How much emphasis do you put on empty hands training compared to weapons training?
When you fight empty hands, do you usually stand in a right lead, as is normal when fighting with weapons, or do you take a more boxing like left lead stance?
Hello: I'm just an old geezer who practices Arnis in Washington state. I feel that it is fair to state the your hand to hand art comes from the way of the weapon. I don't know of any other way to develop hand speed, reflexes and eliminate the fear of any attack better than first learning the basic filipino stick flow drills. The styles of double o, abinico, palis palis, banda y banda and others all have thier weapon and hand to hand applications. In your response to right or left hand stance. Practice in Arnis will teach you to be ambidexterious. You should be able to fight well in a left or right forward stance and employ them as needed. In short the basic beginer in Arnis should reach, what I call an intermediate level in a rather short time compared to other arts. I would call this intermediate student as someone who can perform free flow sumbrada give & take single stick play with nothing other than instictive reaction. This takes years in more traditional art forms, but in FMA a hard working beginner should be fairly competent in about one year.
Thank you for your answer, but could you please elaborate on the right/left stance in empty hands? I know ambidexterity is a goal, but still one stance is usually prefered compared to the other. I myself favour the right stance, because that is the stance I use with a weapon. In my club, when we do filipino empty hand drills we also usually train with a right stance, but once we start punching at pads, the stance is changed to left.
well to give insight about the RRMA Sabakan(empty hand) we encourage you to fight in any stand but of course in the basic we taught our student in left lead as boxing does but since we use kali as our based we also used the right lead, we will ask them what is they prepared than force them to learn an awkward stance. In RRMA stance are more mobile and constantly moving but grounded meaning with balance. we trained in different method and situation, anyway real fight is not a sparring like training. it is quick and end the fight as soon as you can. so we trained them on either way but as myself, i also prefer the right lead stance in realtions to my weapons work and jkd concepts. but since PG Espera are more in a traditional based he moved wiht purpose without thinking which stance to use rather he blend on the movement of his opponent and response against his attack, he is more on instictive than prefering something. Pg Espera are not use to trained in the more commercial method, definitely he will trained in a traditional way maybe with some modern method but more on traditional blade based fighting method of Kali. good luck and till we meet here. I will not be with you on the training days, only on tuesday which is my day off. I work from 6 am to 7 pm sorry btu i will be there on every tuesday as my work permit me. by the way thanks for joining our group.
I learned this art as a left hander and the transition to right hand did not prove to be too much of a problem for me as I was rather slow to learn. Ambidexterity just comes in time. I would'nt worry about it too much, It just comes. I teach my few students the left / right stances while playing with double sticks, then dropping the sticks and working the single and double sinwalli forms from a boxing format. Think about 6 count double sinwalli "Heavan" (sticks up). Drop the sticks and you can have a cross body inside block (right hand), then and eye rake (following left hand)and an underhand pass with the right hand. These first three would be from a right foot forward stance. The following 4,5 & 6 strikes would be identical to the first 3 but in a left hand stance. You can play all sorts of games here with the many multitudes of Double stick or Espada Daga technique. These drills will develop ambidexterity. So much boxing is hidden in the sticks!
Sverre.
