Is Filipino the best?

Marc,
Another question, what does the long pony tail signify? I noticed that you and your partner in the video wore real long ponytails with ties throughout the tail.

Sorry guys to interupt your great discussion with this question, each of you have a lot of good stuff to say, there is really nothing I can add, carry on.
 
HI Donna!

Well, I don't know about the fashion statement of pony tails. Are they passe?

But I do want to comment that Mr. Mc Young's videos and books, compared to other authors (which I'm too much of a gentleman to identify by name, of course) are, IMHO the difference between reading what a veteran from a dozen wars who has come back decorated & alive has to say about fighting, as opposed to what a bunch of Boy Scouts have to say.

Mind you since I've only been attacked (threatened?) by a knife once, I consider myself in the Boy Scout category; so with that caveat, a couple of observations:

Mr. Mc Young's point that what passess for Kali or knife training will "get you raped in prison" is well taken. I've heard some dumb things advocated on vids and books. Believe it or not, "He looked like he was going to harm me" is not a great defense, nor is maiming the opponent, as opposed to killing him a viable argument before a jury as to what a nice guy you are and how they should give you a medal for your "restraint"--Don't laugh, I've heard more ludicrous remarks.

As Mr. Mc Young points out: "The only time you are justified in using a knife on somebody is if you are in immediate threat of death or grave bodily injury"--No S%%T! It ain't pepper spray, folks.

As to the "That is if it (what passes for knife training and Kali in the U.S.)doesn't get you killed by an armed opponent."

I speculate that it may have something to do with:

1. We don't live in a society where most of us wear knives in sheaths outside our belts nor is impromptu dueling the norm, and training as if this were the case (as opposed to the "ambush" scenario) is not very realistic.

2. Styles tend to implode upon themselves, getting too sophisticated for their own good--
How many of us spend time training how to counter a counter to a counter?
To 'twirl' and switch from saber to reverse in the heat of a battle?
To strip/disarm barehanded the flat or spine of a speeding blade (or more miraculously the handle).etc,etc.

However, these are only my speculations and, like Donna, I would love to hear more from Mr.McYoung himself--even if bruises some of our egos...

BTW, Marc, are you planning another vid or book incorporating more of your Silat training?

 
I think what you are seeing is the view of different people with regard to the FMA's and blade arts in general...the relationship between studying the entire spectrum of the art with all of its' intricate movements, and the pragmatic, practical side of the arts we discuss.

If you know how to strip using the flat of the blade, fine. Snakes, vines, strips, you should know the basic mechanics of because in the split second in close quarters, you may need that and you can blow a knife or club out of someone's hand. The idea that you have to drill that several times a week is a matter of personal opinion.

Counter for counter, and a counter for the counter to the counter...
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Because knives can damage you in so many ways, so fast and from so many different angles, it is good to know what could possibly happen in a fight. This is a Chess Match where you are thinking one, two, three steps ahead of the attacker. If you have the time to do it, many times you will not.

My ideas on sparring are not that popular with most folks, I think it is of limited value and it depends solely on having a serious training partner and being honest with each other. Again, it is a tool and not the whole picture.

Drills? WOW! I could really piss some people off now.
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The Drill is about response a series of "questions" and "answers" that make phrases, how is that for an oversimplification?

In a Drill, you are training for an autonomic response. Muscle memory, if you will...what happens when Biker John or Joe Rockhead does something completely outside of that drill after segueing with something else? You have your body programmed to respond a certain way...and it will respond in that fashion if you have drilled over and over and over. If you are about to be in a car accident, you will take whatever action appears to have merit in the moment, and by taking that evasive action, thinking ahead, you might run into something else.

Self-Defense, in this country, in the year 2000, is a great deal different than what happened in the Philipines. Cultures, legal system, clothing, obstacles, all sorts of things come into play. Defending yourself with a knife is not duelling, there is a difference between knife fighting and fighting with a knife.

If someone blows the drill and blasts your center line, you have to be able to combat that.

Often times, when we play with other people, that is what we are doing, it degenerates into a game. Is that game deadly? Sure, but is it the answer to everything? No.

You the Kali Student are playing checkers...what happens when the Dude on the street that is a nothing decides to use a knife like a Knight? You follow me? Or are the analogies too stupid or simple?

Wouldn't you be pissed if you were playing 5-Card Draw Poker and someone called "Crazy-8's" on your ass? Wouldn't that suck?

Think of fighting with a knife, using it to defend yourself like driving a car.

Gear shift, the draw.

Gas, "get the hell out of the way" footwork.

Brakes are the checks and stopping of things.

