Informative Issue No. 93 2013

A Curriculum that has been Broken Down into Three Parts

Marc LawrenceMarc Lawrence

Foundation Curriculum The Program in Action Final Comment

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The FMA Informative was able to have Punong Guro Marc Lawrence share his program of Basic Arnis de Mano. This program will give the student the overall basis of Arnis de Mano so then the student can proceed on to a style/system of their chioce. Marc Lawrence is a Mataw-Guro or Master Teacher and a member of Mataw-Guro Association. The Ar-nis Professionals Association of the Republic of the Philippines certified him as an Instructor. He is the Founder and Punong Guro of the Modified Pangamut System.

A Word From Marc Lawrence I started this with this idea of Arnis De Mano education did not come from me but from the Mataw Guro Association and its Founders. I believe in giving credit where credit is due. I would love to say that I developed this concept but I will give credit to Professor Soteco program of School of Arnis Professionals and to the Ma-taw Guro Association, which I am member of. Instead of trying to teach and compete with long programs in martial arts offering a ranking- belt/levels of learning system, I would offer a short only 12 weeks basic fighting class that would have just 12 hours of class time plus what the student did for home work. Most students did an extra 2 hours a week of training with each other away from class with each other in the dojo or at someone’s house.

Foundation

I will start with this idea of Arnis De Mano education did not come from me but from the Mataw Guro Association and its Founders. I believe in giving credit where credit is due. I would love to say that I developed this concept but I will give credit to Professor Soteco program of School of Arnis Pro-fessionals and to the Mataw Guro Association, which I am member of. The Professor wrote a book called “Arnis in 12 Easy Lessons”.

He teaches and works through the University of Cavite. I took what I learned from him and his book for the foundation of this idea of my class. I found this book filled with some great ideas and was very in-

sightful. Acting upon this idea and the request by a number of local Karate School in my town, it had a synergistic effect upon how I was teaching my Arnis de Mano. Instead of trying to teach and compete with long programs in martial arts offering a ranking- belt/levels of learning system, I would offer a short only 12 weeks basic fighting class that would have just 12 hours of class time plus what the student did for home work. Most students did an extra 2 hours a week of training with each other away from class with each other in the dojo or at someone’s house. I went forward in devel-oping a curriculum that followed the outline of book. What I found was it need adjusting to the re-quests from Masters of the Karate schools. What they were looking for was an Arnis Class that would show how the stick was used, how the knife was used and how all of this would relate to empty hands AKA Karate. (For those who do know it that is the translation of what Karate means) To do this meant that I would have to pair some things down and enhance others so that the student would be

able to transition well and not get confused as well be able to add to their current Martial Art. I sat down and put to-gether a written training outline that would deliver what I had in mind. Now with all ideas they all sound good but you really need to bounce them off other people as we all have a tendency to get tun-nel vision about things we make or create. In a sense we all think our ideas are the greatest things since pockets on shirts or sliced bread! So what I did is I shared what I wanted to do with my senior students as to make this happen it would take my time as well as theirs. That meant I needed buy in from them so they had a stake in it. So what we did is as follows; we had a number of instructors meet-ing where we did a review of the proposed curriculum and where we looked at a schedule to teach the class. Unlike most people I do not have every Saturday off because I work for Fire Department as a Fire Captain. We have rotating shifts that change by one day each week. That meant to make all of this happen at least two on my senior instructors would have to take a training day.

Curriculum

After all of that work we came up with a curriculum that was broken into three parts, these being month one, month two and month three. Each lesson would be rolled out at the beginning of the month and then repeated each work for the rest of the month. We agreed to put a cut-off date, of two weeks in the beginning in the first month. This was so we did not disrupt the students in the class as have to go back to the beginning every time we had a new student who wanted to attend. We discussed many ideas about striking patterns and re-viewed many patterns used. To make this a generic method, one that was not teaching my system but one that could blend with any system out there. In this way any student could go through the class get their basics and then decide if they wanted to learn more then they could learn my system or someone else’s. This idea is the concept behind Arnis Education as shared by the Mataw Guro Asso-ciation. We decide to use the three basic strikes concept, these being forehand, backhand and centerline thrust. We decided to blend three different Cinco Terros patterns together, this would lead to what is called the eight basic. This was due to their simplicity and effec-tiveness proven through combat. We based our strikes upon physical body landmarks rather then try to explain angles. Our premise was to keep it simple and effective. We were following the roots of the early days of Filipino Martial Arts, from when it was taught to keep a village safe from raiders. We decided to teach this from a stick/

