ike lots of people, I've long thought martial arts were very cool. Sure, they can be misused by cinema (any film by Steven Segal, for instance) but the concept is a lot of fun, and even if you doubt the functional use of 99% of it in actual physical conflict, it's a way to get some exercise, improve your flexibility, and gain deeper understanding into the fight scenes you see in action movies.  Unfortunately, also like lots of people, I've always admired martial arts from a distance and never actually gotten involved in any discipline. The strip mall black belt mills in which you always see two dozen 8 year olds standing in rows and punching at the air have never appealed to me, and my knees couldn't take high impact leaping stuff, but I like Tai Chi, and I really love martial arts weapons; swords, staves, etc.

Since Malaya feels much the same as me, and one of her best female friends is a Gura (teacher) at "Kali," a form that originated largely in the Philippines, we've been giving more and more serious thought to getting into some sort of martial arts training ever since I moved up here, in July of 2003. By August of 2004 we were still thinking about it, but getting closer to doing it, and by September 2004 we were both taking classes weekly, Malaya more often than I.

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October 6, 2004

After Kali class on Tuesday night, Malaya and me were talking to the teacher (AKA Gura) and Malaya asked why there weren't more women there lately. Men mostly work on bare hand and stick stuff, while women do bare hand and knives. Not exclusively of course, everyone learns everything eventually, but when there are sufficient students to break us up into different tasks, that's usually how it goes. And since there haven't been many other women at class for the past month, Malaya's been missing out on knife play.

Classes are very small in the first place; 4-8 or so usually with 6 (including Malaya and me) on Tuesday night, plus the instructor. Even numbers are better, since then everyone gets a partner for the sparring and learning process, since most everything is learned one on one, taking turns giving and receiving the technique. You've got to feel what it's like to have it done to you to do it to others, and when you and another student are learning it at the same time, you learn from each other as well as the teacher.

Anyway, while we were talking after class, the gura (female teacher) told us that she doesn't get many female students who stick with it. Most students don't stick with it at all in the first place, and women less than men. I don't know how the retention % compares to that of other forms of martial arts, but the gura's theory is that since Kali is such a deadly serious form, with killing techniques being taught right from the start and a learning curve of many years (at least five years to consider being expert enough to graduate to guru quality yourself, which just means that you might be competent to teach classes) that it scares off people who aren't serious about learning the form, and about planning for their lives in general.

She told us that few men under the age of 30ish and few women without children stick with it. I didn't see any logical connection between those groups, but in her experience teaching for many years, most women aren't comfortable with the techniques; that the stuff we're learning is too potentially deadly, and obviously so. She said she'd talked to female experts in other forms, women who had been doing Karate or whatever for a decade or more, who saw her do a demonstration with a live (sharp) sword and were freaked out. They were like, "But that's dangerous! You could kill someone!" and gura was like, "Well duh. What do you think a spinning roundhouse kick to the jaw would do? Or an eye gouge?" Not that she said it in quite those words, but it was like the women who were big on other forms never really considered what all that punching and kicking they were working at was for, ultimately. Whereas in Kali, some of the first lessons you learn with knives are diverting an attack with your empty hand, then pushing it aside with your knife hand, slicing your blade along their arm the whole way, and then finishing them with a stab to the throat.

Tuesday night in class we were all working with short sticks, and learning to block with one hand in the middle of the stick, redirecting it sort of like shooting a pool cue. I can't describe the whole thing in words and you don't care anyway, but the point was to block that way and then slide behind them and use your staff for a choking device. It was quite cool, all the different arm placements, the footwork required, the potential counters and counters to counters, throws possible from that position, pressure points on the neck and throat, etc.

Imagine you're holding your stick in your right hand, making a fist, and the other end of your stick is tucked into the crook of your left elbow. Almost like playing a violin with a very long bow. Now your left arm is bent upwards, and you use that hand to wrap around their head, neck, side of their face... whatever, in order to move their head to the proper angle to crush their windpipe, or hit a pressure point and drop them into submission. Techniques include finding the correct pressure points quickly, finding ones that you can't hit without rolling the stick down at an angle, cocking the stick under their jaw to turn their heads and break the neck, and more.  We're working on this with other people, and using hard wooden sticks (Malaya and me just got a lovely pair of dark mahogany sticks that are about as hard as stone.) and yes, you could easily severely injure someone practicing like that, and yes, you could very easily kill a person that way, or at least knock them unconscious, or put them on the ground helplessly gasping for breath.  Then kill or cripple them in any number of ways.

