Molave and Yakal wood sticks info??

[Waltyr]

Greetings to All,

Does anyone have any experience in there personal workouts with using heavier wood sticks for training? I've seen some Molave and Yakal sticks for escrima/arnis and wondering if anyone feels that they help develop upper arm strength? I've also read that the Yakal wood is very durable and is very resistant to decay. Any thoughts???


W.v.

[Brian R. VanCise]

Hey Walter,

I use Kamagong quite often in my private training and they
really do develop arm strength. I am sure that Yakal and
Molave are similar but maybe not as heavy.

Brian R. VanCise
www.instinctiveresponsetraining.com (http://www.instinctiveresponsetraining.com)

[lhommedieu]

I've been using 33" x 7'8" ironwood sticks for a couple of years now - although I don't care about upper body strength as much as I care about whether I can use my legs and waist, etc., to move them around. Consequently though, my wrists and forearms are stronger than they used to be - this is probably due to having to stop the sticks from moving in one direction in order to get them to move in another. What was interesting also was that I ordered a pinute recently from C.A.S. Iberia that seemed lighter than my sticks - but I had to slow down due to the fact that this is a relatively new weapon for me, i.e., I value the tops of my ears.

We use a heavy ananangkil in a similar fashion to train the legs and waist to generate speed and power, and I've used sledge hammer handles, etc. for the same purpose. For an example of ananagkil, there is a link to a short video on this page:

http://northshoreac.com/san_miguel_eskrima/ananangkil.htm

You can tell from the way the arm muscles are defined in the photograph that this would be a good way to build arm strength in addition to the reasons for training with this weapon mentioned above. One caveat: during periods when I was really enthusiastic about training with heavy weapons, I had a lot of shoulder strains and tears; with a heavy stick it's easy to tear stuff in your wrists if you're not careful and don't build up to it gradually.

Best,

Steve Lamade

[arnisador]

I like to use them on occasion but spend most of my time with rattan. It's good to pick up a "real" stick on occasion, though, and see if you can get it moving as rapidly as needed, note what it does to your abaniqo and similar strikes when the weapon is so heavy, and generally remind oneself that if a rattan strike hurts a little, an ironwood strike will hurt a lot. I would say it does develop grip strength, but I wouldn't look for big biceps from using them.

They certainly are available:
Molave Sticks (http://www.swordsofhonor.com/molaveescrima.html)
Yakal Sticks (http://www.swordsofhonor.com/yaesfist.html)

See also this thread (http://fmatalk.com/showthread.php?t=432).