The Filipino Martial Arts offer a wide variety of techniques that range from striking, locking, and breaking to trapping, disarming, and takedowns. The options are vast. With so many options, it can become challenging to focus training on core elements that will make you effective and well rounded. In budgeting your training time, it is best to spend the majority of it on skills that will get you results. Typically these are fundamental skills, skills that permeate all other skills. For example, if you cannot recognize or create an opening, then entering to successfully apply a trap, lock, or disarm will be very difficult to do. However, once you have developed fundamental offensive skills, simply learned how to get in, then you can apply many of your other techniques such as trapping, loc...

If training were simply a matter of doing the right drills and exercises, everyone would be a badass. But it’s not just physical, it’s mental. If your mind is not already strong, then consistantly following the steps it takes to reach your goals is hard. You find seemingly legitimate reasons to postpone, skip, or even give up on the actions you must take.  Most of us end up fighting our thoughts, and in doing so, sabotage our dreams. A closer look at what’s going on inside your mind will help you take action and learn to fight for your goals. The Resistance The world is out to kill you. No, you’re not paranoid. It’s true. You reach for high goals, but life fights unfairly. You were supposed to workout, but something came up at work. You want to train, but your shoulder is hurting agai...

Developing prowess in the Filipino martial arts requires access to quality instruction, hours of training alone and with partners, and a real dedication to improvement. It requires the development of coordination, timing, and a variety of other skills specific to the application of the Filipino martial arts. However, there is some low hanging fruit that can greatly approve your capability to apply Kali. This low hanging fruit is simply developing well-rounded athletic fitness. This is not ground breaking news, but it is significant. If you improve your ability to perform basic athletic movements (running, jumping, throwing, etc.), you will notice a significant improvement in your Filipino martial arts skills. If you develop strength, you will see it replicated in your strikes, takedowns, a...

Physical skills are only part of the skills that you need for self defense. You must have cognitive skills too.  One of the most important cognitive skills you can cultivate for self defense is situational awareness. What is Situational Awareness? Simply put, situational awareness is knowing what is happening around you.  It is knowing your environment and what events are occurring nearby.  In terms of self defense, situational awareness includes knowing what is happening, and knowing what, if anything, you should do about it. To do this, you must derive meaning from the circumstances in which you find yourself. Situational awareness is your perception of the environment and nearby events together with your assessment of how your actions will affect your immediate and near f...

When studying Kali, learning in the beginning is easy. You just imitate those who are better than you. You drill to develop coordination through consistent repetition. Eventually, you memorize patterns of movements that become techniques. You learn to perform those techniques when your partner feeds you a specific attack. The process for learning this in the beginning is pretty clear. The tough part of learning Kali starts when you move beyond those basics. This is where things get fuzzy. It’s gets difficult when you have to coordinate your movements to attack and counter an unpredictable opponent. You have to see what is going on, decide what to do about it, then select and perform the right technique. It is hard because you must choose from a wide variety of responses, and in choosing th...