D&D make fun of LARPing??...I'm sure some of them do it themselves
thanks for the info
I find it extremely wierd, especially when they start to live the lives of their characters rather themselves...
Now imagine a person with weapons training LARPing...UNSTOPPABLE

It is cool - like civil war reenactments or samurai battles. But somehow I don't think many of them are into Kali silat. Speaking of which, what were we posting about again?

yes we'd best keep this on topic hadn't we.

Back to the stick fighting chaps!

Just as a general comment it is interesting to see so many similarities in all the different styles of stick fighting.

Mainly because there are only so many things you can do with a stick and a pair of hands and feet. They all end up looking similar but have different names for the techniques.

That brings sort of an interesting point to my attention about Kali (I call it all Kali for my own convenience) - the stick techniques don't vary that much in execution. Angles are angles, the wing/roof block is pretty universal - I think we're all aware of that. There is great range in combinations of course: modern arnis seems to utilize straightforward, beautifully simple techniques while say Inosanto Kali crams as many strikes into half a second as it can and can make your head spin. Both are equally effective. That being said, has anyone noticed any drastic differences in the FOOTWORK from system to system? I've noticed a lot of people who incorporate Kali into their "core art" often just adopt their respective styles footwork when stick fighting. Boxers tend to go left leg forward, wing chunners stand square - you get the idea. Are there any styles that utilize a very specific footwork? What are the advantages and disadvantages?

Excellent post!

Ok chaps lets get this discussion fired up!

well doesnt Kali have its own set of footwork itself? Basically stepping out to the sides, its pretty similar to southern mantis in my opinion in terms of footwork. But with my encounter with Modern Arnis they encorporated Karate into their empty hand system so their stance is alot lower than when they are striking with a stick (just from my experience from sparring the the Arnis guy). Stick they stand taller while empty hand they're lower.

And WC guys do stand very square ish. But from watching I find it very limiting in terms of the striking of the weapon . And also the stance seems to give the attacker lots of space to comin and strike with the stick. Or maybe it was just his inability to be more adaptful and skilled with the stick....thats probably it

Anyhow I believe that the footwork doesnt seem to change all that much because the stick is a projection of a persons arm. This idea seems to be pretty common across most martial arts out there. Therefore hand techniques would be similar thus the footwork remaining relatively the same as well.

Nice videos. NIce way to train like that. I miss the good old days. The only ones tougher in the training than the Dog Brothers are the guys from Sayoc. Really tough dudes. Hope I can get a chance to see or participate in of their gatherings.

I've heard about the Sayoc guys but I don't know how you get any tougher than "real contact".

I suppose you could do "real contact" knife fighting....



-John

Sayoc Kali got a really big profile boost when the american chief instructors got involved with training Benicio Del Toro and Tommy Lee Jones for the film 'The Hunted' (it was a sort of update on First Blood, but with loads of CQC instead of explosions). they took that exposure and ran with it; and i have to say that my initial investigation into filipino arts was inspired by the concepts portrayed in the movie. As it happened there was no Sayoc in my area, but we did have Doce Pares, so I went with that and it proved to be a good move. sayoc as a style of kali/escrima is not inherently 'tougher' than any other, indeed, much of the technique will be very similar to the many other family variations of FMA available, and will also be part and parcel of what the Dog Bro's do. The big difference is that the Dog Bro's encourage controlled full force work to help you seperate what is good in reality from what is good in theory.