Do any of you here do real contact stick fighting?

Hell no. Those guys are nuts!

not for a while :P

Yes pretty regularly maybe once a month or at the least every other month. I like to go at it every now and then with some advanced guy's just wearing fencing masks and elbow, knee protectors with a light hand guard. Stick striking, kickings, punchings, trapping, disarms, takedowns and throws, grappling basically all out and pretty much anything goes.

Through the years I have had a few good welts.

YES! How great is this! I actually used to do more back in the day, but I'm getting back into it a lot more nowadays. I'm sure over the course of Spring we'll be heading to the parks to engage more often.

My assistant has trained with guro Crafty and I've spoken with him on a few occasions. Many folks aren't aware that they don't fight like that every day.

BrianRVanCise -

I hear ya about the welts, lol. My assistant has come in from time to time covered in them. Gotta love that rush. I'm hyped about doing more of this.

-John

Yes it definately is a rush! Your adrenaline will certainly flow!

like that old janx spirit?

We all know that old drinking song...

I hope Douglas Adams is some place *funny* in heaven. He sure was funny enough himself

It's been awhile, but I have occasionally, and I mean only every once and awhile even practiced with the sticks...and you do get whacked on the hands. Last time was several months back and only at a workshop...so no too intensive stuff...given my Master Felix Roiles in Southern California. The guy is really good.

Funny when you get a lot of people banging away on rattan sticks, you can actually smell it on the air.

Hi, just wanted to share some jogo do pau videos...
some free practice:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHBX7sZOY7o
you can join a jogo do pau group on youtube i created, hope i can make more videos.. http://www.youtube.com/group/jogodopau

and here lots of different examples of jogo do pau
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSDSsereOdg
this videos also shows full combat with armor, that now is not necessary due to new sticks that don't hurt much and you just need a helmet for full contact

i will talk a little about it(in my opinion and in my terrible english), what it is and what its not etc..

It is a stick to stick martial art based on efficiency and effectiveness. it is also a traditional portuguese martial art. The effectiveness and efficiency is not lost to the traditional here since it was used in duels and for self defense for many years and never lost that or suffered stylizations for modern application just to reach larger groups of people.
It uses a long wood stick (150cm) and more recently master Nuno Russo developed the technique for small stick (80cms).
It uses sticks as sticks, and not as swords, the strikes are strong but you don’t need to be strong yourself to do them, because it uses your body movement and rotation to deliver very fast strikes with few energy spend, instead of just arm strength.
As sticks dont cut as sword do and what with a sword could be lethal, with a stick might not do much... the strikes must be very strong to knock down an opponent, because a weak strike can look pathetic to someone that is just a little bit stronger than you, and could probably just slap you in the face if you strike weakly or timidly. That strike strength as I said comes from the speed and rotation of the body and not from arms strength making it very fluid. Also uses block bouncing(hard to explain here.. look at videos) to counter attack at high speed using the energy from one strike to the other with fluidity.

the blocks are a very important part here, they are very solid and defined, because without that, you cant effectively block a high speed attack and could only move back to not get hit. They also keep your hand protected, far away from the blocking area, since in sticks you dont have hand protections, so the posture for blocking must be really emphasized or else even in slow training you can easily be hit on the hands.

It avoids grappling, hand to hand combat, doesn't have hand to stick disarming techniques because it avoids close combat, and we practice distance a lot so in a real situation someone that tries to get close would easily be strike down before they get close. Also if someone moves the body too forward, we are trained to trust them before he can deliver an attack.
really.. sorry for the English, but hope you get an idea, cheers!