An online friend sent me this video on Nov 10, and I immediately started taking notes on it, lol.
There is nothing better/worse than a white dude learning about arnis and getting So Fascinated by it. Thank the gods that he has a Filipino friend.
The first few minutes are generally a solid if brief history: Eskrima/kalis/arnis started as a commonerβs art with no official βsystem,β aside from being practical, deadly, and using a variety of weapons.
Spain came around and forbid blade usage, hence the transition into the now-famous sticks. Speaking of which, Filipinos killed Magellan using the bladed version of eskrima. Likeβ¦ A LOT of Filipinos. Magellan and 49 Spaniards just rolled up to a full army of 1,500 natives and assumed, βWell, we have guns, so weβll be fiiiiiiiiiiine!β Fuck around and find out, colonizer.
Magellan died because he underestimated the battle-hardened Filipino natives.
The thing that jumped out at me was the comment about eskrima being βhidden in dance and play,β which is likely referring to two things: The maglalatik dance is specifically a war dance. I donβt know if thatβs βhidden,β so much as βthis is literally supposed to be practice for young men to learn how to fight, and for seasoned fighters to keep in shape.β
The other might be the common old wivesβ tale saying that kalis fighters practiced to music. This is something that Iβve only seen done 1) for performances/displays where no actual fighting was going on, or 2) to pull foreignersβ legs about secret Pinoy techniques. Some people call it βcheesy,β and I personally think some guys saw Pinoys sparring to their workout playlist (or the historical equivalent), and they thought we did that all the time.
Like, nobody minds if a white guy spars with βEye Of The Tigerβ blasting because maybe he just likes working out to music, but when a Filipino guy/group spars with eskrima to their favorite beats, suddenly itβs a βtime-honored tradition?β I havenβt seen any dance-battlers mentioned in the Boxer Codex or other records, so until someone has evidence, I wonβt say itβs historical.
Regarding the hands-on stuff: I feel like they intentionally skipped the most boring stuff, either so the video would be more exciting, or to just fuck with poor Martin. Like, they handed this poor man a stick right off the bat and started him out with hitting stuff and sparring? Where is the training montage??? Was all of it cut???
Also, hereβs an intersection with βreal fights arenβt nearly as long as the movies pretendβ and βfighters are not necessarily good video-makers:β The spars lasted all of five seconds each, and it was mostly to βthe first one who lands a hit wins.β This is okay when itβs clearly in good fun, but itβs also not very educational and it tips a little bit into βTELLING people how awesome eskrima isβ instead of βSHOWING people how awesome it is.β
Martin does not look like he learned any footwork, either, but he says he knows boxing! The sport that people literally compare eskrimaβs footwork to the most often!
Maybe this is my entertaining/acting side coming out, but if youβre planning a video well in advance, with someone that you know is not trained in this field, and an indirect purpose of this is to spread knowledge of your countryβs national sport/combat-style, I feel like you need to set aside a couple hours for a crash-course of βhereβs how to do X, Y, and Z,β while the actual students and teachers are doing fancy stuff. You can film however much you need, and then CUT however much you need to fit the time-limit.
The video would have greatly been helped if they kept a training montage that lasted twenty or thirty seconds--it would be much more involved than what the video seems to have done, by just tossing a new guy a stick and messing around with him.
General impression: An easy to digest taste of eskrima, like Cup-O-Noodles / instant ramen, or whatever your countryβs version of βcheap and easy foodβ is. Not bad for what it is, but youβll need something meatier after a couple of hours.
