have seen usually only have had a few masters, if more than one. Rarely, we will see a man who has studied many arts and actually form the opinion that this guy is one of the best we have seen. The men with the most arts under their belts, in my experience, have had the worst skills. Likewise, the men I have met that have the highest levels of Black belt, the loftiest titles, have also been the lousiest fighters (or not a fighter at all) I have seen. Few people you will meet will be as honest as I am being with you right now.
Perfection is an ever-evasive plateau the martial artist will spend his life in pursuit of, and only what one stops chasing, will he have time to self-promote and Faceturbate with all these degrees and fan clubs and martial groupies. Trust me on this one. The best fighters you will find don’t have time to do PR.
So when you hear of being “the best”, what the real martial artist is really trying to say is “being MY best”; we are in competition with ourselves, with our old achievements, with the memories of what we once were. And this is why you find men like Bernard Hopkins trying to stay in the ring too long, and why some fighters seem to keep at it way past their prime. They are not afraid of losing. They are not afraid of poverty. They are not afraid of failure because they understand that in order to elevate to the next level of their pursuit of perfection, the martial artist must exhaust his last breath to find out more about his art. The martial artist who pursues perfection is always struggling to develop his art further, he trains until his body won’t allow more progress, and then he fights to find students who can continue to train and test the art when he can no longer do it himself. This is a never ending process you will never retire from. The goal is not to get more students, but to get better students. Not to add more arts to one’s knowledge base, but to know the arts in one’s knowledge base more. I hope you understand what I mean.
I have a list of “to-dos” that seem to never get done. Right now, I am heading to the school to work on a Mook Jong (wooden dummy) I started on in October. There are sets of techniques for the Mook Jong I learned from three different masters I had been wanting to consolidate since the 80s, but never really started working on until last summer–and that isn’t even done yet. Then there are the books I have half-written throughout my house, a few old instructor-friends who are waiting for me to organize a periodic “fight-night” just for us. Oh, then the guys at the gym are asking when the next “Fight Night” for them will be…
Last night, I recalled something Boggs Lao once told me, “Practice every day, you will be one step more to Mastery. Miss a practice, and you lose ten steps.”
Those who know me, know that I teach by maxim–and I either demonstrate on the student to make the point clear or I point to actual instances those rules are broken or upheld. All of this helps cement understanding in the student, and no teacher should teach something he is incapable of doing or pulling off in real time. (That’s a saying too, by the way)
Hey, what can I say? I hang out with old Masters!
So one of the book ideas I had is a book of these sayings–which is temporarily scrapped as I realize that most martial artists only like shiny things that adorn uniforms, walls or website bios. Although there are many who enjoy this blog, I am constantly asked for videos and clips they can watch. But you know me; we will do nothing of the sort! I have, however, recorded some DVD but only students and good friends will ever see them. So, my new book will be a techniques book, complete with pictures for you visual types. That books, which I actually thought would represent some of my best work, is titled “Ten Rules of Fighting for the Serious Martial Artist”. I would like to share the 10 rules with very little explanation. If you want to learn them in detail, well… you know what to do.
Ten Rules of Fighting
Learn to use simultaneous block/check/trap and attack. It’s a little more complicated than what most of you know as simultaneous “__-and-counter”. The main thing here is learn to use, not simultaneous… The martial artist spends too much time learning to *demonstrate* technique, and not enough time learning to USE their techniques. I can’t count how many martial artists who know these techniques–many Wing Chun and FMA guys come to mind here–but can’t use them when they fight. The simultaneous clear-and-attack technique is a very powerful, difficult to stop technique. But in order to have dominating skill, you must learn to use it.
Feet are the horse, hands are the arrows. This is a Chinese saying that comes from my Jow Ga master, Chin Yuk Din. Although we kick more in Jow Ga than many other Southern styles, our specialty with the feet is to outrun the opponent; we can catch running opponent and use his lack of stability to finish him. In my school, the first thing we do is develop strong legs and agility in the feet. The job of the hands, however, is to penetrate the opponent’s defenses are sharply, quickly and accurately as a shower of arrows. Hopefully this visual will explain it better than I can.