To me, that's what makes it worth doing. Not that I'm going to murder people with the technique, but that it's immediately and obviously applicable to real life combat, and it's very effective. And according to gura, that's what turns off lots of other people to it.

Her theory is that people who are still young or haven't really given much thought to what they want to do with their lives don't like that. They have to think about life and death and how easily they could die or kill, and it unsettles them.

Young men, teens and twenties, usually think they're immortal and nothing could go wrong too badly. That's why they drive 120MPH on the freeway, binge drink, get into stupid fights, and engage in all the other reckless behaviors men are so well-known for. You'd think those habits would make Kali attractive to young guys, but they apparently lack the discipline to stick with it long enough to get any good. Also, it's hard for a lot of people, young men especially, to admit they aren't good at something. And when you're in a class with half a dozen other people all of whom could cripple you without even really trying, especially when they're older, or not in very good shape, or women, or whatever, it's humbling, and a lot of young men don't have a strong enough ego to take that. Apparently.

As for women not sticking with it, I don't have as much insight into their condition, but as gura said and Malaya agreed, most women don't have that old cliché, the killer instinct. The sort of potentially deadly thing we were working on Tuesday night is a prime example, as gura said lots of women just aren't comfortable with that sort of power. To learn something that they could use not just to fight back or escape an attacker, but to go on the offensive with and even kill with, unsettles them. And, oddly enough, women with children are much more able to deal with it, probably because their protective she-bear instincts come to life once they've got young to protect. Like they can't imagine fighting or killing for themselves, but they can do it for their children.  Men who have families are turned onto Kali more as well, since while they might have always had the aggressive impulses, they've now got a family to protect, to stay alive to provide for, and they're accustomed to making hard choices, sacrificing immediate pleasure for long term improvement, and other such adult issues.

Gura also said that there is often a drop off after two years or so, when people sort of plateau in their skills and start to get tired of the regular practice, when advancing further in ability is obviously going to take them years more. I dunno if I'll have that problem, and I'm enjoying Kali so far, but feel free to check back in 23 months to see if I'm still at it.

October 1, 2004

Kali is the discipline I'm training in (if once a week mostly for fun can really be considered "training") and it's a Filipino style honed over the centuries. It's performed largely bare-handed, but also includes a lot of work with short sticks, knives, swords, and staves, though it's very adaptable; you can really use anything as an effective weapon, once you know what you're doing. The local master (one of the very few masters anywhere in this discipline) has advanced classes at his home in which he regularly turns out very odd tools. Shovels, rolled up newspapers, garden tools, etc.

What I enjoy most about the art is that it's not all pretentious or regimented. It's the antithesis of those strip mall karate classes where you see a dozen 8 y/o's dressed in their cute little Karate outfits, standing in lines and punching the air while shouting in unison, like very young Tae Bo students who lack music. Kali is also not high impact on your body (unless you get hit, I suppose); it's not jiu jitsu or some other art were you're doing cartwheels and spinning kicks and need padded mats, lots of leaping ability, and knee surgery to compete proficiently.

Kali is all about practicality. You don't wear a special outfit to class, and you don't spend a great deal of time practicing forms, learning how to bow correctly, memorizing foreign names for complicated moves, etc. Your first class you are right in there, learning practical things like how to block and hit, how to keep your balance, move with your correct feet, counter attacks, and more. You get to use weapons immediately also; dulled knives and staves right from the start, and it's fun. There are all sorts of spinning techniques that look like showing off at first, but that you soon find out are essential to the art. You could just hit and hit and hit with your stick from different angles, but if you know how to spin the stick some in between strikes it's a great rhythm breaker, throwing off your opponent, confusing them about the direction from which you are coming, and setting your timing for your next strike.

