Why pick up the stick?

Why practice Kali, Escirma, Arnis de Mano, Kuntao, Silat or their derivations? Why should I add weapons practice to what I practice? Whenever I am asked these questions, it is inevitable that it will lead to the real question: Are you just a stick fighter?
So let’s talk about it. Are those who practice Kali, Escrima, Arnis de Mano, Kuntao, Silat just stick fighters? The short answer is no. The long answer follows.

The beauty of practicing with weapons; sticks, blades, staff, etc. is that it introduces a new world to the practitioner. It introduces the real world, a world where people have easy access to weapons. Weapons’ training allows the student to accelerate their hand techniques performance and if taught by master it should also open a new vista of fighting scenarios.

Sticks, baseball bats, glass bottles, kitchen knives, steak knives, tightly held cell phones, you get the picture. If you haven’t trained with and against weapons you are deluding yourself. You will step from beneath the eves and be beaten by a world you had not prepared yourself for.

What is this new, real world I speak of? I speak of a world that all martial artists, all warriors, should be training for: A world where confrontations have no rules and occur more like close-quarter-combat then like something from “Westside Story.” Training with weapons and training in reaction to weapons is an imperative.

The training that we do with weapons gives our students respect and perspective for what can happen when a dull or sharp blade is in the hands of an incompetent brawler who is challenging a trained martial artist with no weapons experience. While the artist may be trained for combat, if they are not trained for the rush of chemicals that “dump” into the neuromuscular system and emotions that will pour into their minds they will be caught unawares for that moment of time when their life could be taken.

When your life is in danger you need to be able to call upon all your training in less then the blink of an eye. The live hand specifics training of SEACA Systema allows for just that and any good training system should.

Live hand specifics training allows you to transfer weapons training to unarmed combat without thinking. This training teaches the adept to treat the unarmed opponent’s hands as though they were blades (in the beginning) and eventually train against bladed assailants while unarmed and finally as a bladed combatant against another bladed combatant. (as training permits)

This training “burns” a neuromuscular pathway into the students’ system, that when moved to exhibit unarmed hand techniques allows the student to apply fast-hard pressure and fast-light pressure at will. These levels of speed, focus and applied pressure are difficult to attain without weapons training.
This training, this live hand specific training, should also help the trainee open him/herself up to the question: what can be used as a weapon?

With this new respect for weapons, a new paradigm should begin to take root; the student sees that they can be successful with a weapon, without a weapon, and against weapons. Once this stage is reached and they enter intermediate training, they start to see that there are practical weapons all around them, and will be able to see the environment itself as a weapon. They train and live in the in a new paradigm in which they find multiple answers to the question: what can be used as a weapon.
With this budding awareness of their environment they will start to spontaneously produce hand and kicking combinations that are effective on the “street.” They will also begin to develop an ability  to maneuver their opponents into corners, trees, or against a curb that was not in their assailant’s awareness.

The step, between seeing and utilizing the environment and other items as a weapon, is the difference between just punching and being able to punch and break bricks at will. Having this kind of dramatic shift answers the question, why pick up the stick.

Bahi has been a student of T’Chi Chun, Aikido and is a Maha Guro of SEACA Systema, the beauty way of Ka-ilat. The founder and chief instructor of SEACA Systema is Manuong “Ric” Rikanovivh Roman Gardea.