Steal the breath. This is also a Chinese saying, however, I only stole the title. When I mention “steal the breath” I am referring to the Kuntaw philosophy of striking the throat and the breast bone. This is an advanced technique whereby you observe the breathing pattern of a fatigued opponent and strike him with full force when he has just completed his exhale. I have used this technique in “friendly” sparring with superior opponents who were winded and I needed to level the playing field. It is difficult to accomplish, but when you figure it out is a miracle-worker. This is all I will say about this technique.
The best time that is ideal for attack: When the opponent is not ready and you are. So self-explanatory I should stop here. But for those of you who can’t picture it, I am referring to having your figure on the trigger. If you or your opponent is at rest and not occupied, you and he are ready to attack. When doing anything else: moving the hands, blocking, striking, kicking, readjusting one’s clothing or stands, repositioning… you are not. Make sure you are always ready and he is never ready. Most of the time you are fighting, you should be searching for this moment.
Strikes at an opponent should be like the links of a chain. Any gap in your attack is like a broken link in a chain. By keeping your attacks linked together on one rush, your opponent will not have an opportunity to launch his own attack. You should tie him up with his own defense, and by the time he is able to untie himself–you are out of range.
Every technique has a counter. When studying a technique, you should learn what counters are most likely as well as possible. Then along with your practice of that technique, you should practice the counter to the counter of that technique. Doing this will give you the:
Iron Defense, Loud Attack. The fighter must have a set of defenses like an iron wall–not only will the opponent be unable to pierce the wall, it would be injurious to try. Each time he attacks, make him pay for it. The attack should be as easy to escape as one can escape the loudness of thunder. One of my criticisms of “self-defense”-oriented martial arts is the reliance on defense as a means to end combat, rather than building a set of attacking skills that will shut down the opponent. Defense techniques to these folks is almost always practiced softly, and only a few have times when they practice under pressure. If you’re going to develop defense, make it impenetrable.
Hit with the hips and shoulders, not the limbs. We should develop our strength in the arms and legs. However, we do not want to rely on the limbs for power. Learn to use the hips and shoulders when punching and kicking, and you will increase your output threefold. (Note: It is more complicated than shoulders=punching, hips=kicking. Try utilizing the shoulders for kicking and the hips for punching!)
Enter with boldness. This has as much to do with mentality and training as it does with execution. One of the most dangerous mistakes a fighter can make is to hesitate. If you don’t attack or counter with 100% commitment, you give your opponent the opportunity to stop you. Even if you are not utilizing a full-power attack, you must be at 100% with something: power, distance, speed… Now, anything less than a well-trained or experienced and confident fighter will be unable to do this. Cultivate your fighters into the kind of fighter who can enter with boldness; they will never fail.
When the arms touch, you can fight better blind, than the seeing opponent. If you are not familiar with sticky hands, you may not be able to understand this rule. When the arms touch, you should be able to sense the opponents’ next move through the arm or hand that is touching you. Often, fighters make moves–not by intention, but by happenstance–and the aware fighter will know it before that fighter even realizes it. What I mean is that many opponents rarely plan their next move. They hit with whatever feels natural, based on where their hands and feet are placed, where their balance is, where the opponent is as what he is doing, and where the opponent’s hands and feet are. If you have developed the heightened awareness of TRUE sensitivity (not the stuff done on youtube and DVD), your opponent’s intentions will be transmit through his hand/arm–and you will know before he even realizes what’s going on.
Whew! 1,360 words! We will stop here, and who knows? Maybe in the future I will actually write the book to fully teach these rules. If you like this or any other articles, please check out the “Offerings” page off the main page and check out my books! Thanks for visiting my blog.
I am in Washington, DC., my old stomping grounds, and visited an old friend who has a successful school in town recently. He started with a Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do/Moo Duk Kwon at a well-known local school while we were still teens, and today he boasts of more than 20 belts in various styles. I will refer to this brother as “JC” so that we won’t use his name, as my article won’t be a flattering one.
Among his instructorships is one in Wing Chun Kung Fu, which he received in a week. I am very familiar with the organization that awarded him permission to teach WC because that master is a distant relative of mine. In fact, I often show his advertisement to visitors to my school to illustrate how low the martial arts industry has gotten. I scanned the wall of his dojo, hoping to find a certificate in JKD/Kali or Eskrima so that I could bait him into a conversation about it. As an old friend, I never pass up an opportunity to educate… um, excuse me–rescue–those I truly care about.
Okay, I do it to almost anyone. But seriously, sometimes I really think I would be wasting my time with some folks. With my friends, however, I couldn’t care less about offending them and will speak my mind.
Thank God he does not teach the FMAs, although he did hit me up for a written curriculum that he could “follow along” to start a “sticks and knives” class. Conversation followed. Then he attempted to change the subject by asking me about the difference between Jow Ga’s sticky hands and Wing Chun’s sticky hands. (By the way, did I mention that I have also studied Wing Chun? Yes, one of my favorite cousins is a Wing Chun Sifu too) We ended up crossing hands, and I had to give my good friend a lesson in Chi Sao. This isn’t fun, and bottom line, he should have beaten me as my total amount of instruction in Chi Sao (most of which came from white eyebrow, not wc) about 7 days of 6 to 8 hours of hands-on instruction. I am no expert in Chi Sao–and apparently neither is my friend. Sadly, my learning in just Chi Sao is more than his total amount of learning from the whole system of Wing Chun. Bottom line again: He shouldn’t teach Wing Chun.
And he doesn’t. Actually, I believe my friend knows that he is no expert in these arts, so he lumps all of his martial arts offerings into one class appropriately labelled “Martial Arts”. He offers Yoga, After School Karate, tumbling, XMA, Aerobics, cross-fit style exercise, “kickboxing” (my friend is actually a good fighter), and a few other labels. I noticed, however, nowhere does he mention his lineage–and he comes from a very strong, Korean lineage–or his accomplishments. What he does best, he doesn’t teach. When I looked at what he’s pursued, I see that the dates correspond with the latest trends in the martial arts: Ninjitsu in the 80s, Kenpo in the 90s, BJJ in the 90s, Wing Chun in the Y2K, Israeli martial arts most recently, a generic “close quarters defense” certificate lined in camoflauge… I’m sure you’ve seen this before.
JC is in great shape, by the way. He looks better now in his 40s than we did 20 years ago, when I was hanging out with him. Yet in my opinion, he was probably a better fighter in those days than he is now–not due to age, but because back then, he only knew a few styles. Last I remembed, he had three main arts he did. Moo Duk Kwon (we were classmates) is a hard Korean style similar to Japanese Shotokan. He also dabbled in Judo and too part in a few open mats. And around our early 20s, he was learning “ninjitsu” from a Shorin Ryu expert whose teaching was very similar to our MDK teacher. I say he was better then because he only had a few arts that he was doing.
Many martial artists today are chasing so many different, unrelated arts that they know lots of stuff but they don’t do any of that “stuff” well. I call this “skill dilution”. (Actually I ripped that term off from Striking Thoughts’ page) The thing about learning everything under the sun is this: there is nothing wrong with learning a bunch of stuff, as long as you take the time to fully develop that stuff to proficiency. The question is, what do you consider “proficiency”? Well, as a student, proficiency at a minimum is the ability to use it in a fight. For a teacher, however, proficiency at a minimum is expertise–the ability to isolate that skill and use it against many opponents and to be able to dominate with that skill. Martial artists today are just satisfied with being able to demonstrate a skill and consider that ability to demonstrate the skill as “qualified to teach”.
