Carranza Basic Class - Kali Stick Flow of Filipino Martial Arts

hey welcome back to the channel I'm Paul Ingram today we're going to be working on What's called the corenza flow and this comes from Filipino martial arts commonly known as K arice or esrea and what corenza is or in Tagalog SAA which means to dance but what Kenza is is a solitary free flow exercise that involves the any weapon category of Kali or even the empty hands and basically it's like Shadow Boxing but with a weapon or with your colli skills and today we're going to be focusing on some very basics of this exercise and we're just going to use a single stick and the whole purpose for today is to just find a nice smooth flow when we train corenza there's three main ways that we can train it we could train it in a more combative Marshal kind of sense where we're really moving like we're imitating how we would be moving in combat we can train it in the second way which is more of a meditative kind of like a like a like a TA Chi or a yoga type of mentality where it's really focusing on meditation and mindfulness and being in the present moment and a third common way to express corenza is through theatrical and this is when you're really to kind of incorporate gymnastics and different types of Twirls and flips and all kinds of things with your weapon and that's more for like demonstration stuff but for today's purpose we're going to kind of stick more with the meditative so we're just focusing on flow or focusing on smoothness in the weapon techniques and in the transitions from movement to movement we're going to start with the single stick just grab any stick that you have laying around if you have a traditional Rattan collie stick obviously use that but if not just grab anything you can find and we want our sticks in collie really to be somewhere between 24 in to even up to 31 32 in so what I find a 28 in length stick is a nice happy medium and it works for most people and then from there you can explore with you know a little bit shorter sticks a little bit longer sticks so we're going to work with three simple beginner patterns and then we're going to put them together into our corenza flow so grab our gear and let's get started all right as far as gripping our weapon there's a few ways that you can do this and you can explore the different ways and then decide which you like the most and we can either grip the weapon flush to the bottom just like this or you can go one finger up two finger up three finger up or even a full um fist length up a whole hand up typically we don't really want to go much higher than that um but you can you know kind of explore the different ones some people kind of find what they like and they stay there other people throughout the practice we kind of change it up a little bit maybe the hand slips a little bit and uh you just got to work with what you got or until you can make the adjustment um into the grip that you prefer now to begin we're going to take what's called a strong lead so if we're right-handed the right foot's going to be forward if you're left-handed the left foot's going to be forward now we are going to be moving around with some footwork nothing particular for today's training um but sometimes the right foot's going to be forward sometimes the left foot's going to be forward but for the beginning we're going to start off with a strong lead our first exercise is known as the x or our first pattern is known as the X we're just going to make a big X right in front of the body a forehand strike and a backhand strike and we're just going to keep these strikes roughly about 45° so nice diagonal strike and just let the body move with the strike so let the Torso rotate with the strike so as I'm striking a forehand I'm rotating in the same direction as I strike with the backhand I'm rotating in the same direction and don't worry about speed don't worry about power we're going to focus on smoothness right here now we can also go into smaller uh exit smaller strikes where the strikes can come out of the elbow and we can play around with even smaller strikes where they're going to come out of the manipulation from the wrist so we can work these three basic striking techniques on all the patterns that we're going to be working today first one from the shoulder which is going to be our largest strikes medium strikes which will be from the elbow joint and short strikes which is from the wrist as far as the left hand goes you can keep it right here on the chest on the center of the chest or sometimes it'll go into second position which will be down by the same side hip so in this case my left hand will be down by my left hip so position one for the left hand is at the plexus in front of the in front of the chest and position two is down by the hip we're just not going to you know let it dangle here not doing anything we'll put a little bit of tension elbow bent and put a little bit of intention in that left hand striking pattern number two now we're going to go up the X what we call the upward figure8 this one is really nice because it it really gets the mechanics in the hips the shoveling in the hips to really start working here so this striking pattern the figure8 is very good for really developing your body mechanics and again we can make these large strikes where the rotation is predominantly coming from the shoulder go to our medium strikes where it's mostly focused from the elbow or our short strikes where we're focusing on the rotation from the wrist and just take 30 seconds or so and just work through the figure eight