Almost all of the techniques are learned in twos; the teacher shows you something new, and then everyone pairs up to practice it, taking turns. Thursday night we were working (for part of the class) with a drop punch sort of technique that's hard to describe in words, but which was executed after the basic check/block technique (with which you turn aside/dodge a punch and then counterattack). Basically you move like you're doing a normal punch, but with your fist just a few inches from the target you fall downwards a bit, letting your legs go loose, and use the momentum from that to turn your short little punch into a hammer. It seems absurd, but after we tried it a few times (and I felt the gura hit me with it) I realized how useful it was. Not that that's the first thing I'd do in some hypothetical/mythical street fight, but it's a way to hit someone ten times harder than you could otherwise, in that sort of situation, and it's applicable to many other types of maneuver.  With the punch (which we were all taking turns hitting each other with, pulling them short of course) we then learned to add a sidearmed shove/hit sort of thing that looks like it couldn't bruise fresh bread, but when done properly will shove you several feet sideways. Literally; I "hurfed" and staggered when the gura demonstrated one into my low back, and she wasn't even trying.

The trick of it is to use the momentum you gain by dropping down several inches and put that force/mass into motion with a punch or shove. So it's not just whatever your arm can muster, it's the weight of your entire body dropping six inches as you flex your knees, channeled into your fist. It's incredibly deceptive to watch and to execute; I didn't feel like I was doing anything, and the much more advanced student I was practicing with was taking two steps back from the momentum. (Not that he couldn't have sent me across the room if he'd wanted to, or that I was shoving him as hard as I could; the point is that by doing something seemingly simple a little maneuver was made enormously more effective.)

And no, that little trick isn't the basis of the entire art or anything like that, it's just what we worked on Thursday night. I am not experienced enough with Kali to comment on it at any depth; I can only talk about what I've done personally and how effective it seems to me.

The footwork was another thing we worked on a lot; when the experts move it's just amazing to watch them; they seem to be gliding, hardly moving their feet when they move, and yet they're always behind you, always moving around you faster than you can react, and always coming at you with the correct foot for their strike. The gura will show us something and it looks easy, and then we try it and it's thirty seconds of stubbed toes and missteps until we're like... "Okay, which foot did you step with first?" She doesn't even need to think about it, since after many years of training it's just instinct. Beginning dancers need charts of "left, right, right, left, right" type instructions; experts just go with the flow of the music and their partner, and everything builds on everything else; as we learn simple tricks and techniques and movements we see them included in the more advanced stuff the more experienced students are doing.

But for the footwork on Thursday, we were learning to do these sort of slide steps, keeping our knees bent quite a bit, keeping our weight centered and back on our heels, and keeping our heads still. Watching someone expert at Kali move is amazing, since they really look like they're on wheels, or ice. They just flow and slide, and they're almost silent doing it. No slapping of heels or toes or scratching of feet; it's like they're on cotton and the rest of us are wearing iron boots.  And they're always in the right place, always moving to counter or react before I can even begin to turn. So Gura was teaching us something about that last night, how to walk, how to move, and how it should feel. And when I got just a little bit of it right, it felt so different. Stumbling turned to gliding for just a moment, and I felt light and smooth. It's the same with other techniques; the proper way to swing the stick around (letting centrifugal force almost pull it, so you swing faster with far less effort), or spin it, or whatever, and when you do it right you can really feel it. It moves straighter, faster, and more smoothly.

I harbor no illusions that I could actually turn any of the theoretical combat knowledge and sparring experience into actual street survival skills, at least not yet, but since I'm not in junior high or drunk in the cheap seats at a Raiders' game, I hardly need to worry about getting into any brawls. For now it's fun to learn, challenging, and excellent exercise. Every class I come home with something sore, and as another guy in the class said, "Kali works weird muscles."  Thursday night with all of the footwork it was the thighs; Malaya was limping out to the car afterwards, and she does squats and presses and elliptical and such at the gym every day. Other times I've come home with the muscles on the outside of my shoulders so sore I could hardly lift them, or the backs of my arms, or my knees. Tonight Malaya and me both have bandaids on the inside of our right thumbs where we got healthy blisters from all of the stick work we were doing.  It's surprising just how many muscles you use doing punching, or blocking, or stick work that are different from the ones you develop in a normal workout.

I'm enjoying the class though, and it's not too expensive (I'd go more often if I felt like I could afford it.) and I learn a lot every time, so I'm glad we're doing it. Malaya is even more into it than I am, and goes to 2 or 3 classes a week, and yes, it's useful to have each other to practice with, spar with, remind each other of proper footwork and technique, and so on. I'd recommend Kali to anyone who thinks it sounds interesting, but it's not very well-known around the country or world and I have no idea where you could get qualified training in it other than in the Bay Area, so just look into some other martial art you think you might enjoy. As long as they don't remind you of the Cobra Kai or force new students to do a bunch of Kill Bill style "punch your fists to a bloody pulp" bullshit they're probably pretty okay. I just wish I'd started something ten years ago, since I'd be expert in at least one form, and could easily apply that to the Kali work I'm doing now.