Well, if my homeboy can’t whup me with a skill I had only about 40 hours of instruction in but he is certified to teach… he ain’t qualified to teach that skill. And in case you were wondering, yes, I did tell him. Had he opened his school here in Sacramento, he would have to deal with some very good Wing Chunners who might want to see how good he is at that art. Yes he is my homie. But then, some of these WC experts in town are my homies too. I can help you out with maybe two or three of them, homie… Fortunately there are no WC schools in DC that I know of.
This problem in the art is more widespread than you may know. Take any ten schools out the phone book in any city, I guarantee at least half of the teachers you find over the age of 30 will boast of expertise in at least 4 styles. Now ask around for who the best teachers are, and I am sure they will most likely recommend teachers who only teach one or two styles. This doesn’t mean he has only learned two or three arts; most of us have sowed our oats and picked up a few things or two (or three) along our journeys. The only difference is that we know what we are experts in and will not misrepresent ourselves to be experts in more than what we really know. Some people are in such a race to know and teach the next art, that the dilute their ability in arts they should be focusing on in the effort to skim the surface of a few other arts. Yes, they water down what may be excellent knowledge and skill, by failing to develop their proficiency in favor of stuff they know very little about. In my art of Jow Ga, we offer over 40 forms and weapons. Ask any of my students from my Advanced class, and they will tell you–I only claim full proficiency in five of those forms. And I practice this art full time, and have been practicing, for 21 years. I also happen to have permission to teach the arts of five Masters, but take a look at my website; I only offer the systems of two of them. These are the arts I do best, and the only way I will achieve the higher levels of skill (I am still in pursuit of those levels, by the way) is to focus on just two of them.
My old childhood friend is running a day care center because he has put the art he does best on the shelf while chasing side hustles that have not brought him the results he thought he’d get.
Here’s an afterthought: Many MMA fighters do the same. Rather than learn to adapt what they do best to the ring, they dabble in a bunch of stuff that they only do halfway decent–and lose to the guys who have learned to maximize their Hedgehog. More on this later…
Look for upcoming articles to be published in Spanish. I have my reason for doing so, but I want to surprise you with it. I have a few articles that will first be translated into spanish, and then eventually we will be publishing our articles simultaneously in English and Spanish.
Hint: My next book is already done and will be sent to Amazon. But the one after this will be a techniques book. You’ve asked to “see” my method… I resisted the urge to produce videos and books, but my readers win this one. I have a co-writer, a photographer, and we will get started on this one soon. The only catch is, you won’t be able to read it in English…. (more on this later) And you never know; I’ve been flirting with the idea of producing a DVD. We’ve made a few cheap attempts and perhaps this book will be released with an accompanying DVD. Or perhaps not….
So if you know anyone living south of the border who is interested in the martial arts–any style, not just FMAs–send em on over. The first article will be up within a week.
But you know me, I’m a “hands-on” kinda guy, and we shut down that argument real quick. But guess what, he is still teaching that garbage in his classes! The bottom line is that Sinawali–the way they are practiced–do nothing for fighting ability. The best fighters in the Philippines do not train them for their fighting ability. Beginners do not need them to learn how to hit or defend. They don’t even do a good job developing forearm, wrist, and hand strength like plain old striking practice does! They don’t “translate” well to empty hand. And if you ever tried to use those techniques against a guy determined to knock your head off your shoulders, well, he’s going to knock your head off your shoulders! The way most of you are taught to practice them, the distance is wrong (sticks usually meet in the middle of you and your opponent, so the distance is unrealistic), you don’t practice with any amount of power (striking power, that is), and once you “get” the rhythm down, it is no longer beneficial for you to practice it other than just having more coordination to do it faster or ad lib your drills. The only benefit I see is that it kills time during class when you don’t have much practical shit to teach. Oh, and some people like to decorate their school with frayed up sticks and the smell of burning rattan… Makes you guys look like you’ve been kicking some ass in there.