feel the motion feel your body notice how your weight shifts let the Torso the hips and shoulders rotate with the strike forehand side backhand side you can experiment with the opposite leg forward all right and our third and final striking pattern that we're going to work today is our plus we're going to strike a horizontal and then our vertical horizontal strike on the other side and then a vertical so we have a forehand horizontal that then moves into a backhand vertical and then a backhand horizontal that moves into a forehand vertical now we could strike high right to the Head we could strike middle which is goes right to the Elbow or floating ribs we got can strike low down to the knees on that vertical maybe you'll even smash them all the way to the foot and you play around with these elevations and typically for this one just for right now we're just going to do full strikes we get the arm involved let the Torso the hips and shoulders rotate with the strikes right so sometimes we're going to be leaning forward on the strikes sometimes maybe we're leaning back we can alternate forward and back forward and back maybe back on the horizontal forward on the vertical okay and just kind of play around here on our plus focusing on smoothness we want smooth transition from movement to movement okay we don't want to strike stop strike stop right we don't want to look like a robot want to look like a smooth animal and let the body go let the mechanic go explore the movement here explore the mechanic test your balance we want to be on balance but it's important to test it you know see what your limits are see where your body goes off balance and let your body make the natural correction to come back to balance okay good so you can do corenza as you know just working the individual drills just like that even though that's not really corenza that's more of just uh working the Striking patterns in the drill format corenza is really when we're going to start blending these things and we want to start moving into a more of a free Lance a free expression so let's do an example together nice and slow here so I'm going to call it up out what pattern and then we're just going to change that pattern and I'll make sure that there's enough time so that you can change it maybe you got to kind of remember it a little bit okay so let's go ahead and give it a go just flow with me here so we're going to start off with our X strikes just nice and easy don't worry about footwork right now you know if you feel that motion to move around feel free but right now we're just focusing mostly on what we're doing with the upper body from here we're going to go into the upward figure in maybe just switch your feet yeah if you want to incorporate some footwork but maybe you're feeling like don't really know what's going on here I don't know what to do yet eventually we'll come back and do some videos where we'll do some specific footwork drills and stuff like that that will help calibrate your feet with your upper body now we're going to transition into our plus so horizontal to vertical spend a little bit of time here just a few seconds play with the elevations if You' like go back into the X find your X back into the plus but this time I'm going to start with a vertical and then go to a horizontal all right and then into the upward figure eight notice how I started from the backhand side this time so you can start from a forehand or backhand go into some short strikes back into the X okay we're just going to speed up the transitions a little bit more so I'm going to call them out maybe every 5 seconds or so back into the upper Figure 8 back into the X back into the plus you can even throw some music on and uh find some Rhythm that way back into figure eight back into the plus to the X plus figure8 plus X back into the plus Figure 8 x and if you'd like to pass the weapon to your other hand right next to your hip and let's just get a little bit of time here with our non-dominant hand here starting off start off with the X a good idea to train the other hand this is going to help prepare when we get into the double stick flows upward figure eight but on your own you do want to make sure you're spending enough time on both sides of the body and back into our plus figure eight and X passing it back to our more dominant hand back into the X right away nice and smooth there upward figure8 plus and back into our left hand and we'll close it out right there so that's a great introduction to corenza the solitary free flow or kind of like the Shadow Boxing with a weapon from Filipino martial arts from Ki and this exercise here has many many benefits obviously has benefits for you know the more combat the Marshall application where we're able to discover the flow within our body so that way we could be more adaptable to Any Given changing situation right all the unpredictabilities that can happen in like a self-defense situation or something like that but the corenza practice has more to offer than just that it's great for the nervous system in the body to connect the body and the mind it's good for building Focus concentration mental Clarity many many great benefits that we get out of it it can even be a nice good stress relief for a busy crazy day that maybe we have in our you know modern Lifestyles if you enjoyed this corenza practice and would like to see more and like to continue your practice with me to improve upon your corenza your solitary free flow hit the Thumbs Up Button make sure you're subscribed here to the channel and I'll catch you back here next next time