In Defense of Myself or Reconciling Ironies: How a Bruce Lee Fan Can Be a Traditional Martial Artist

I know what you're thinking.  You're wondering just how a Bruce Lee fan can practice as a traditional martial artist.  And that saying so would make me a walking oxymoron.

If you met me a little over a decade ago and expressed a less than favorable opinion of Bruce Lee or his skills as a martial artist or fighter I would be among the first to jump on your throat and beat you into fanatic reverence for the man, the myth, and the legend.  Attacking Bruce Lee then would have been the same as attacking the memory of my father.

What has changed since then?  You may say that I have mellowed and, though still a fan, I'm no longer as rabid as I was then.

I am a fan in that I admire his achievements and am impressed by his abilities.  I will always hold Bruce Lee in high esteem as the compleat martial artist.  But what I am not is a follower.  I have my own way to follow.  It is not better than Bruce Lee's, it is just my own.

I have no intention in being a martial artist of becoming the best fighter there is.  I have had injuries which have become physical limitations to achieving such an ambition.  And although I understand the reasoning of Bruce Lee's martial arts philosophy and agree with the bulk if not all of it, my reason in practicing eskrima is now more for reasons of cultural preservation than of athletic preparation.

Of course, I took up eskrima to become an able fighter, to learn how to defend myself.  But in the ensuing years it has become apparent to me that almost everyone else is coming up with newer, more modern ways of practicing the art.  For those interested in these styles, they can go to the clubs teaching such styles.

At one point, I realized that if most everyone else was going this way, there should be someone who can show a way back for those who might want to study the art's past.  (Except perhaps for the mystical.  Knowing nothing about it, I cannot discuss that aspect of traditional eskrima which delves into oracions, mutyas, and anting-antings.  This is something my teacher says he never learned, or even his teacher before him.  But, in Bohol, I have heard that there are still some who do and, as with all that is mystical, one is forbidden to openly talk about it or even describe the rituals.)

In his later years, Bruce Lee would come to say that he no longer believed in styles and that even his own Jeet Kune Do could not be said to be the best martial art.  He went on to say that structurally most of us are the same, having two hands and two feet, knees and elbows, and what other tools one may have.  Taken far enough by their practitioners, all martial arts will eventually resemble each other, because there's only so much that one can do with the human body.  I believe this is the reason why you would see many cognate techniques even in martial arts that developed independent of each other.

Ultimately, Lee said, it comes down to honestly expressing oneself.  This is what I'm trying to do through traditional eskrima.

My teacher only taught me through sinawali, and though there were several stick and pinute disarms, he only taught me two knife disarms, which when used up or down, right or left might almost seem like a new technique but is in fact only applications of the two.  One will also realize that these two disarms are just variations of one knife disarm.  So there was not a lot of technique to learn, but I trusted in what I learned to be effective.  I might never have been in a real fight, make that a real street fight, especially with knives, but my teacher had, on more than one occasion, and he made sure I learned how to deal with knives in a way that I can use it so.  Old-school, so to say.

I must admit that through books and Youtube videos and with the help of training partners I have learned more than what my teacher taught me.  What I have learned is not purely traditional, but his teachings and his method, or lack of it, will remain to be the core of my practice of eskrima.  And his approach will always be my standard for training.

I cannot say that my eskrima is the best or that it teaches everything there is to know, but what I have done is teach it the way I was taught and train in some of the traditional ways that some elders, only a couple of whom were eskrimadors, have described to me.

These days, however, one sees a lot of modification with most eskrima/arnis/FMA schools, especially those that are most popular.  People are coming up with new drills, adding techniques and a multitude of disarms.  Some of these styles or systems may be doing a lot of the same things as the traditional, but they've also been doing a lot of things their own way.  This is understandable, because even in the traditional stuff I learned there was always the improvisation of the individual practitioner.  But with a few of them, sometimes what is new obscures the old.

I feel that should there be a need for the modern-day eskrimador to find his way back, we must also know and be able to show the way.

I have my own path as a martial artist and the only honest way I can express myself in this is through traditional eskrima.  This is what I do because, for all the value of vicarious learning, I am most bound to that which I have learned from my own experience.  Of this, at least, I think Bruce Lee would approve.

And, come to think of it, traditional eskrima is itself without system and without method.