The wheel is guiding your car through whatever obstacles confront you, a knife through someone's sphere of defense. Slashing, thrusting, poking, passing, pommel hits, ripping, scaling, filleting, etc.

The mirrors, you should be checking every few seconds, your awareness...

Almost everything else is superfluous. This is America, what are the chances on you running into a fellow Kalista that wants your wallet?

If your primary interest is learning the art, that is perfectly fine.

If your primary goal is learning how to defend yourself, instead of learning 3 disarms to every move and 3 counters to every one of those and 3 counters to the counters of every move. Go learn about firearms, you are surrounded by them.
 
Originally posted by Donna Barnas:
Marc,
Another question, what does the long pony tail signify? I noticed that you and your partner in the video wore real long ponytails with ties throughout the tail.

Sorry guys to interupt your great discussion with this question, each of you have a lot of good stuff to say, there is really nothing I can add, carry on.
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Hi,

I would be the other guy on Marc's knife Videos (the tall quiet one). Marc suggested that there might be some interesting stuff on this group of forums, so I dropped in to check them out and found your question.

To answer your question about our pony tails;
It is either that we are deeply connected to the Native tradition of wearing an enticing scalplock so that a lot of people will try to take it, thus giving one many opportunities to "count coup" on enemies. Or, we are slaves to fashion, I forget which.
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Why in the world would you think a stick disarm is a knife disarm I dont care what anybody says a stick disarm is a stick disarm Not a knife.
 
Edges,

I don't know if you were referring to me as you did not say...but I looked back at my post and found a flaw in me firing that off. I was running the disarms together, working the flat of the blade and then running to vines, etc., and that, as you pointed out, is wrong. A lot of the time, if you perform a stick disarm against a blade, you would cut your own armpit, etc., there is a difference that I did not point out.

But I still stand behind the learning an art vs. self-defense analogy.
 
Thank you for the warm welcome Donna,

You asked

Originally posted by Donna Barnas:

BTW, there was a thread a while back concerning Pencak Silat knife work. Can you tell us how it differs or is it very much the same?
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Well, in my experience there are of course certain similarities, both Silat and the FMA have a lot of the same antecedents. That being said I do find some important differences between the two families.

Also please understand that I have the highest respect for the FMA and do not mean to detract from them in any way by my observations.

There are a couple of things that stand out in my mind as different. The first is that I feel that the FMA as I have seen them practiced here in the states focus more on dueling than on defending from a knife attack (or attacking effectively with a knife). What I have mostly seen in FMA circles is two folks squaring off, knives in hand and then engaging. This can be anything from trading a bunch of techniques to a dancelike game of tag to a full out Dog Brothers style knock the snot out of each other match.

Now I have nothing against this sort of practice. It can be both very instructive and a whole lot of fun, but it bears the same resemblance to a knife fight that a boxing match does to a mugging.

Silat knife, at least as I teach it works a bit differently. We start training with Jurus, which are short "forms". The jurus do not so much contain technique as they are the "meta-movements" from which a great number of techniques can be derived. When the Jurus have been worked long enough by the student that they have entered into muscle memory then we start working defenses. We do this with the defender starting with a knife that is sheathed or otherwise out of the way. We work with attacks that come in from any number of angles including from behind until the student can defend, deploy his or her knife and counter successfully. Then we study the attack. I can't emphasize enough the need to be able to deploy ones weapon quickly and effectively in a combat situation, and this aspect of knife fighting seems to me to often be neglected.

A very kewl practice I picked up from Bob Orlando (who is a top notch player) is when you buy a knife, especially a folder, buy two identical ones and take the edge and point off one of them and paint its handle white. Use that one in practice so that you will know the balance and characteristics of your carry knife intimately.

Another area that I see a difference is in focus. While the FMA often promote the idea of "defanging the snake" Silat's focus is a bit more direct. I liken it to the tactics of the mongoose. When a mongoose fights a cobra it does not try to remove the snake's fangs. Its every action is directed to one goal, to deliver the bite that will stop the snake. That is more like Silat.

I hope that this sheds a little light on the subject, bear in mind though that mine is just one perspective.

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I like the idea of a practice & carry version of the same blade. That's one reason I use a cheaper factory model (BM Ascent) at my level - plus I wouldn't mind losing it, for whatever reason.

The whole "cut to stop" concept does seem very in line with american legal ideas. But maybe at a different level - some wouldn't immediately stop from even a successful "defang" but would from a gutting. I wonder how history plays into this - I never heard stories of Indonesian "chicken fights" and the like, like I have from FMA.
 
I guess the question is are we training the limb destructions/guntings as fight stoppers or a way to way to gain entry on our attacker.

