Dog Brothers Public Forum

ok, heres the problem. i cant always work with a partner and i need 2 hit something! so i want 2 start working a tire, but i live in an apartment and there is no room n the basement. anybody have any ideas about what i can do/build? not 2 thrilled about the idea of holes in the wall and my girlfriend wont be 2 happy about a tire standing around so, i would prefer something free standing. any products out there?
ptotts

The first dummy I had for hitting with a stick was inspired by a similar dummy my friend and former training partner Steve DelCastillo had built.  It was a sewing dummy, as in the type tailors and seamstresses use, mounted onto the bottom of an office chair. He put an old WEKAF body protector on it and jammed a stick into the neck with some balled up t-shirts hockey taped to the top where he put a WEKAF helmet. He'd put his gear bag over the base of the office chair and voila, a dummy. It worked great for his apartment.


I was living in an apartment too. I didn't have any old gear so I needed to come up with something different. I went out scouting garage sales until I found a chair and bought it. I disconnected the seat and then stuck a thick 6' long hardwood dowel, the kind used for curtain rods, into the base. I took an eskrima stick and duct taped it across the top to make a "t". I took all the t-shirts that my wife was going to give to Goodwill, about 5, and wrapped the top part of the pole so that it was thinly covered. The wood of the pole was soft and just a single hit from a stick left a sizeable dent and further strikes took chips out. The t-shirts stopped the damage to the dowel. I took duct tape and wrapped it like a mummy so none of the t-shirt material was showing.  This also muffled the sound so my neighbors wouldn't get bothered by the noise. I lived upstairs and that was a concern. I then weighted the base with sandbags. It worked well for everything that I needed. It wasn't the same as a tire dummy, but it did the trick.

The total cost for this dummy was about $20, mostly for the dowel. I later unwrapped it and replaced the t-shirts with a towel which gave it a better feel. That dummy lasted for more than a year and fit perfectly into my coat closet in my apartment when I wasn't using it.

A recap of the materials:

1 wooden dowel about 6' long about 1.5" diameter
1 new eskrima stick
1 wheeled office chair
2 25lb bags of sand
1 roll of duct tape
5 t-shirts or 1 beach towel split into 2 lengthwise

I hope that helps.

Hey There,

I think that Jugador made some good points.

I too think that it would be odd that de Corcuera would teach people. I interpreted the theory to say that he would have brought his bodyguards and strongmen with him and it would have been they that passed anything on. Those people would have been unnamed to history but could have been from anywhere including Cebu, Venezuela, and the Basque region among others.

I also see the idea of concurrent development as really feasible. The bottom line to me is that I don't think that the FMA as we know them today are without influence from the West. It's pretty often that you see styles that claim to be pre-hispanic and to me that's just not realistic. Whenever you fight other people and live, you learn something and those fights influence you.

The Grandfathers DVD is done.  The box cover is done.  The only thing holding back its actual release it that we have to have three DVDs to give to the duplication house at the same time to keep costs down.  At the moment we have Grandfathers, the conversion of POWER from the first series, and have finished the master of the double disc Kali Tudo (tm).  As soon as we finish the box cover for it, we should be ready to roll.

The DVD of "The Grandfathers Speak" contains an additional 30 minutes of footage based upon an interview I did with GM Leo Giron about his experiences in WW2.  

Editor Ron "Night Owl" Gabriel has done a stellar job on this mixing in extraordinary footage you probably have never seen.

I admit to misting up on the ending of it.

Thanks for the update!

Hey There,

A shout might help. I certainly wouldn't rule it out during a fight. But imagine trying to do a shout for each strike in a 3 or 4 point combo that you're doing in less than a second. A kiap might actually detract during that. A lot of eskrima is done in a boxing method. Boxers might trash talk, growl, or make a noise here or there, but they generally don't kiap because it generally doesn't add much to what they do. I'd say give it a shot during sparring and then see if it works for you. I think it's going to have to go through some adjustment though before it will fit into your stick fighting.

I think they're hitting plenty hard. Thinking along Newtonian lines, it's good to keep in mind that the objects hitting and being hit are not "at rest". Sometimes that can add to the strike's power, but mostly it means that you get a lot of glancing blows etc. instead of solid hits because the people you're fighting are trying hard to NOT get hit. They are also jamming the strikes and cutting lines so as to do "damage control".

