No Protection Stick Sparring

In the World of stick fighting the sects have gone a few different routes.

One of the most common is to put big helmets on and wear enough body armor to absorb a motorcycle crash impact.  Another is to run patterns and use foam sticks.  Both ideas breed false ideas about the fight.

Even the famed Dog Brothers wear gloves and a mask.  They try to hit each other as hard as they can–but certain realities are still avoided.  And that reality is the second you put a glove on you have changed the very nature of the task.

So who has kept the purity of the stick fighting reality?

Well in Cebu the Heyrosa clan of stick fighters still spars with no protection. They don’t’ use ironwood sticks or try to whack the person to death in sparring (they avoid hitting the head and major joints). Nonetheless, the one thing they do is to hit the hand (even a light hit with a stick generates a reality that is far removed form those wearing hockey gloves who participate in the Doce pares PTK type of stick sparring–which turns into nothing but a whack the mole on the head while ignoring that your hand would have been broken and you left helpless to any attack).

Wearing gloves is like using paintball guns instead of real guns–the safety and low risk creates illusions about battle and combat.  So does the idea that a fluid process can be approached from rehearsed patterns.  In the clip you will see–there are no patterns–the nature of the sparring is too fast–just as trying to do a kata against a K 1 fighter will leave you knocked the hell out, approaching this fluid sparring with the normal kali/arnis/eskrima patterns will leave you with busted up arms and hands. And that means you are dead in the street–in REAL COMBAT