Richard, can you give some examples to illustrate the directness of your Silat knife?

Thanks.

Dave
 
Richard, thanks for coming.
The hairstyle question has plagued the forums for awhile now. (Yes, I've lurked that long.)
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Do you feel that the Kerambit knife is practical or perhaps overrated?
 
Originally posted by Dave Fulton:
I guess the question is are we training the limb destructions/guntings as fight stoppers or a way to way to gain entry on our attacker.

Richard, can you give some examples to illustrate the directness of your Silat knife?

Thanks.

Dave
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Hi Dave,

Another question might be how much time do you spend in doing destructions, locks, traps, binds, and whatnot. One of the tendencies I have seen in some of the FMA as practiced here in the States is to sort of get lost in the trapping/destruction phase of combat. While this may work OK against an inexperienced opponent or someone who has been conditioned to play the same kind of game, the problem is that in the whole flow of combat you can find yourself a beat behind your opponent. I find this to be more and more the case as players familiarize themselves with Filipino style trapping.

As for an example of what I mean, a couple of weeks ago I was sparing (dueling) with a friend who is an Arnis player. I fed him a straight thrust on a high outside line, he checked it and brought his off hand up to do a destruction to my triceps. In the half beat where he was trying to attack my arm I did a Perkuatan (which is a kind of reinforcement) and changed my angle of attack just a bit (a tweak of the hips) which allowed me to push through his trap and score a cut to his carotid while he was trying to disable my arm.

I hope this sheads a little light on what I am talking about.

Richard

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Power is always less effective than its possesors estimate it to
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Originally posted by Smoke:

Do you feel that the Kerambit knife is practical or perhaps overrated?
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Hi Smoke,

The Karambit can be an effective weapon if you have been well trained in its use. I don't think it is very practical as a carry knife in most of the world. It is way too specialized for every day use, requires a lot of practice to use well, and looks odd enough to freak out the civilians. On the other hand Karambit techniques adapt well to both carpet knife and some of the "hawksbill" folders that are on the market these days.

Richard


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Power is always less effective than its possesors estimate it to
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Thanks Richard.
The Kerambit can probably kick ass it's just that even with the poison, a lot of them are short 2" blade knives.

I figure there are some folks who will still try and slug it out literally with a guy with a kerambit just because it is a short blade.
 
Originally posted by Smoke:
Thanks Richard.
The Kerambit can probably kick ass it's just that even with the poison, a lot of them are short 2" blade knives.

I figure there are some folks who will still try and slug it out literally with a guy with a kerambit just because it is a short blade.
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Hi Smoke,

Of course, with the Karambit (as with any blade IMHO) your opponent should not know you have it until after you have cut him
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From a legal standpoint if the fellow is just trying to slug it out with you, in most places if you use any kind of knife on him you will most likely be looking at assault charges or worse.
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Richard



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Power is always less effective than its possessors estimate it to be
 
Originally posted by Donna Barnas:


Richard,

What style or style of Pencak do you train in, and or teach and does the style have a good deal of knifework. I haven't seen much of Pencak, I had someone show me stuff from Eddie Jaffrie, Herman Suwanda and Paul DeThoures. The style of FMA I currently train in borrows from Silat. But, mostly the open handed techniques. The FMA premise of using anything as a weapon, seems to be borrowed from Silat as well from what I can see. i.e. scarf as weapon.
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Hi Donna,

The school of Silat the both Marc and I practice is called Gerakan Suci (pronounce it gerAKan SuCHi). You can find out a little about it at http://www.gerakansuci.com

It does have, as one might imagine, a lot of blade work in its curriculum, as well as other traditional weapons (and a couple of contemporary ones like the kriptonite bike lock). All of the teachers of the style (about 8 in the States) are very careful about who we teach the blade aspects of the art to, that facet of the art is just too dangerous for everyday use.

We do have as does the FMA a focus on using anything that comes to hand as a weapon but I don't know if FMA got that from Silat or we both got it from the same root source.

Richard


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Power is always less effective than its possessors estimate it to be
 
Donna said
>Your principle of the knife attack being an >ambush has stuck with me.
>Please elaborate more of what you meant by "what passes for knife training and Kali >in the US will get you killed."

Okay, folks sorry about the delay getting back to you on this. I had no interest in dropping a bomb and disappearing into the cyber-woodwork, unfortunately, things got suddenly interesting around here (Like may you live in interesting times interesting.)

Anyway I hope that nobody misconstrued my statement as disparaging towards the FMA themselves. However, a significant point about what I meant, was covered by J-ringo in that the FMA were developed for deployment under specific cultural, enviromental and tactical conditions. Not that these don't work, but before you pick them up and transplant them wholesale into a different culture, you need to pay attention to a few itty-bity differences.

