From: eskrima-digest-owner@hpwsrt.cup.hp.com To: eskrima-digest@hpwsrt.cup.hp.com Subject: Inayan_Eskrima/FMA-Digest V7 #592 Reply-To: eskrima@hpwsrt.cup.hp.com Errors-To: eskrima-digest-owner@hpwsrt.cup.hp.com Precedence: Inayan_Eskrima/FMA-Digest Sat, 23 Dec 2000 Vol 07 : Num 592 In this issue: eskrima: Merry Christmas/Yorkshire supplies eskrima: Kalipages Updated eskrima: Greetings of the season eskrima: Drills "vs" sparring eskrima: Ball Cane/Walking Sticks eskrima: Blackthorne sticks eskrima: . ========================================================================== Eskrima-Digest, serving the Internet since June 1994. 1200 members strong! Copyright 1994-2000: Ray Terry and Martial Arts Resource An open FMA discussion forum provided in memory of Mangisursuro Mike Inay, Founder of the Inayan System of Eskrima. Replying to this message will NOT unsubscribe you. To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe eskrima-digest" (no quotes) in the body (top line, left justified) of a "plain text" e-mail addressed to majordomo@hpwsrt.cup.hp.com. To send e-mail to this list use eskrima@hpwsrt.cup.hp.com See the Filipino Martial Arts (FMA) FAQ and the online search engine for back issues of the Eskrima-Digest at http://www.MartialArtsResource.com Mabuhay ang eskrima! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Matthew=20Barclay?= Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 20:42:48 +0000 (GMT) Subject: eskrima: Merry Christmas/Yorkshire supplies Hi, for Filipino weaponry in Yorkshire, you can try Pat O'Malley's page, which is: www.eskrimador-supplies.com Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year (not too happy - don't want any drunk and disorderly charges now) regards, Matt ____________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.co.uk address at http://mail.yahoo.co.uk or your free @yahoo.ie address at http://mail.yahoo.ie ------------------------------ From: abass@iname.com Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 17:18:48 -0500 Subject: eskrima: Kalipages Updated I've just updated the Kalipages site for December. There is a new interface (very cool I think) and 9 new links to videos, photo techniques, and text items. http://www.geocities.com/kalipages As always, thanks to everyone who has been emailing new items to add to this archive. Please keep it up. ashley bass ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ All the busy little creatures Chasing out their destinies Living in their pools They soon forget about the sea... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~N.P.~~~ ------------------------------ From: "Bill Lowery" Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 01:18:24 -0000 Subject: eskrima: Greetings of the season Hi, I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year. Bill Lowery PS: Sorry Ray, I don't send many multiple emails and often send html by mistake!! ------------------------------ From: "BILL MCGRATH" Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2000 21:58:20 -0500 Subject: eskrima: Drills "vs" sparring Grandpooba Ray said that things were getting kinda quiet around the digest , therefore here's a post that covers two threads: Drills "vs" Sparring Teacher ''vs'' Fighter A recent thread held a debate over the usefulness of timing drills. "If sparring is closer to real fighting, why not simply spar?" ran the argument against drills. I think we can add clarity to the question "are timing drills useful" by asking "useful to whom?" In examining virtually every human attribute you can place people into what statisticians call a "bell curve" model. This is a graph with a bell-like shape into which the vast majority of people fall into the large "average" range in the middle and lesser numbers of "below average" and "above average" at either end. Just as we are born with a certain potential for height or IQ, I believe we are all born with certain potential levels of various attributes that will place us along different points of a bell curve depending on the attribute. At one end of the "musical skills" bell curve (to use an extreme example for the sake of clarity) you have someone like Mozart who was performing the piano publicly at the age of three and writing his first symphony at the age of six. Towards the other end of the musical skills bell curve you have someone like myself, who could clear a room just as quickly with a violin as with a sword .At the extreme opposite end from a Mozart you would have someone with dysmusia which is to music what dyslexia is to reading. Near one end of the bell curve you have someone (like myself) who would need many months practicing basic scales and exercises before listening to that person's performance would not be a painful experience and at the other you have someone who learns his scales in a day and thereafter can play back a complex piece of music after hearing it just once. I call those people at the extreme above average end of the bell curve for any attribute "naturals" . I think drills on a basic level are designed to help the average person through much repetition acquire the skills that come so easily to the "natural." People like Mozart are rare, yet professional orchestras are filled with people who can play his music. I believe there are people born who are "naturals" in the field of fighting (my guess is about 10% of the population is born with ). They are born with aggressive strong-willed personalities, are naturally courageous and decisive, have a high pain tolerance, are self disciplined, have excellent timing and an instinctive confidence in what their bodies are capable of. A "natural" fighter does not need to spend as much time in drills as a fighter born with average or below average attributes. Notice I said "as much time" not "no time". Let's compare training to fight with learning to swim. Take some kids and give them their first swim lesson by dropping them into the deep end of the pool and the "natural swimmers" will happily dog paddle around having a great time. The "average swimmers" will dog paddle to the sides holding on until they gain enough confidence to make short trips out from the side and back. The "below average" swimmers will sink like a stone, have to be rescued, and refuse to come back for their next lesson. One mistake a swimming instructor could make would be to leave the "naturals" dog paddling at the deep end and bring everyone else to the shallow ends to learn basic strokes. Give the average kids a few weeks of training in the Australian crawl and they will beat the naturals in a race across the pool. In this case an average swimmer using a superior technology (the crawl stroke) and more organized training can beat a natural swimmer using an inferior technology (the dog paddle) and little training. Let everyone train for the same amount of time in the crawl and the advantage will return to the ''naturals''. However, another mistake our swimming instructor could make would be to bring all the kids to the shallow end of the pool and keep them there forever doing basic drills. If the teacher keeps all his students too long just doing drlls he runs the risk of frustrating the naturals and boring the average kids. This teacher may loose all his ''naturals'' and most of his ''average'' kids to the first "no rules" pool that opens up nearby. I believe the ability of naturals to survive and even thrive at the ''deep end of the pool'' from day one may lead many naturals to mistake ''what works for me'' for ''what works''. That may be one of the reasons why a great fighter fails to produce students equal to himself. To learn boxing from Mohamed Ali would be cool, but how useful would it be when he tells you; ''Just stay exactly at the edge of his range and when he punches snap your head back just enough for him to miss. It's easy, I do it all the time.'' Imagine a student of ''Ali Style'' boxing telling you ''Ali proved that you don't need to keep your guard up while boxing at range.'' I would suggest to you that all Ali proved was that Ali had the attributes to break the rules, which has no bearing on whether you can break the rules unless you are another ''natural''. And even being a ''natural'' may not be enough to be another Ali. Imagine Ali teaching Mike Tyson how to box; '' Mike, the jab will be your most important punch''. Here is the bad news guys, to be another Ali or another Tyson or another Bruce Lee you have to already be another Ali or Tyson or Lee before you walk in the school door. Thai Boxing's Master Chai is inhumanly fast. One of his students told me someone tried to figure out why so a sample muscle biopsy was done on him. The results showed that he had an unusually high ratio of fast twitch to slow twitch muscle fibers. While training under Mater Chai will make you a better Thai boxer you probably will never get as fast as he is unless you walk in the door with the same muscle fiber makeup as he has. All this brings me back to the subject of drills. One thing I have noticed about the natural fighters I have had as students is their good sense of timing. Once you teach them the ''how'' of a technique they seem to have an instinctive sense of ''when''. This is something that drills are designed to teach. If basic strikes are your letters and combinations of strikes are your words, then drills are sample sentences designed to show you the rules of grammar. The ''natural'' fighter may not have to spend as much time on basic drills as everyone else, but you will see elite athletes, who are mostly ''naturals'', practicing their own sets of drills when competing against other naturals on an elite level. Now however, instead of teaching basic skills the drills are looking to make incremental improvements in an otherwise excellent performance. While engaging in basic drills for too long is a waste of time for the natural, having the average person engage in advanced drills before he is ready would be equally frustrating. What is an advanced drill? Imagine Mohamed Ali training "Ali Jr.'' Ali would have him do 1,000 jabs as a warm up for speed and endurance in his main weapon. He would have "Jr.'' practice staying just at the edge of his opponent's reach through footwork and learn to avoid an attack solely through a subtle shifting of distance. Once Jr. had mastered that drill and did not need to rely on his arms to block at range, it would make sense for him to drop his hands for brief periods while at range to rest his arms so that his jabs in round ten are just as fast as they were in round one. I think that both the "natural" and the "average" fighter can make a mistake concerning drills. The natural fighter may say of basic drills "These drill aren't right. You don't really need them." And the average fighter may say of advanced drills "These drills aren't right. You can't really pull them off in a fight." Match the right drill with the fighter it was designed for and they will change their minds concerning drills. Regards, Tuhon Bill McGrath http://www.pekiti-tirsia.com ------------------------------ From: "william schultz" Date: 22 Dec 2000 21:24:28 -0800 Subject: eskrima: Ball Cane/Walking Sticks Greetings, For those of you who may be interested in a Ball Cane/Walking stick, you can contact my friend and training partner Preston Boyd at impasto420@netzero.net He just made me a beautiful, and quite useable ;-) ball cane made of Hickory with a polished brass neck that sweeps back slightly with a round brass ball that's 6 3/4" around (shaped kind of like a door knob) at the top. The Hickory is very solid, great looking, and that ball is going to drop or break whatever it contacts (God forbid, if that kind of action is ever needed). I have been playing with it for a week now to get used to the balance and length. I am liking it. Definitely best used for power shots. I have been casually looking for a solid and good looking cane for a couple of years now without any luck. Most of the ones that I have seen were too light weight to have any real stopping power. Of the few decent ones that I did find, they were just to darn short for me. Living on the far side of the Bell curve makes finding things that fit me very difficult. He crafted this perfectly for my height. I believe he will be offering some very ornately carved (but very useable) canes and sticks in the future as well. Also, you can take a look at his new web site (which is very much under construction at the moment) to see some of his other hand crafted goodies. William Schultz PCMA/MCAC http://www.geocities.com/boidhe/stickfighter.html ------------------------------ From: Ray Terry Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 5:04:17 PST Subject: eskrima: Blackthorne sticks Cold Steel used to carry some very nice walking sticks. They were Blackthorne walking sticks, hard to break, ball on the handle end. Very nice. Not sure if they still sell them or not... Ray Terry raymail@hpwsrt.cup.hp.com ------------------------------ From: Ray Terry Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 6:25:22 PST Subject: eskrima: . ------------------------------ End of Inayan_Eskrima/FMA-Digest V7 #592 **************************************** To unsubscribe from the eskrima-digest send the command: unsubscribe eskrima-digest -or- unsubscribe eskrima-digest your.old@address in the BODY of an email (top line, left justified) addressed to majordomo@hpwsrt.cup.hp.com. Old digest issues are available via ftp://ftp.martialartsresource.com. Copyright 1994-2000: Ray Terry and the Martial Arts Resource Standard disclaimers apply.