Me: The 10-cent tour

[ap Oweyn]

Hello there. Stuart here. I started studying martial arts about 23 years ago, with taekwondo. I'm a bit of a mutt. Practiced some boxing, kickboxing, JKD, Western fencing, and a smattering of Shotokan karate. In addition to FMA of course.

I began studying Doce Pares arnis in 1989. With the Patalinghug family, just outside of Baltimore, Maryland. Trained with the Patalinghugs exclusively for about 6 years. Then I started studying Inosanto kali (for lack of a better term) with Guro Pat Finley, also in Maryland. Now I'm practicing with a Modern Arnis group in Northern Virginia, headed by Guro Roman Picardo.

I suppose that's about it. Unless anybody has anything they particularly want to know.

Cheers.


Stuart

[arnisador]

Welcome!

How did you find the Inosanto blend kali? Many JKD styles are criticized for having just the surface aspects of the FMA in their stickwork, but I understand that Dan Inosanto teaches a full system.

[ap Oweyn]

Welcome!

How did you find the Inosanto blend kali? Many JKD styles are criticized for having just the surface aspects of the FMA in their stickwork, but I understand that Dan Inosanto teaches a full system.

He probably does teach a full system. But I think that it's a fair criticism to be completely honest. I don't think "surface" aptly describes Guro Dan's understanding of FMA. But kali does sometimes get treated more as an attribute-building exercise in JKD than it does a comprehensive system. So you might do a bunch of sinawali drills "to build coordination" and a bunch of knife sparring "to develop footwork." But there might not be a cohesive progression of skills.

I think my teacher felt the same way, because when I last spoke to him, he'd consolidated a lot of his teaching. Presumably so as to avoid the "technique of the moment" syndrome.

That's one of the pitfalls to what I call the duffel bag approach. You collect lots and lots of different sinawalis, hubud variations, etc. Throw them all into a duffel bag. And then reach in and pull a few out during practice. But it's not very objective focused. I felt like it was too easy not to envision an objective and then identify the right tools to achieve it.

In all fairness, though, I went to that class more to learn kickboxing than kali. So my perceptions are probably also coloured by that.

Bottom line: I think both Guro Dan and Guro Pat (my teacher) are excellent FMAers. I do think it warrants a more organized approach than it sometimes gets in a JKD context though.


Stuart

[arnisador]

Interesting to hear it from that end--I study JKD through Paul Vunak's org. and it's much the same. Sinawali is for coordination/ambidexterity, knife sparring is for that fleet-footedness in your footwork, and so on. It's all about the attributes. That's fine if that's your focus but can be a bit of a letdown for a hard-core FMAer!

[ap Oweyn]

Exactly. For me it was an odd situation. I originally got interested in FMA through JKD. (Through articles featuring Dan Inosanto.) Found my way to Doce Pares by blind luck. A school opened up near me as I was researching FMA. Then, later, when I went to a JKD teacher, I already had a firmly entrenched FMA background.


Stuart