# fighting and perfecting



## thekuntawman (Jan 21, 2002)

this post is for "arnisador" and hoping it can help out other people to.

in another topic i said that in the philippines most of the styles you can find there are not "complete" like the magazines and most people here in the us thing complete means. they usually do not do a lots of disarmings and millions of counters and things like that. in my own system, we do use the yantok at daga but not the way everyone else does, so usually i just say i dont teach it at all. still many styles does not even have sinawali either. of course everyone knows the 10 that the presases do, that is pretty mcuh standard, but many styles dont do them. even kids on the street know how to do it.

anyway to answer your question arnisador, i do not consider competition fighting to be "sport" even though it can be. fighters use the competition to give there skills a boost so we know how to take a hit, how to time the opponent attack, and how to adjust to the speed of a real fight. of course competition is not the streets, but as a law abideing practioner, we get whatever fighting experience we can. competitions fightting puts you inf front of many different body sizes, skills and faces and attitiudes. in a street fight you know nothing about your opponent and what he will do, so if you get more epxerience than the next guy you have the advantage.

what is common with the "fighting artists" ( not "martial" artists) is that they put more attention to the attackings instead of the counter. i know, "complete" styles have more counters than anything, but most of the focus on fighting styles is on ways to attack. 

when i was training at home to prepare for a visit to the philippines when i was 18 years old, my grandfather made me practice with the same three and five hits combinations hundreds of times to get ready for my cousins who i didnt see in seven years. most of my friends who participated in NARAPHIL competition, do not spend ther times with disarmings and give and take. we make a few hit combos (using ernesto presas 1-6, try this one, 5-6-3-2) and do them so many times your opponent cannot counter them. if you focus on hit combinations you cant go wrong.


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## thekuntawman (Jan 21, 2002)

sorry i am taking such a long time to make my statement.

anyway, in order to perfect a specialty, you have to decide what you will sacrifice. if a guy says he wants the best hands in the world, he will spend little time on feet and weapons and grappling. but dont stop there, you also train your hands to fight against grapplers and kickers and armed men. when you can beat them all, you really have the best hands in the world.

fighting is not like science, where this rule beats that rule every time. there is so many other things that can determine who can whip who. just because a man does not know how to use a knife it does not mean he cant beat a man holding a knife with his stick. but that is only if he is good with his stick and knows how to beat the knife. but if the stick fighter tries to beat the knife fighter, who is a specialty of knives yet the stickfighter is not, he is in trouble. if you want to be the best at what you do, you have to do your specialty ALL THE TIME. so does that mean you can get beat doing someone else's fight? yes, that is why you have to be better at your speciatly than he is at his.

so you say your specialty is stick fighting, than specialize in the stick and who cares if you dont know the lubid and the karit. either you will be a jack-of-all-trade (and okay or good at them) or you will be a true master and expert at a few. but at least you can walk the street and know that no one can take you.

this is a true master of an art, not someone who knows a little of this and a little of that, and there is only one way to determine who is the real master.


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## arnisador (Jan 21, 2002)

> _Originally posted by thekuntawman _
> *this post is for "arnisador" and hoping it can help out other people to.*



Thanks! When I took that name I had no idea that there'd be so many FMA practitioners on the board and it would identigy my art. Now that there are so many I think I should have made it more specific!



> *
> in my own system, we do use the yantok at daga but not the way everyone else does*



Could you expand on that? I also note you have kuntaw in your name--would you say something about kuntaw please?

I found your comments very interesting and especially the distinction between "fighting artists" and "martial" artists and the emphasis on the fact that the best defense is often a good offense. I am inclined to agree based on my experience with stick sparring--it's about attacking. I find it interesting that you emphasize the combinations of attacks chosen essentially from the 12 angles. There's so much more we practice but at some level it all comes down to hitting somebody with a stick.

Thanks, I've enjoyed seeing this reality injected into the discussion. The disarms are fun and intellectually interesting due to their intricacy but I've never thought that they'd be effective.