Unfortunately, a tendency to homoginze is endemic to the Americanized FMA. I have heard people say that by training with a stick you will know how to handle any weapon. Forgetting that while a stick is an "average" weapon, when it comes to weapons, the differences are just as significant as the similiarities. And you won't learn those differences unless you stop telling yourself you know something and really pick it up and work with it. You can see the same process being applied to knife use in the States. They assume the way you will be attacked in the Philippines will be the same way you will be attacked in the States. Or that you will be able to use your knife in NY in the same way as in Cebu. While the FMA were developed to work in the Phillipines, the differences on how a knife is used in the States are more critical than the similarities.

Basically the blade work I encountered out in the streets of Los Angeles had very little resemblence to what is taught as "knife fighting" in most schools and seminars. Not that I didn't occassionally see some of the stuff that is taught, but rather I saw all sorts of stuff other than what these "experts" were saying. These little moves would drop your - or the expert's - guts onto the floor just as effectively as what studmuffins was teaching. But when asked about defending against these moves by little ol' me, the teachers responses were, at best, feeble. Yet, these guys claimed to be teaching you what it took to survive on the streets? Whazzup wit dat?

In my life I have been in five different knife altercations where I faced a blade in the hands of someone definately not on my side. In fact, he was kind of dedicated to punching my ticket. Oddly enough, I was only able to get my own blade out in one of these. Other than that I was kind of otherwise occupied (read, keeping the guy from cutting my nuts off). What I did to survive bore little resemblence to what my training had suggested I do. Being a somewhat Curious George, I went out and asked other people who have surivived knife assaults and guess what? Their experience didn't resemble a duel. Amazingly enough, they didn't have time to draw their knives when attacked either. Hmmmmm.... I don't think it's just me.

However everyone of us recognized and admitted that the reason we are alive is because when attacked by a knife, our first reaction was to nuetralize the immediate threat...not to draw our knives and do all sorts of kewl and studly moves. Moves that are taught as integral to the art of knife fighting. But that having had someone try to play show and tell with my vital organs, I have serious doubt as to their effectiveness. They just wouldn't work against someone who has the slightest bit of experience on how to attack with a knife -- especially when it comes to you trapping and controlling the attacker's knife hand. Not that they wouldn't work if you were attacked under the dojo scenarios that you trained for. Unfortunately,I know about 30 different common street attacks that you would never have the chance to use those techniques against, because he wouldn't feed you his arm.

So assuming that you have managed not to get your guts cut out or your arms slashed to ribbons for trying these moves, and that you have managed to pull your knife out (remembering that the only time you are justified in using a knife is if you are in the middle of a life threatening assault) and you have followed your training. Gosh... all those ifs.

Well guess what folks, the training of most FMA blade work will not leave a wound pattern consistent with your claim of self-defense. Want to know what "Defanging the serpent" will look like in court? Defensive wounds (those wounds a person takes when they hold up their hands to defend themselves). Furthermore, it's not going to go over well with a jury that the so-called aggressor was sliced 14 times by you. (Hmmmm that looks like an assault to me). You're definately going to bone yourself if after you first slash you turn to face the guy to slash him again. Think the witnesses are going to tell the cops that you were defending yourself when they saw you whirl and slash the dude up some more? That isn't self-defense, that's active participation, if not out and out murder. Yet that is exactly what most training encourages. And that is the training you WILL follow under stress.

It seems funny that many people teaching "knife fighting" base much of what they teach as street defense on books and videos by me, Peyton, Don Pentacost and Sammy Franco. All of us whose knowledge about knife work in the USA comes not from training, but first-hand experience. Oddly enough, we don't act as if we have big red S's on our chests, we're scared spitless of blades because we know what they can do unless we stop the guy. We also have had to face the legal ramifications of "self-defense."

Them's just some of the reasons that you the students need to take anything a so-called knife fighting expert -- who bases his stuff in the FMA -- with a serious grain of salt.
Or keep it seperate in your head as MA training and not self-defense. It's not that the system doesn't work, it's just that without critical changes to adapt to YOUR environment, you will end up in deep kim chee.

Animal http://www.diac.com/~dgordon

 
Originally posted by Richard Dobson:
To answer your question about our pony tails;
It is either that we are deeply connected to the Native tradition of wearing an enticing scalplock so that a lot of people will try to take it, thus giving one many opportunities to "count coup" on enemies. Or, we are slaves to fashion, I forget which.
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Oh bull...back then the chicks dug the hair.
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