ESCRIMA Stick Fighting Basic Strikes - How to Strike with Sticks!

in Filipino martial arts we have three basic types of striking we have our long strikes our medium strikes and we also have our short strikes let's go over some of the variations on the basics covering each one of these types of strikes that you can start practicing them today our first set of strikes is our long strikes and I like beginning with the long strikes because they give you that full range of motion they teach you the full Arc of the strikes and they develop V the coordination and the musculature everything in your body that full range of motion the best and then from there we can digress into the different types of strikes so we're going to work with two basic patterns and they're the diagonal striking or the X striking the first one is down the X and in ki or Filipino martial arts off of our right shoulder with the right hand we call this an angle one and off of the left shoulder from the right hand we call this an angle two now you're going to see for these long strikes I'm starting this off from a full chamber position so the stick is starting from my back and I'm striking as long as I possibly can now when we do this what that means is I'm going to keep the elbow bent I'm not going to lock this out and really extend this thing out I want to keep the shoulder packed into the socket for protecting the shoulder and I want to keep the elbow slightly bent to protect the elbow but we're just going to work this striking downward on this x nice long strikes and just let the momentum of the strike follow the strike through and carry the weapon up to the next position so what we want to eliminate is we don't want to strike stop and then mechanically pick this thing up Let the motion let the momentum just flow to the next position so just rep this out put a timer on for about 60 seconds or 2 minutes and just rep this thing out right here and if you'd like you can even switch your hands and start working it on the other side cuz that's really good because it'll prepare your coordination for when it's uh time to train with two weapons right so that's our first type of striking our long strikes on the downward eight let's get to our medium strikes now watch very carefully here cuz you're going to see how the strike is going to initiate more so out of the elbow now a couple things you can do you can start this from that full chamber position like a long strike and then just strike off of that elbow position or you can start to kind of bring the guard in which is going to bring the weapon a little bit more forward towards the opponent and this is a little bit faster strike here it's not going to produce as much power as the long strike cuz the long strike right big gear you're putting your whole body behind it a lot of power but as we're starting to shorten the gear it's going to be faster just a little bit less power but now we're going to strike mostly using the elbow position now we're still want to get our body behind it in collie we want to use the whole body we want to maximize as much of the power as we can translating from the ground through our feet through our torso through the weapon so we can maximize the impact and the effect of the strike but now we're working with a medium type of strike off of the elbow so again just set a timer for 60 to 100 20 seconds and get your reps [Applause] in for the last of the basic strikes we're looking at our short strikes and you probably already guessed it cuz we're just working our way down the arm from joint to Joint to joint and our short strikes is going to come off of the wrist so this is where we literally just rotate the wrist out and sometimes the arm can be a little bit more extended still keeping the elbow bent sometimes it might have to be closer to the body too it just depends on the situation you know maybe you're more on the offense you're kind of chasing somebody else maybe you're a little bit more on the defense and you got to kind of suck this thing in protect your hand protect your head got protect everything at the same time right but now we're able to use that rotation in the wrist so you're going to see how I'm cutting this forward and I'm cutting this forward the thing you want to pay attention to with Filipino martial arts it is a blade fighting system but we use the retan sticks as a training implement and what we want to pay attention to is this second knuckle line right here we want to make sure that that knuckle line is cutting forward that's where the blade Edge would be if we were holding on to a bolo a sword a knife anything like that and it also makes sure that the wrist stays in the proper articulation so that way you don't injure your wrist it keeps it safe and protected so now we can work our short figure8 just like this with that cutting motion moving forward working off of the wrist it's a great exercise also for your wrist Mobility a great exercise for your elbow conditioning and a great exercise for your shoulder conditioning as well many many students that I've had over the years for Filipino martial arts that had tight shoulders some tight stiff wrists just doing collie and just working these movements over and over again has really helped them loosen up stiff shoulders and wrists and regain some of that mobility and range of motion back so make sure set your uh timer for about one or two minutes and work your short wrist cuts on that downward figure eight don't worry about speed in the beginning but as you're getting better you can work out speeding it up let's take these exact same principles that we just applied on basic striking on the downward figure eight and just apply them to the upward figure eight it's one of the beautiful things about collie we call this the transference of skill and this time we're just going to go upward so on that forehand side up up we call this an angle three and on the backhand upward side we call this an angle four but you're going to see I'm starting the long strikes first initiating from the shoulders we still have the rotation of the Torso going the rotation of the body you can stand still or you can move around with your footwork that's fine either one got lots of videos on footwork and all that stuff but you want to just kind of get this thing moving make it nice and smooth smooth is the goal that's the first goal y get everything smooth then we can start to put that rotation more so into the elbow so you're going to see how now the shoulder is a little bit more isolated there's still going to be some movement there but it's more isolated look how isolated the wrist is as well so all that movement initiation is coming out of the elbow now we still ideally want to move the Torso and the hips with this that's going to help generate the most bang for your buck most benefit and most effect out of your strikes and then we go into one more joint which is the wrist so now you can see how much more the shoulder is more locked in the elbow has a little bit of sway but it's pretty much locked in and now that wrist is really doing the rotation for our short strikes again focusing on that second knuckle line as much as we can to make sure we would be presenting that blade Edge to keep the proper wrist structural Integrity in place now when we're doing this low one it's good to just practice it anywhere like this you can just set it in front of the body and just kind of practice and really get the coordination down if we're doing more of an application we could go low down here by the knees or we can come up nice and high and Ki we call this the H okay and it's just a continuing chain of upward strikes and we go high because that protects the hand and it puts the the upper you know uh the last few inches of the weapon at the elevation of the Highline targets so you know just work through this set the timer 1 to two minutes on the shoulders one to two minutes on the elbows and one to two minutes on the wrist strikes long strikes medium strikes and short strikes and then just play around put try to see if you can start flowing them together going through it upward and downward figure eights maybe you got your short strikes on your downward to your up strikes with your short and all that and have fun train them all individually and then explore chaining them all together into your own unique flow practice hey I hope that you like this video here at the Marshall Flex Channel if you want to see more Filipino marshal arts kind of like this where we're getting the sticks to move and flow just hit the thumbs up button on this video and maybe even drop me down a comment and let me know how much that you've been enjoying this practice and what you've gained out of it so that way I know we're on the same page and I know to make some more of these uh Filipino martial arts videos be sure you subscribe to the martial Flix Channel if you're brand new here you're not subscribed yet because we're training martial arts in a fun way and we're moving our bodies developing our movement developing our Mobility that's inspired through martial arts training we're not always necessarily all about fighting it's really about the lifestyle and really gain the other benefits that martial arts can give us to just improve our lives and make our quality of life even better cuz the martial arts can do that it's got so much more potential to it than just fighting alone fighting is fun and it's important to know but there's so much more that martial arts has to offer all right get out there go practice these moves and I'll catch you back here next [Music] time [Music]