September 13, 2004

Sunday morning I went to Kali class with Malaya, my 2nd real martial arts class as a full participant (the one we attended together last year was more of a visitor type thing). It's a good class with a real master teaching it, but it's also held at 9am over in Oakland, and that's a fair distance at an unfair time, by my standards at least. The parents went along, but they were going to hit the local Unitarian Church for the service and out of curiosity. Of course class went long, well past 12:30, so they were back before it ended, and the weather was quite chilly Sunday morning, like 65 and windy, so they bundled up on the cement bench and watched for a bit, before retreating to their rental convertible (with the roof very much up) and waiting for us to finish.

It wasn't a real great class for spectating, at least not until the end when the noobs (like Malaya and I) sit down and watch the gurus spar with interesting weapons and techniques, assisted and coached by the master. We learn a lot just by watching people who actually know what they're doing, and it's like a good kung fu movie, for free, in person. Though you're much more likely to see someone actually get hit during these sparring sessions than you are in most martial arts movies.  It's damn entertaining too; the master going with double sticks against a very good guy with a long staff and then a spear was damn impressive.  Certainly motivated me to want to get better with the stick, so I can work up to using two of them. That's a years-long project though.

I'll write more about the Kali classes soon, since Malaya's been going twice a week for a couple of months, and I'm going to be going (at least) once a week now that I've tried it and enjoyed it. I also seem to pick the movements up pretty quickly, though there's nothing like sparring with someone who's been doing it for 4 or 5 or 8 years to immediately humble me. As I struggle to master the 4 or 5 rapid hand/arm movements to successfully block a slow motion punch and deliver a good counter-strike, my more experienced fellow students effortlessly catch my punch, pull me sideways, and delivery 3 or 4 killing blows in literally 2 seconds.  We've got to practice everything in slow motion several times, and I think I'm doing good when I can do that, and maybe deal with them at half-speed. And then I see them working with each other, or they go full speed once in a while as we're sparring, pulling their punches short of hitting me, of course, and it's just... yeah.

The master at Sunday's class has been practicing and teaching Kali for upwards of 40 years, and while he looks like a dumpy little Filipino guy in street clothes; when you see him move it's scary. So fluid, so quick, and he's like iron under his skin and slight pot belly. He shows you the movements and hits you with about 10% of his power, and you stagger back. Literally; he does little slaps just for fun to show you where he would have hit, and your arm goes numb. He was showing me a little block to chest bump thing, and while leaning against my sternum he did the bump at about 1/5 power, and I went "whoof" and staggered back two steps.  And he was just leaning on me; zero distance to build up speed or power, and he was far from trying to knock me.

I was always very skeptical of that focused force and power stuff, like how they say Bruce Lee could knock someone ten feet with a one inch-punch, but when you feel it pushing into your sternum hard enough to empty your lungs, or feel a short little guy slap your arm casually and it feels like you just got hit by the door of a truck, it's sort of hard to remain a non-believer.

I don't know what my long-term goals are with studying Kali, but I enjoy the classes, enjoy doing the exercises, and since Malaya is into it as well (meaning we've always got a sparring partner/move memory aid) I'll going to keep at it for a while. It's not real cardiovascular, but it's fun to learn new techniques, it's definitely a good way to build up some muscle in odd places (lots of work on the wrists, my triceps were aching from all the punching the first class, and both my forearms and thighs are sore today from stick and footwork), I've gained some coordination, and on the off-chance I need to defend myself against a non-gun wielding opponent, it might come in handy.

It's also very informative when we see the good people duel, since it shows just how absurd the fights in movies are. Any one with any skill in Kali would counter and put away 98% of the people I've ever seen in a movie within 2 or 3 moves. Literally, movie character would take a big, slow, telegraphed swipe with their sword, Kali expert would sidestep, slap the opponent's weapon hand down effortlessly, and then strike hard to the head or other vulnerable areas, and that would be that.  True, fights of those type wouldn't make much of a movie, but reality seldom does.

Anyway, more on Kali soon, perhaps Friday after I attend class Thursday night and have more to say and more perspective on the whole thing.

