Not One Way

There is one thing that I’ve noticed about how I am presenting the traditional ways of training in eskrima or FMA through this blog.  It is that I seem to be stressing that there is only one way.  I would like to correct this impression, if, in case, I have led others to believe so.

If anything, it is informality that governs the traditional approach of training in eskrima.  There is no system or process.  Even the measure of one’s weapons is not fixed to a standard length, but always according to one’s own proportions and fighting style.
 
There is no one way of traditional training in eskrima.  There are as many ways as there are islands of our archipelago, not that each of our more than seven thousand islands has a style, although many islands, provinces, or regions do historically identify with certain styles.  (I merely said that for emphasis.)
 
My experience is only one of the many ways that one can be taught eskrima traditionally.  And, if you want to be truly steeped in tradition, you may with some masters even take up oracions, habaks, anting-antings, and similar or analogous modes of training or augmenting skill.
 
From my experience, if there is anything that characterizes traditional eskrima, it is a lack of system.  One master, in teaching, say, five students, may have as many ways for teaching each student.   And, most of the time, it is dictated by what he sees as the student’s aptitude and level of skill.  Sometimes, the lesson will depend on what the master recalls from seeing his pupils move.
 
There were those who would start them off with banana or coconut stalks.  Setting twelve stalks or twelve pairs of stalks for the student to use and go through in each practice session.  The session would be over when none of the stalks can be of use.
 
There were those who would only teach solo olisi, with the stick no longer than the distance from one’s armpit to the closed fist.  And there were those who’d always begin with doble baston.  There were those who would only teach you on nights when there is no moon.  There were others who would teach in broad daylight, so long as both master and pupil were in seclusion.
 
Still there were others who taught nothing but went right on to telling their pupil to do their best and hit them.  And also others who would leave their pupils beating a stick hanging at chest level from a branch or stepping on a triangle of coconuts or endlessly going forward and backward on a fallen tree trunk.
 
There were styles where the measure of mastery was being able to do the redonda in the middle of a doorway and not hitting any of the jambs on the doorframe; or being able to run the gauntlet of a pre-industrial age sugar mill unscathed (which is the legend ascribed to the de cuerdas style); or standing in the middle of a banig while twelve grains of corn are thrown all at once at you, but not letting a single grain fall on the banig; or being able to finally take on one’s master in open contest as an equal.

Seeing that I already had twelve strikes, my teacher did not take the time to teach me his sequence or style of doing the twelve strikes.  He went straight on to teach me about how to defend from them.  Seeing that I already knew some sinawali (basically those which are popularly known as single and double sinawali), he went right on to teach me how to break the rhythm when playing in sinawali.  He also taught me other techniques that didn’t have names or that he didn’t name.
 
Another student of my teacher, who was a foot taller than me and who worked at a junk shop which mainly dealt in scrap iron (ergo, massively strong) was trained more on power strikes, much like a larga mano fighter.  Although I would say that I was faster than him, sparring was an unpleasant experience.  I did not enjoy being in his sphere of destruction.  No abaniko can defend against a full-powered strike to the head.  Another student was so blindingly fast with the stick that sparring with him was the first time that I felt fear in training.
 
An acquaintance who is a ranked practitioner of modern arnis, prior to this formal FMA training was also trained traditionally.  And his experience in tradition was very different.  He was taught to hold the stick with the thumb extended, not as I and many others were taught (with the thumb closed on the fore-knuckles). 
 
Now you may dismiss this as a backward style, but I’ve found that it is not so.  There is a reason for holding it that way.  And in case some of you might think that this style is weak, it isn’t so.  It has been battle-tested, if not by my acquaintance then by those who went before him.  This was a style where a pupil graduated by taking on the master with live blades.  Certainly not a style for the faint of heart.
 
As I said, there is no one way of training traditionally in eskrima.
 
So now you might ask, if there is no one way; if it all seems so random; how is any or all of this traditional?  

My position is simply this: that so long as these were the ways our forefathers learned eskrima before the age of formalized instruction, then it is an eskrima tradition.