Monday, October 03, 2005

Using Competition so it does not ruin our Self-defense.

Using Competition so it does not ruin our Self-defense.

I went to the Cold Steel Challenge just the other weekend (9/24-25) with a couple of friends and had a really good time watching different MA schools compete in knife and sword fighting competitions put on by Cold Steel. This was the second year that CS put this on and the prizes were awesome for an amateur event: The IMPERIAL SERIES-Katana, Wakazashi, O Tanto from CS worth about $2500+.

But what I would like to think/write about is how this competing effected or can affect self-defense. We saw various styles of MA and some reenactment groups that act out medieval swordplay. Now the major MA groups there were of the FMA (Filipino MA), but other style were seen too: Kenpo, Kung-Fu, etc.

I saw people that just use their knife or sword like a bat, I saw people trading shots to get points & then I saw a few (very few) people that put their training & skill into practice.
The prizes were very nice, I would have wanted them myself and probably would have done what was needed to get the job done, but would that have helped my self-defense?

I learned by watching that competition that we must not give up good sound techniques just to win the next point or we might carry that “sport leakage”(Hock) into the streets where it will get us mimed or killed.

It just so happened that one of the few groups that use their skill consistently was a FMA called Atienza Kali (a sister system to Sayco Kali); which it turned out to be the instructors I would be seeing at a 5-hour seminar the following weekend.

The nice thing about these guys was no matter whom they fought they always played by their rules, which was not to trade hits or double kills. I saw blocks/deflections and then counters, I saw them going in for the 1st attack by slapping the opponents sword and then thrusting. They were just fun to watch. All of them might not have made it to the end, but by what I saw they were not going to let “sport leakage” creep in JUST to win the point. (Their top student won the sword competition)

That is all I was going to write and post, but got back from the Kali seminar and was impressed with what I learned; I had already seen these techniques applied on the competition floor appropriately. They taught us how to read the opponents movements better so that I could pick up the strikes easier and I know that drilling with these ideas in mind that I can apply this to stick, knife and hand strikes. All these ideas blend well with what I have learned and still learn at Hock’s seminars and just gives me “1 more bullet for my gun” (Hock).

Atienza Kali’s approach to blade fighting/training is keeping it as close to the chaos of combat as possible.


P.S. I was able to meet Tom Kier of Sayco Kali who is one of the people who helped choreograph/trained the FMA scenes in the movie the Hunted. It was fun talking to him about his work on that film.

Just My Thoughts. (JMT)

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