The three major branches of Filipino martial arts are Arnis typically from the northern Luzon regions, Eskrima from the central Visayas regions, and Kali from the southern Mindanao regions. Inside these branches dwell a protracted line of masters, families, systems and history. Most Filipino systems will associate with one in every of these terms and their respective regions of the Philippines.
As a guerrilla combat art it has proved to be extremely effective. The local warriors would make use of whatever that they had around them to make use of against many invading cultures. Today is it widely practiced as a exploration into the history of the Filipino culture.
Using the stick and the dagger is commonest in all the Filipino martial arts, but like all traditional martial arts it has gotten away from easy and effective to complicated and useless.
At its core, the indigenous martial arts of the Philippines are based on the bolo, a machete like weapon used for all the pieces from farm work to fighting. Born from guerrilla combat, Filipino martial arts should not a systemized type of combat.
Traditions and teachings are transferred from father to son, master to student. Teaching methods vary and documentation of those methods only occurred over the past 2 a long time.
Most traditional martial arts fall victim to this same problem. Instructors begin to make things complicated to be able to replenish time and keep students occupied. Take a take a look at the Japanese throughout the Edo period. With nobody to fight, the samurai warriors began to over analyze, write poetry and arrange flowers. The identical is true with the Filipino martial arts, from the fundamental techniques of what actually worked, today we’ve got an advanced and confusing symbolic representation of what happened within the jungle.
For effective fighting technique and real self defense it doesn’t have to be complicated, just easy and adaptable to the today’s modern world.