I also think that people are not out to kill each other at the Gathering, but rather to learn and grow as fighters and people. Head shots might get pulled, or they might be working on developing other skills and so not take them. There's also the idea that a lot of fighters come to work on their groundfighting and not their striking.

As for the 3 weapon mask and striking the back of the head, realistically, waiver or no, there's a good chance that if you kill somebody that you will go to jail much less be eternally emotionally scarred. So strikes to the brain stem might not get so much floor time as say strikes to the limbs and trunk. Plus few people are going to give you the back of their head to hit and even fewer people know how to hit the back of the head with power while presented with the front.

My thoughts.

Hey,

I carry a swiss army knife with a blade under 2 inches. I carry it because it is mostly legal every where that I go and with the metal outside it makes a wicked pocket stick. Also it has a really sharp but not illegal leather punch. Mostly I deploy it quickly to cut rope and open the occasional brew, but it's there if I need it for other more "tactical" reasons.

I used to carry a larger and much more quickly drawn knife. But out here in Cali I decided the best way to go is the legally defensible way.

What's CSW and who is EP?

Hey There,

Those types of strikes are something that you have to work on over time. You build up the supporting muscle and tendon strength and then develop flexibility in the shoulders, elbows, and wrists that help you do it with power. I would suggest starting out slowly working on technique and then over time (at least weeks) adding power. Adding too much too soon is an invitation to injury. It's also helpful to do the same motion with a hammer or with a blade so that you have a clear focus on where the power is going and you are definitely hitting with the business edge rather than the oblique sides.

It's also helpful to have someone looking over your shoulder and giving you tips. Good luck.

Hey There,

The Filipino situation with the terrorist kidnappings in Iraq is a bit more complicated than it may look on the surface. The war is very unpopular in the Philippines not because some lefties here in the States think that it's a war for profit. The major concerns are the safety of Filipino workers overseas, the domestic stability of the Philippines, and the overall unpopularity of the Iraq War in the minds of the Filipino populace.

There is an extremely large number of Filipino citizens that are employed in Islamic countries in the middle east. Not just thousands but hundreds of thousands. They contribute a great deal to the Philippine economy and they are a very valuable part of society. The kidnapping of a Filipino worker in Iraq is not the same as a kidnapping of an American worker. The Filipinos need to have somewhat friendly relationships with these countries and those people so as to guarantee the safety of those workers in those countries not to mention the battles with the MILF, aka Al Quaida, at home.

Also GMA has a serious problem at home with the recent election. The election was seriously contested and she needs to keep her country stable. Any sign of weakness or any chance to make GMA look bad will not be passed up by the opposition. If there is political unrest in the Philippines right now it could undo a large amount of the work that she has done to attract investors and protect the future of the Philippine economy. Political unrest could also turn violent and in the interest of domestic tranquility she has chosen to appease the fears of the general population. It makes sense for her to do that.

Also it's easy for us to say that it's bad for the Filipinos to pull out the troops. But the fact is that when we chose to go alone, we chose to BE alone unless we keep others interested or paid. This is our war and a "Coalition of the Willing" means that the US has to keep up good relationships and incentives in order to keep that "Willing" part moving especially in an unpopular war. That means keeping promises. Bush promised greater access to the US for Filipino tourists coming to visit family or conduct business. Yet Filipinos are denied more entry visas to the United States today than before the war. Bush promised greater financial cooperation and business development between the US and the Philippines. Yet there was a large amount of work that had to be done by Filipinos in the United States to keep the Philippines open as an investment place for CalPers and there was no help given by the US Government. There are a lot of spots where promised aid did not come through and there is A LOT of resentment about it in the Philippines. The people know this and so the war is unpopular there as one would expect when promises are broken and bills go unpaid.  The result now is that it may cause greater harm to the Philippines to NOT withdraw the troops than to keep them there in Iraq.  

The Philippines is a democracy and as a result, if the people don't want the troops there, then GMA needs to listen and it appears that she did.


Bart Hubbard
Capital Doce Pares

Hey There,

To facilitate an understanding of some principles of Corto Linear, Ramon will be showing a few minutes of film footage showing GM Momoy Ca?ete working with other notables including Kano Ca?ete, Banoy Borja, and Ben Culanag. Additional footage will include GM Eulogio Ca?ete and GM Anciong Bacon.

I hope to see you there.


Bart Hubbard
Capital Doce Pares