“Couch” training (or swing your stick while watching TV)

I watch TV…a lot.

When I watch TV I try to have a stick in my hands and practice arnis.  Really.

I wonder how many of you reading out there do the same thing.  It’s simple — just sit there watching TV and have ’something arnis’  in your hand.  This could be a stick, a training bolo, training knife, real knife, real bolo, ballpoint pen (Pinoys call this the dreaded ‘BALL PEN’) or just empty hand.

Of course, the couch you sit on shouldn’t be against a wall when you do this.  Even so, you could still train as long as you are aware of how close your stick is to the wall when you swing it.  Better yet, if you have one of those La-Z-Boy things and have the room, move that joint to a spot in front of the TV but far enough away from walls or other valuable furniture.

So…there I sit watching my favourite TV show (‘Burn Notice’ with Bruce Campbell) and I run through some of the following exercises:

Wrist twirls — The point of this exercise is to make limber your wrists and to develop a strong grip on the stick.  Grab the stick 1.5 to 2 inches from the butt end (proper Modern Arnis form) and smoothly twirl that stick with your wrist.  First one way, then back.   Take that stick and move it to the other side of your body (or couch, as the case may be) and twirl it the same way.  Go ahead and twirl that puppy, in a circular motion, over your head.  At the commercials, get up and twirl it the same as before, but now you are standing.   Make sure you don’t hit anything or smack the dog in the face.  One cool thing is an exercise Rodel Dagooc teaches his students:  start with the stick in your hand and your arms outstretched and slightly higher than shoulder level.  Twirl that stick X number of times AS YOU ARE BRINGING THAT STICK DOWN AND CHAMBERED TO THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF YOUR BODY.  For example, if you are doing this trick with your right hand and your right leg is forward, twirl that stick X times ‘inward’ towards your left side.  You end up with the stick and your wrist by your left hip and ‘chambered’.  Imagine that this is a bolo (or if you practice with a bolo) that you are hacking at something X times and end with the bolo by your side, ready for the next series.  Next, you would reverse the moment and go from left hip to the outstretched hand position.  When the commercial is over, sit your butt back down and do the same exercise and control the stick all the way down and back up while minding your mom’s Pope John Paul II commemorative plate.

Baba-Taas (down-up  exercise) -- This exercise is NOT A TWIRL, because IT IS A STRIKE.  In Tagalog, Baba means ‘lower’ and Taas (tuh-USS) means ‘upper’.  Take the stick, and execute a #4 and #2 strike in front of you.  The #4 is the LOWER strike and #2 is the UPPER strike.  The idea is to do this fast, smoothly and with control.  See how many you can do before your wrist or grip starts to hurt or find a time frame (in TV time, do this until the next commercial or until the next car chase or until the second or third guy dies in the next action sequence) and then stop or better yet, move the stick to the other hand.  Here’s a tip:  try to do this exercise with the utmost relaxation.  The proper way to execute these strikes is to grip the stick and to deliberately not try to hit the guy with the stick.  In other words, pretend there is NO STICK in your hand and just ‘extend’  the strike.  Delivering the strikes in this way will make your action smoother and quicker because you are not tensing up.  The big mistake is for people to try to aim the stick at the target and because of this they lose control of the motion and end up hitting the guy when they didn’t mean to do it.  It has something to do with some people’s inability to judge distance….

Pilantik (overhead Abaniko) — This is where the rest of FMA differs with MARPPIO Modern Arnis.  The Pilantik (pee-lun-TEEK) strike is sometimes called the ‘windshield wiper’ strike because it looks… like…a…wind-shield…wiper.  (ugh).  To MARPPIO, this is just one way to deliver an Abaniko strike and that the windshield wiper strike and Abaniko are the same thing.  In actuality there are 5 variations of Abaniko (or fan type strike) in total and this is just one way to deliver the arced strike.  Executing the strike is easy:  grip the stick and put it out in front of you with your arm extended (not all the way) and turn the stick so that your gripped palm faces one way, then the other.  Doing this ’swishes’ your stick over your head in an arc (the WINDDSHIEELD WIPERRR…ta-DAH!!! — ugh).  More tips:  for good form try to not move your elbow and your wrist too much — in other words, try to keep your wrist and elbow from flopping around because this strike is meant to be an up-close personal type hit and most of the power will com from your wrist (if you are sitting).  If you are STANDING, the power will come from the bottom of your feet as your body shifts it’s weight from one side to the other.  This technique articulates the concept of generating power from the base of your feet — a very basic concept when generating power in boxing.   The pilantik strike is a favourite of Master Rodel Dagooc, the famous “smoking stick” guy himself.  He developed the concept for this type of Abaniko strike and this is the way we learn it in San Pablo and the way all MARPPIO practitioners should deliver the strike.  Now, mind you, most other FMA (especially outside of the Philippines) think this is the only Abaniko strike there is.  This is a classical arnis strike and is in the basic repertoire in a lot of FMA in the Philippines along with others in the subset.  (More on this at the end of this blog).   Incidentally, the Abaniko is neither a strike or a block == it is both.  Depending on the context of what you are doing, the Abaniko is a legit strike or block in the sequence you are using when squaring off with someone.

