Simple Kali

Maybe someone can help me out. In the past I have purchased both Janich's knife video and Keating's Drawpoint 1 (among others). And at long last I found a willing partner to train with! So some of the drills are actually starting to ingrain patterns of movement that might prove useful. I'd like to round things out a little bit more now though.

I'm looking for a tape(s) that will cover some Filipino stick and empty hand concepts. (Actually, I'm looking for a school, but I have little hope of finding one in the CT area.) Anyway, simplicity is the watchword here. Things like knees, elbows, stomps and sweeps. Preferably no more than five angles of attack, maybe some cadena de mano or other empty-hand flow drills.

Any particular style come to mind? Any tape recommendations? I was thinking Keating's Conceptual Gold or maybe Burton Richardson's Battlefield Kali? If anyone has seen either of these two videos, I'd appreciate any feedback you have about them.
 
S

Smoke

Joined
Oct 14, 1998
Messages
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Stickwise, the Dogbrothers series is hard to beat. I will say Battlefield Kali is a bit faster paced and Burton shows different hand techniques than he did in the Dogbrothers series.

Kadena De Mano, I'm biased and would recommend my teacher's tape Latosa Escrima Kadena De Mano. However, it's real conceptual and beginners might get confused as there isn't a lot of fancy drills.

Hoch Hochheim has a great set of vids out covering all of this as well.

The reviews for tapes can be found here
http://www.bladeforums.com/ubb/Forum35/HTML/000404.html



[This message has been edited by Smoke (edited 04-23-2001).]
 
Hock's Combat Arnis (now "Archipeligo Combatives") tapes are excellent. Each tape has mano-mano, daga, solo baston, doble baston, and espada y daga techniques on it. All the fluff has been left out, all that's left are the actual combat techniques and the drills and training to develop them.

Check 'em out at www.HocksCQC.com
 
You might try DeCuerdas escrima/eskrima. I read some years ago in an article on Angel Cabales that this was his first art, & that it had only 5 angles. The article also stated that when creating Serrada, Cabales added 7 more to cover the deficiencies of that art. I studied Serrada (ironically up to Angle 5). When reading Wiley's first book on it years later, I thought most of the higher angles were too esoteric for the street. Wiley now has a new book on Serrada that just came out--it looks a little more comprehensive than the first.

The only video I know of for this style is available at www.ninjutsu.com (sorry, no direct link available). Look under the "Master Van Donk" videos & then select "Eskrima." I've not seen this video so can't comment.

I know that Van Donk is something of a laughingstock within the Bujinkan but other than his own description of the video, know nothing of his FMA skills.
He does claim to be the inheritor of DeCuerdas--his teacher is now dead, making his claim all the harder to verify. Hope this helps.

[This message has been edited by eda-koppo (edited 04-28-2001).]
 
<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by eda-koppo:
You might try DeCuerdas escrima/eskrima. I read some years ago in an article on Angel Cabales that this was his first art, & that it had only 5 angles. The article also stated that when creating Serrada, Cabales added 7 more to cover the deficiencies of that art. I studied Serrada (ironically up to Angle 5).</font>
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll look into it. If DeCuerdas is really a stripped down predecessor of Serrada then you are talking one lean & mean system!

I don't know what my resistance is to learning too many angles & counters but I've always remembered a passage from Inosanto's book on Filippino martial arts. I believe he was quoting John Lacoste (sp?). To paraphrase, it went something like this. "I tell you true... I teach you (angle) 1 and 2, you never lose". That approach always seemed to make sense to me. You don't have to know a lot, you just have to know it well.
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