August 8, 2003

Yesterday night Malaya and I stopped by a friend's Kali class, hoping to get a look at what was going on there.  Kali is a form of martial arts popular in the Philippines, and while I don't know enough about various forms of martial arts to explain it clearly in comparison to other forms, it's pretty likely none of you know enough about them to benefit much from such a comparison, if I were even capable of making it. Basically Kali is a weapon-oriented form, one with very smooth and flowing movements, and not much foo foo flim flam type posing or rules or ceremony.  People in the classes don't wear those cute little Karate Kid type uniforms, and you don't all stand in rows and punch imaginary objects while shouting in Japanese or Chinese.  It's a much more practical and flowing form, and Malaya's friend is very young for an instructor, but she's very skilled in it, and she makes it fun. I had fun, anyway.

I haven't observed her class before, but she only teaches a few people, and on this night they were in a new location and the turnout was smaller than usual.  As a result Malaya and I participated in the class and got to see just how it would go for new students.  One of the regular students had brought three sticks, so we all used those for some basic drills and techniques, and went from learning to just twirl them around in our hands while moving our arms in the correct way to applying the techniques we'd been using to learn to strike powerfully, as well as adapt some defensive techniques for bare-handed fighting.

We're not under any illusions that we could not kick ass in a street brawl or anything like that, but it was some exercise and interesting and a reasonable way to spend a couple of hours.  The teacher spent a lot of time talking about theory and concepts, in terms of defending, allowing the other person to pick the target and then evading their strike, turning an attack aside, but we were also spending a lot of time just working on the physical techniques with the sticks and then with bare hands, combining it with footwork, etc.

It was sort of an impromptu session, since we'd just dropped by to watch and only joined in since we were invited and the class was very small that night, so it wasn't like "Introduction to Kali 101" or anything like that, but I found it informative enough.  I have no idea what a full on beginning Kali class would be like, and what sort of thing we'd start off doing, but the teacher is not hung up on rules and slow learning curves, so it's not at all unusual for brand new students to be handling live knives or sticks or engaging in careful sparring their very first class.

That sort of thing is what Malaya and I like, since we both want to just jump into something, and don't have patience for endless regimented drills and training practices.  We just need to find an art and a teacher that we like enough to stick with, in a discipline that uses a lot of weapons and tools, since we're really attracted to that aspect of things, rather than just hand to hand combat.  Malaya's friend yesterday night would be a good option, but since she's been Malaya's close friend for so many years it wouldn't work real well, with the whole master/student relationship not meshing with the friend/friend dynamic.

But I feel better able to figure that sort of thing I want to train in, having spent a session checking out Kali.  Kali isn't a very popular/well-known style, so it's not like I'm/we're going to try out everything once and then pick one, but previously it was like trying to pick a car when never having actually been to an auto dealer.  We know what sort of martial art we like, and several of the better-known ones are already ruled out for various reasons (Judo and Karate are way too chop chop and non-flowing and regimented and repetitive for our tastes), so we'll be looking to find something we're comfortable spending some years learning more about.

I mentioned a few days ago that Malaya and I drove up to Sonoma State to view a female martial arts demonstration. I thought I might blog about it at some length, and I still might, but I'm not going to do so today.  I took about 30 photos while there, mostly of the various demonstrations, but looking over them tonight, I'm pretty disappointed.  Only about half a dozen of them are in decent enough focus to bother posting, and only a few of those show anything interesting enough to post.  Most of the time I tried to take a picture of the people sparring or whatever, and by the time my digital camera clicked, the action was over.  Or the people are all blurry.  Sports photography is harder than it looks, and it's impossible with a slow to click digicam like mine.

The fact that most of the women doing their cute little prancing routines could use those same moves at higher speed to beat the crap out of me is irrelevant, and I'll thank you for not bringing that up.  You should also not mention how much I want to learn to do that sort of thing and how much I enjoy doing my own utterly amateurish and improvised Tai Chi moves now, when the mood takes me.

And here is a shot of a nice demonstration by two masters at their discipline. Both women were at least 50 years old, and they were frighteningly fast with the sword and staff, landing numerous nasty hits to each other's heads an shins.  There were at least half a dozen demonstrations from groups who used sparring weapons and pads and sparred no contact; you could very clearly hear wooden staves cracking into pads and helmets from 20 feet away.  It looked like a lot of fun.

Malaya and I are still debating what discipline we want to get into, and she's been looking online for classes in the area.

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