Doblete — (doe-BLEH-teh) A doblete strike is two zero strikes in a row.  Very simple.  You can practice this strike sitting on a sofa as long as you have enough space for your zero strike to clear the couch.  A zero strike is executed with the stick gripped in front of you and starts from the wrist.  The strike is ‘flicked’ or whipped rather than powered forward with a lot of strength.  It is the whipping motion that makes this strike sick.  The proper way to think about deriving power for the zero strike is to think about the whip starting from the bottom of your feet and being translated as a short, powerful whipping motion that starts at the wrist and the potential of which becomes released after you start the whip.  After the wrist is released and the stick moves forward, you should be able to feel and control the acceleration of the stick as the point moves away from you and into your opponent.  The doblete occurs when you do two zero strikes but THE SECOND ZERO STRIKE  MOVES FURTHER AWAY FROM YOU.  Think of it this way:  the first zero strike makes a small circle and the second one, bolstered by the whipping action from the first, creates a LARGER CIRCLE.  The last bit about this is that you will take a slight step forward so that the stick will gain ground as it comes around from the second zero strike.  In other words, you will be charging into the guy and your stick is the thing that hits harder on the second hit.   Obviously, executing the doblete requires that you get up off that chair and shuffle along in your living room.  That’s ok…do a few dobletes during the commercial break or at a particularly low action section of your TV show.

Sungkiti — (soong-KEE-tee) This is the strike where you are poking or stabbing someone with the tip of your stick/blade similar to the way that you deliver a #6 or #7 strike.   If you know how to do a Sungkiti, make sure that no one is walking by as you do this from the couch.   The other thing to think about is that you ‘clear’ this strike after you’ve hit your opponent:   imagine that you’ve hit the guy and are controlling the arc gracefully through the target and around over to the other side of your body.

Abaniko — There are five types of Abaniko in Modern Arnis:  Malayuan (wide arc) Malapitan (medium sized arc) and Dikitan (small arc), Pilantik (already talked about this) and Abaniko Double action.   Sorry to shortchange you on this topic, but this is W-A-A-Y too much to talk about on what was supposed to be a short blog on practicing in front of the TV.   This subgroup of Modern Arnis strikes deserves it’s own blog entry.  Suffice it to say that you should go ahead and practice these techniques as well.  If you’re sitting on a couch, just find a way to clear the sides so that the arc you create is full.  Make sure that you do whip the stick so that the stick ‘whistles’ in the air.  Whistling (really…the sound is more of a swoosh), is indication that the stick is traveling at a great velocity and is giving you the power that you want.

Final: MAKE SURE THAT YOU GOT THE LIVE HAND WORKING AS WELL.  In all of these TV exercises, make sure that your non-gripping hand is working as well.  The way you can make sure this is so is to keep in mind that the live hand is 1.) moving 2.) moving relative to the strike [meaning that as the strike is delivered, the live hand moves in the opposites direction to create an opposing motion, thus creating balance in the dstrike 3.) moving in such a way that allows you to have an opportunity to reach out and touch the opponent 4.) coordinate your [wow...I am really going to mention this ridiculously obvious point] live hand so that the stick DOES NOT HIT IT.

According to the American Bureau of Labor Statistics as reported in their annual American Time Use Survey,  watching TV is leisure activity that occupied most of our time with men spending more time in front of the tube than women.  TV practice is a viable alternative to Modern Arnis practice when and if you are not able to find a training partner or go to the training center or school.  You’re already in front of the damn TV anyway…why not make the most of it by picking up a stick and swinging it a little?

Watch some of the techniques I mention in this blog from this Rodel Dagooc seminar.  Start watching at 2:04.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 11th, 2009 at 5:37 am and is filed under General, Training, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.