Back when I still had no training in eskrima, I had a very
low opinion of swordsmen or of any martial artist who fought with weapons; thus,
also eskrimadors. I held in higher
regard the skills of those who learned to fight with empty hands and kept
exclusively to it. I acknowledged it as
the more difficult and greater mastery.
For how hard is it, really, to fight with weapons?
Through the years as an eskrima practitioner, however, I
have had a reversal in my opinion. For me,
it still holds true that empty hand fighting techniques are more difficult to
learn and are the greater mastery. But
now I also say that only those martial artists who have had training and
experience with weapons can truly become masters of empty hand fighting.
You will note that there is some truth in what I say if you take
into account how many of the old grandmasters of jujitsu, judo, karate, and
aikido also trained with the staff, spear, sword, or other forms of weaponry. In most the various styles of kung fu, or
wushu, as others would want it to be called, those students who have advanced
to a certain level of proficiency are then taught techniques with weapons. It would indeed seem that weapons training is
necessary for mastery.
Eskrima may adopt a reverse methodology from other martial
arts by introducing weapons first and teaching empty hand techniques later but
the principle still applies that weapons training complements and improves one’s
effectiveness in empty hand techniques.
For one, this is because those who have trained and who do
use weapons know more fully the dangers of being attacked with such weapons,
what a skilled practitioner may accomplish with them, and also what to do to
evade them or minimize the harm they may cause.
Also, most weapons travel faster than the hand. And so, someone who has trained with weapons
is better able to keep track of his opponent’s movements and has a better
chance of evading or countering an attack, more so when the attacker is unarmed.
Even more important than the foregoing is how eskrima
conditions the eskrimador.
It is the stick handling in eskrima which trains, prepares,
and teaches the practitioner the necessary quickness of action, proper strength
of grip, flexibility of the wrist, and the torque necessary for the empty hand
applications of wrist locking and grappling.
Further, the techniques of striking, thrusting, and blocking
with either stick, sword, or knife may be readily interpolated into empty hand
strikes, punches, parries, blocks, and breaking.
Because the eskrima practitioner is trained not only to
strike with force but also to hold the stick tightly enough so that it does not
fly from his hand but also lightly enough so as not to restrict his own
movement, the practitioner, though unaware, is trained how to apply sufficient
force in restraining or trapping the opponent’s hands. In empty hand fighting, this sensitivity then
becomes reflex or second nature to the eskrimador.
Eskrima may begin with teaching one how to use weapons, but the
supreme mastery of it is still, and always, towards how to use one’s empty
hands as weapons.
