Woof All:
What follows is a recent post of mine on the ED-- posted here in hopes of stimulating sharing of the perspectives of others.
Crafty Dog
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> Hi
>
> I was just wondering how list members train their left and right hands. I tend to work my left hand in a thrusting motion, while my right hand moves in a cutting motion. My rationale is that as a right hander I am highly unlikely to ever even think about fighting somone with a longer weapon in my left hand. The focus of my eskrima is very much on single stick & espada y daga.
>
> How do other people approach this?
> Jon
This has come up a couple of times before. To briefly summarize Dog
Brothers Martial Arts (DBMA) in this regard:
Our system has as its mission statement "To walk as a warrior for all our
days". The Real Contact Stickfighting that the Dog Brothers are known for is seen as a testing ground for the system, not merely as young sweaty smelly psychopaths with sticks airing it out.
Outside the ritual context of our "DB Gatherings of the Pack" multiple
player situations are a part of reality and we take training for such
eventualities seriously. The 360 degree awareness and capabilities required we feel are greatly enhanced by what we call "Bilateralism": the ability to work with either hand, foot or shoulder forward and either hand in dominant modality. To this end we do a lot of siniwali work with an emphasis on integrating foot and triangular footwork, blending in the footwork of Krabi Krabong.
This is in the context of short term, middle term and long term training.
If I had a beginner who needed to be a man to be reckoned with in short
order, this is not the portion of the program I would emphasize. On the
other hand, by working at this material steadily over time and acquiring the skills and coordinations necessary one can, IMHO, have a formidable and highly adaptable skill set for a wide range of situations even when the
explosiveness of youth declines. This applies to empty had as well as
weapons.
Although long & short is more of a subset of single stick in DBMA -- used
for developing the ability to really hit with the live hand-- I have high
regard for merit of long and short and was particularly impressed with the
time I saw GM Ben Luna Lema-- he readily did long & short both left and
righty-- which is a very high level of coordination indeed.
I do confess to a bias against emphasizing single stick out of concern for
its tendency to affect many people by increasing the disparity between the dominant hand and the complementary hand-- unlike a boxer who usually specializes in one side forward, but uses both hands.
Woof,
Guro Crafty
DBMA
