Oh yeah, and swords are more deadly, faster finishers and need less power application than sticks. (Please do not send me photos of giant, Filipino broadswords – I know they exist – I used the word “usually.”) But with the “roundness” of a stick, you lose the very vital, flat-edge-ness of the sword. Many of the machetes around the world are single edge, and the swords are not necessarily single edged, and can come in all kinds of interesting and elegant shapes, but FMA swords usually that not big and wide like…like say, European broadswords. In fact it might be a little taboo to have a designated handle on your FMA stick? We sometimes grimace a bit when we see an over-taped or customized baston handle, don’t we? While FMA swords have all kinds of admirable, customized grips. ![]() While the Filipino stick is usually just round with no designated end for an official handle. On the subject of the stick and sword handle – the sword handle can be round so to speak, but often very contoured and form-fighting for the hand. A stick is an impact weapon that strikes with the tip, the staff of it, and the handle. There ya go! But really, they swing different, weigh different and if you are limited to flat edges, one should really be applied differently. I guess for some I should introduce or remind folks the difference between a round stick and a flat sword/machete. The stick! (And by the way they did have dulled “training machetes” to use also, but the round stick caught on better. So, a sporting/betting alternative to the machete was born. But there was a safer way to do this! And they used the round stick instead, which Remy Presas did for money also. Remy Presas would tell me stories of his youth and how he watched men with crop machetes fight and die for sport and money on the Negros. In Mexico I am told, the expression is, “you will be killed by the $5 knife.” In the Philippines, or say, in Mexico and just about any farming culture locations anywhere really, if you are to be killed with an edged weapon, it will probably be a nasty old, rusty farm tool. Plenty of sharp knives and sharp farm tools. ![]() I’ve been to the Philippines several times, in some big cities and out in the provinces like the Negros Islands and whether it be the municipal areas or the isolated jungles, no one is walking around with a rattan stick on their belts. This replacement causes the confusion.ĭo Filipinos carry sticks around? No. In most of these old and new systems, practitioners have replaced the “wooden” (rattan) stick for the machete, sword as a safer training device. And systems are being invented all the time. There are MANY Filipino systems, way more than you have heard of. Can’t grab? Shouldn’t grab? As a person doing Arnis/Kali/Escrima since 1986 as an obsession at first, and now as a curious hobby of sorts, let me sketch this out for you. A stick is a sword? A sword is a stick? Not really. A Filipino stylist should know about this sword/stick thing and be able to explain and articulate on the subject. The fact that this question continuously pops up, is reason alone to write about it. “But what we have here today is…just a stick.” ![]() ![]() As usual I write about things as they “come up.” And last weekend’s seminar was another example of the routine question I hear once in a while – “Hock, I study Escrima, and the instructor told me you can’t grab the other’s guy’s stick because it’s supposed to be a bolo.” (Bolo being FMA for the sword or machete) When it comes to the FMA stick, it’s kind of schizophrenic. The fundamental things in FMA, changed as time….goes….by…”įilipino stick training.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |