As much as we respect and enjoy other variants of FMA, we just really want to stay within the Presas family arts, and that’s what we decided a few months ago – that we’d stay within our style, practice using books and videos, and go back to our old teacher and seminars once in a while to get correction.

In the mean time, we were seeking out potential instructors in very similar styles to work with occasionally – the problem is that everyone we found was at least 45-60 minutes away.  A big haul, especially when you have children (one needing a babysitter).

However, after months of searching, we’ve finally found someone to work with us in Modern Arnis who’s grounded in the Presas family styles (Kombatan from GM Ernesto and Modern Arnis from Professor Remy) AND is within 30 minutes (20 in no traffic), who teaches in a place with a child care facility for our small one!

Funnily enough, I’d reached out to this person a few months ago via a martial arts web site (I admired his posts and then saw he was nearby) but the email never got to him.

I figured he’d moved or something and was no longer in our area.  We ran into him by chance when he visited our school a few weeks ago, and after finding out he’s a stick guy as well as a teacher in the same art as our school, I introduced myself to him.  The rest is history – we’re now banging sticks with him a couple of times a week (and more when he lets us)!

Note: to people who train with no teacher (from books or videos) – after over a year of doing that, I can tell you that I think that you must, at least at some point, work with someone who knows what they are doing.  Even with a mirror, you can’t really see what you are doing wrong and you have no idea how to correct it (or why).

Find a more experienced person somehow – go to a seminar, something.  If you really enjoy your art, don’t short change yourself by doing it wrong!

So, we’re having fun banging sticks on a regular, informed basis once again.

–Her

Lately,  I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about self defense and violence – specifically, how women initiate violence, and how to defend against it.  I think in these modern times, female attackers are more common than they used to be, and something we are seriously remiss in considering.

Since almost all martial art styles are founded and led by men, it make sense that there’s a blind spot or a poor understanding of this area.  When aimed at women, self defense is usually taught as a woman defending herself against a male attacker, typically in a sexual assault scenario.  Another one is if a woman is grabbed and a male attempts to control her for some nefarious reason (not necessarily sexual assault, but perhaps in context with a domestic assault or some guy in a bar getting grabby).  Good to know, good to practice.  I have heard from time to time an instructor propose that the attacker is female, but the attacker usually was instructed to attack with a punch or kick (like… a guy might).

For guys, it’s always a guy attacking a guy.  Typical examples are muggers/robbers attacking, or guy attacks a guy in a bar, or a guy and his friends attack a guy in a bar (btw: what is it with the bar fights?  I am hanging out in the wrong – or maybe the right – bars).

But we never consider scenarios when an untrained female (or trained for that matter, but we assume trained women fight like guys, I suppose) attacks.

It seems to me that we, as martial artists practicing and teaching practical self defense, should look into female-initiated violence a little deeper.

• Why would a woman initiate violence, in what circumstances?
• Would a female attack you differently than a male would?  Why?
• What tactics/techniques work against a female that would be less likely to work against a male (and vice-versa)?
• What strategies are successful against a woman attacker – is it different than a male?
• For the guys:  are there cultural things they need to be aware of when defending against a woman’s attack?  Is it harder to prove self defense?  What tactics would be most useful in defense AND in making sure you’re not the one sent to jail?

This is by no means a complete list, and I am nowhere near the answers.

I think, by watching  online videos of actual unstaged female fights and attacks, here’s some things I see with untrained female fighters:

Spontaneous attacks:

1. Women tend to go for the head, face and hair – not necessarily to punch, but to scratch, stab, grab and control.  They scratch, they grab that hair and they PULL, and two-handed grabs seem common.  This is weirdly consistent and I have seen few exceptions to this rule (they’ll go for other shots LATER but the first aggressive move is almost always to the head and for the hair) .
2. The “monkey dance” leading to female violence is more subtle and the female attack seems harder to detect when it’s getting ready to happen – it looks like more of a “surprise”.  Men seem to have a more formalized “ritual” to this versus women, perhaps not only due to cultural mores but because of evolution and anthropology.
3. Related to that, there seems to be unwritten “rules” of male fighting that women simply don’t have – there is a concept I’ve heard expressed by male martial artists and friends of a “friendly fight”.   I don’t think this exists for women (at least, not spontaneously).  I think it can appear, to men, as “fighting dirty”.  For a female attacker, there is no such thing as a “low blow” and the violence is absolutely intended to damage as badly as they can manage.
4. However, the female “monkey dance” is a lot more verbal than the male version (which is more physical in its display of challenge).  “Fighting words” seem to have a lot of power to incite women to violence.   Given women are typically more verbal physiologically than men, it makes sense to me that this might be true.
5. When they get angry enough to initiate violence (assuming it is not premeditated), the encounter seems to last a long time, with alternating periods of verbal confrontation with violent attacks.  It seems to me that this will continue even when the defender (or other attacker) inflicts pretty good injuries on the attacking female – it seems to take a lot to get a female attacker to stop (sometimes it seems only outside intervention stops it).

Premeditated attacks

1. You see this when you get videos of girl(s) attacking a victim, typically lured to the spot for the purpose.  I don’t quite understand why, but these seem to have more punches/body blows than the spontaneous attacks had.
2. These also seem to last a long time, with periods of physical violence interspersed with verbal attacks.

I’m not sure where female violent criminals fall, as I haven’t seen a large enough sample to get a good feel for it.

What do you think?  I’ll post more on this subject as I learn more (and my thoughts on the self defense scenarios we get taught that don’t seem to make sense against female attackers).

–Her

This is not a game! Don’t be tryin’ this at home on your kids or your dawgs!
–Her

We own this flick and if you haven’t seen it, you’re missing out.

“Jiujitsu SUCKS!”  hehe!

–Her

–Her

In the modern United States and for most of us not in the military, most weapons are archaic – we learn them, not with the intent of using them in a martial application, but because we find their old applications fascinating and fun to learn.  I guess it’s nice to know we could, if we had to, use these weapons in their original context (or in a pinch in a modern context, I suppose), however, most of us won’t be using them as intended unless we find ourselves either thrown back in time or having to fight zombies.

Using the martial arts to prepare for the zombie apocalypse is a completely different post – remember…

We’ve been thinking about what weaponry, other than our beloved modern arnis, we’d be interested in pursuing further in our martial arts journey. She has a martial arts nerd-on to learn tonfa  (I just think they’re totally cool and I love where they come from, historically).  He is interested in staffs (long and short stick weapons) and would love to learn the martial applications of the tomahawk.

At our old school back in MS, we have had exposure to kama, bo, nunchucks, and the possibility of learning sai and tonfa at a later time.  He learned kama and bo; she had only learned bo.   Weapons forms at that school were rather flashy and “demo” (which is fine, and certainly entertaining to perform and watch).  However, our current preference is for less flashy, more basic patterns.

Here are a few videos over on YouTube we’re finding interesting right now.

Here’s two videos related to kama; a pattern, and bunkai of the kama versus a staff.  Nice solid, basic form, interesting bunkai explanations.

Here’s a tonfa pattern:

Nice and simple application.

(The videos here are all from the same channel that have a TON of other interesting traditional eastern weapons forms – if you have time, do check it out!)

What weapon(s) do you find interesting or fun, and why?

–Her

It was made with poplar and stained red mahogany.  I made the design fit the board sizes available at Lowes so there were only 2 cuts to make (the sides).  The holes were made with a 1.5″ forstner bit so the bottom of each weapon sits in a recess.  The shelves are attached by “L” brackets on the undserside.  Overall, I’m really pleased with how it turned out.  It looks as good as anything I’ve seen for sale and fits our particular weapon needs.

I came up with all the plans and dimensions and my dad helped me keep it from turning out looking like Homer Simpson’s spice  rack.  Carpentry is not my forte.

The new rack is a big improvement over our first DIY weapons rack which was jury-rigged from an old encyclopedia rack:

Its not a very good pic but then again it wasn’t a very good looking rack either.  Still, it served its purpose for awhile.

Next up will be some sort of rack for smaller weapons like kamas, fans, and sais.  I have no idea how I’ll do that and I’m in no huge rush to complete one because none of us are currently using any of those weapons.  I’ll probably wait until we have a need to access those weapons regularly.  Making new PVC  “arms” for my B.O.B. training dummy is a higher priority.

I’m generally ok with being thrown (weird, I know – but I think having someone control me as I go down isn’t as scary), but drills where you practice falling forward, backward, on the side, etc., from your knees or standing… I’m just terrified of getting hurt and each time I know I have to practice it I do it with dread in my heart.  I’m almost completely unable to practice it at home on my own – I freeze up and eventually I find something else to do.  Front falls are the worst, but I feel the same way about back and side falls, too.

This is not new – it’s always been a problem since I began my martial arts journey.

In the dojang last night, we were practicing basic front and back falls from a kneeling position. This isn’t rocket science, people, and it isn’t far to fall, either.  But on each fall, my elbows and shoulders got jarred, I pulled the muscles in my triceps, and I skinned my elbow pretty good.  I’m trying to focus very hard on doing this correctly and I don’t seem to be getting it – it seems much, much harder for me than for others around me.  Compound that with the fear – not a happy part of class, to be sure.

I intellectually and rationally understand the reasons behind learning to fall.  Most arts have falls, all for those excellent reasons.

You know, I should be afraid of a stick coming at my head as fast as someone can swing at me – after all, if I don’t block it well, that could theoretically kill me -  but I’m not afraid of that the same way I am practicing these falls.

For those of you more experienced out there, any ideas?

–Her