I would say that the day was split up into two distinctive areas: Mindset/Theory, and technique. I’ll talk about what I took away from the mindset portion first.
Tom gave us some background about Sayoc Kali and how it differs from other flavors of Kali. In the phillipines there was Kali that was based in agricultural roots and there was Kali with military roots. Sayoc Kali traces its lineage to the military flavor of Kali. My previous experience was with an agricultural style – most people just call it Inosanto Kali today.
The mindset discussion was really beneficial. Tom discussed how he doesn’t use certain words because words affect our mindset and they affect how we think and ultimately what we do (and vice versa). Tom called this neurolinguistic programming. An example would be that Tom stated that he doesn’t use the word “defense.” He said that “Losers Defend” and that he wants to win, so he’s going to be offensive. You want to force the other guy to defend. He also stated something else that we hear in Jiu-Jitsu all the time – always seek to improve your position. You need to ask yourself – “What position am I in? Is there a better position I could be in?” In Jiu-Jitsu you’ll commonly hear this as “Position before submission” or sometimes represented as “Safety > Control > Position > Submission.”
Tom discussed his thoughts on blade design and carry systems and went through some of the blades that were present. Tom said that the design of the blade was more relevent than the steel it was made of. He showed how some features of a knife (such as a choil) could snag on clothing once you’ve fully entered. He showed why some grips were smaller or larger or the grip/blade was angled a certain way. He talked about ringed knives like the karambit and their usefulness/weaknesses etc.
There was also a discussion on the various subject matters that make up a complete system of defense. Tom mentioned edged weapons, firearms, impact weapons, striking, throws and grappling.
Tom’s definition of a weapons expert was someone who could seamlessly transition from all of the weapons/skills available to him.
Technique:
The first techniques we discussed were dropped blade protocol and blade passing protocol.
Dropped blade protocol was something I was already familiar with. In my previous Kali instruction when we were doing Sinawali (exercises with both hands doing something) if you dropped your stick/knife and went down after it you’d get a friendly tap on your head with a baston not to do that. The idea is that you don’t want to track the blade/stick because it diverts your attention from the fight – if you stop to pick it up every time you’ll form a bad habit of always stopping to pick it up.
Blade passing protocol was something I had seen before – I think my instructor had called it “heaven and earth” passing because the tip of the knife is either pointing to heaven and earth (some common techniques in the Kali I had done refer to heaven and earth to refer to weapon orientation). Hearing the “why” behind this was good – it’s a good takeaway and a great way to show there’s some thought put into the system. The technique is based around the fact that you may need to load a weapon to or from someone else, passing this way is the safest way to do so because no one is physically holding the edge and you have a better chance of not falling on it if you were shoved from behind etc.
We then talked about different grips – forward, reverse (pikal), pinch grips, grips with two fingers. Tom said it helps to come up with your own names for this – and showed us his “dial the phone” grip or the “grab someone’s shirt grip” – a nice side effect of the latter was that your knife is in a pretty scary position for the guy whose shirt you have. Tom noted that he disregards advice that only a particular grip is “THE way to go” because you never know if your weapon will be a nail, a pen or pencil, or a razor blade or shard of glass and that it is wise to be dynamic.
We then went into the first pattern. First we went over the basic 5 pattern (palasut). If you were using the blade in your right hand the targets would be their left carotid artery, right carotid artery, high femoral (opponents left side), high femoral (opp right side) and ends with a thrust to the heart. We based every technique for the day off of this.
Off of this we went into gunting (which is a scissoring motion). I had done some of this before in kali when we were working stick disarms. The flow of hands for this technique is probably outside of the scope of a review, however, it showed you where your hands need to be and where they shouldn’t be. For anyone who has done martial arts with forms or does shadow technique of some sort this should have been very easy to pick up. Tom mentioned that when your opponent starts going to his “1 count” you need to become proactive in your response and if you have no weapon on your your level of violence may need to exceed your attackers.
Tom’s assistants were great here (please chime in if you were the ones who helped my friend and I!). After my partner and I were able to get through the first movement we were able to ask questions from the assistants on performing the drill with the attacker and yourself having different grips. We were able to get in reps with both people doing a reverse grip which was great.
At this point Tom showed us that the technique could be done one handed, or that each cut could be turned to a thrust/stab.
This technique was them adjusted so that after each initial cut we would attack a secondary target
1. Carotid
2. Heart
3. Armpit
4. Femoral
The second technique we learned after lunch was cross body tapping. This is a means of countering their attack and giving yourself room to deploy a weapon. One of the Sayoc guys got involved in our reps that we were doing, asked some questions about why we were moving the way we were etc. After finding out that we’re coming from a mostly Judo/JJ background the AI gave us some familiar footwork to use (from throws we’ve repped a lot) that enhanced this drill for us. He saw that we were using “bad hand” because of muscle memory from other things we had learned from previous instruction. This was awesome because he was able to show us how you can use the bad technique to flow right back into the good technique. The footwork he showed up when we pinned their arm to their hip enabled us to deploy our weapon and enter with it – and also gave us familiar ground for a variety of throws.
Tom discussed disarms and how they’re not usually readily available, you’ve got to be a few layers deep to get there and how it should still be something you should learn but that it’s better to have the foundation for other techniques first.
Throwing knives was also discussed as a viable technique. This was great because the previous knife throwing instruction I had didn’t give a lot of “why” and was mostly based off of making small groups – Although we didnt throw any knives at the seminar I should be able to take the concepts back to the “throwing board”
All in all it was a great seminar – maybe I’ll be able to do a short interview with some of the Sayoc guys on their views about training in the future!