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## IFAJKD (Jan 22, 2002)

I came accross this site and have some thoughts about what I've read so far. If you stay within one system are you not limiting yourself to the ranges of that system. My experience has been that amny ranges can occur within the same fight. What happens if a said person closes and you are on the ground, or someone manages to box away while you want to kick, or you want to box but end up being trapped and clinched with elbows, headbutts and knees flying. ? 
The concept of "beating anyone" because you have "mastered" your specific system, as mentioned in one of these posts has never held true. 
Also because you do train in several stratiegic weapons such as single stick, double stick and knife as well as all ranges of combat does not mean that you have neglected an area or have to risk becoming only marginally good at any of them. 
Truly the best fighters I have witnessed haained in many systems and all ranges. I admit that I may not fully understand the nature of the issue of this post but I wanted to jot down my first thoughts.


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## thekuntawman (Jan 22, 2002)

modern/reality/non-traditional people like to put down the word "master" unless bruce lees name is put after the word. but when i use the word master, i am talking about someone who knows how to use his art against all different kinds of fighters. to fight a grappler means you need to know his fighting technique? will a boxer ever have a chance to beat a wrestler if the boxer uses wrestling technqiues? if two people use the same technique against each other, its the one with more experience at it that got the upper hand. the boxer will do better by learning how to use what he does best against other kinds of fighters.

what you chose to study is up to what is your goal. can a guy be a great fighter if he cross train for nhb of course. but he is not wasting his time learning kata, wrist locks, jump kicks and all other things he will not use. so if a fighter wants to learn every kind of fighting style out there just to be familiar with it thats okay. but i chose to focus on a few techniques that i want to perfect better than anyone else. do i know how to roll? yes. do i know espada at daga and sinawali? yes. but i dont train those things because they are not my specialty and i dont feel like i need them.


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## Cthulhu (Jan 22, 2002)

> _Originally posted by thekuntawman _
> *
> what you chose to study is up to what is your goal. can a guy be a great fighter if he cross train for nhb of course. but he is not wasting his time learning kata, wrist locks, jump kicks and all other things he will not use. so if a fighter wants to learn every kind of fighting style out there just to be familiar with it thats okay. but i chose to focus on a few techniques that i want to perfect better than anyone else. do i know how to roll? yes. do i know espada at daga and sinawali? yes. but i dont train those things because they are not my specialty and i dont feel like i need them. *



This is true, but you have to remember that Lee continued practicing his Wing Chun forms (the ones he knew, at least) as well as the other gung fu forms he picked up along the way.  He also continued to train chi sao, though near the end of his life, he apparently took it out of the JKD curriculum.

I agree that it is good to concentrate on a few techniques you know you can do well, particularly for sport and possibly self-defense reasons.  However, you can't concentrate on those techniques at the expense of learning other techniques that you may find displeasing.  A good fighter may rely on only a few techniques, but he/she will know them all.

Cthulhu


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## IFAJKD (Jan 23, 2002)

I want to be careful with my explination.....I actually have no response to the term "master" nor do I associate it with Bruce Lee. To be clear about this, I think many people have mastered their chosen art. This however, does not make it effective against everyone or even for some, effective against anyone. I do agree that you learn to fight to avoid the opponents game. I would never box a boxer or grapple a wrestler. I do however need to know their game and survive it and even excell at it against others. The ability for a given person to place someone in their range that they have mastered is a trained skill. If you think that you can keep people at your chosen range is a fantacy. For some yes, for others no. 
I am one of those people who see NHB, sparring, tournaments as sport. the people involved have rules, I don't have to look for a hidden weapon, no one is thumbing or raking my eyes and no one is biting or head butting. I roll all the time, I stick and knife spar all the time with very limited protection, I have open invitations to do the same as I love to learn, I have lost teeth, blackened eyes, broken noses, lost finger nails, broken and dislocated fingers, ruptured disks, dislocated several bones and yet I still have fought on the street and it IS NOT THE SAME. And Its not even close. 
food for thought maybe...maybe not.


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