[Blarg]

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Escrima is awesome. If you want to see some live Filipino-style stick fighting(Kali), do a search on the dog brothers.



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My issue with escrima is that carrying a collapsing baton is srsly illegal in CA. I constrantly hear escrima people talk about how "oh anything is a weapon". O RLY? Well, tbh, I've never seen anything even remotely sticklike in the hollywood park parking lot, so when someone tries to mug me/attack me there, I'd be screwed if all I knew was stick fighting. On the other hand, I DO carry a knife, and would like to become proficient at using it.
Blarg, do you have any recommendations for a place in LA to learn the knife fighting side of kali?

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Don't know what's being taught enough to say. There was a kali studio on Vermont, in Koreatown, up above 3rd street, that I've driven by. And Dan Inosanto's Kali Academy has been around forever. But I don't know at what stage of development Inosanto or other Kali practicioners might introduce knife play.

From my understanding, though, the movement patterns are very similar, so what you learn from sticks you can apply to knives and to empty hands, too. If you look at the way Filipino stick fighters circle and weave their sticks, you can see right away how at least some of that applies directly to knifeplay, e.g., lots of wrist rotations to slice around and get in to targets.

Sticks are also great for upper body fitness, timing, and coordination in general, so I don't think you'd wind up regretting learning stick fighting first and moving to knife play as part of a normal course of training.