impact weapon perspective first. Put simply, how to break bones and disable some one quickly us-ing a single stick. In the first old fighting pattern we looked at from Cinco Terros was an old pattern that went like this: left collar bone, right col-lar bone, left short ribs, right short ribs and a thrust to the Solar Plex-us area. This according to many European fencing masters has its roots in Spanish sword methods. The second Cinco Terros pattern we looked at was: left collar bone, right collar bone, left knee, right knee and a center thrust to the So-lar Plexus region. The third Cinco Terros pattern we looked at for the project was: left collar bone, right collar bone, left knee, right knee, center line thrust to the Solar Plex-us region and a center-line strike to the crown- frontal region of the skull. By combining these three it made eight basic targets that were delivers using forehand, backhand and centerline strikes and thrusts. This became seven strikes, thrust to the centerline of the body. We decided we would teach simple V-step footwork, we would be using only the single stick, but no double stick due to time constraints, live hand work on a basic level of checks, grabs, passes and vines, basic striking as described earlier, blocking and simple parrying all on the medium striking range. We discussed and decided to teach the class from the self -defensive/ offensive perspec-tive, aka “street fighting” rather than tournament fighting perspec-tive. We included the use of a hunting/ fishing knife for offensive and defensive training. This was

completely different then Professor Setaco of just sticks. This meant to instill simple concepts based upon the carrying of knives for self-de-fense. This was address the need as many people in our area carry fold-ing knives for daily life. We dis-cussed the needs of hand to hand as well as hand on weapon fight-ing methods. We put together a simple Mano Y Mano method that reflected the motions taught in the stick training but using the limbs of the body as the sticks instead. We came up with simple drills that the students could practice on their own as well as in class to allow them to train more then just once a week to build upon their skills. One of the issues we fore-saw was the wanting to integrate the Karate in with the Arnis de Mano. What we came up with was when they did Karate they would be a left foot lead like they nor-mally did and when they did Arnis de Mano they did a right foot lead. That way they could separate their arts at first, while they were learn-ing Arnis de Mano. As the class progressed it did not take long for the students to blend their Karate to our Arnis and vice versa. Some of the students said that our meth-ods fit like Lego blocks together making it a great fit. After many discussions and some good meetings with going over the methods to ensure con-sistency we came up with a cur-riculum that looked solid for the first month. Our textbook would be the book I wrote “The Basics of Filipino Martial Arts by Marc Lawrence”. All Instructors would be at the first class of each month to ensure we all taught the same way. We taught and organized our

lessons from the most basic con-cepts like starting with footwork, how to hold the stick, how to strike

a target, the parts of the stick, etc. In this manner anyone taking the class could learn how to defend

themselves correctly and counter attack if needed.

The Program in Action

Warm ups and stretching exercises were same as used by South Bay FMA club but only the 5 count as short version before each class, as we only had an hour with a morning karate class com-ing in behind ours.

Striking pattern would be a combination of three Cinco Terros methods making seven strikes and one thrust. We referred to this to

as the basic eight. These were all delivered at the medium range, aka Medo. These are forehand, back-hand, thrust and circular strike for #8. We stressed to remind students this an impact weapon used on joints of the body and weak bones near the surface of the skin. The grip will be the basic overlapping thumb grip. The footwork was right foot forward; weapon hand and feet are matched. A special note in teaching was if left handed person they are left lead instead. Legs shoulder width apart ready to run at someone. Blocking was

taught using rigid block for strikes 1-4, sweep blocks for 5-6, upright parry for thrust #7 and flat roof for #8 strike against the center-strike is the center of the head. We used a lot of one per-son in the middle and forming a circulating line that would rotate everyone in and out for practice of each evolution. We used what we called Monkey in the middle from the kid’s knick name for the game. People would come up at you slowly at first then quicker as it progress with stick, then knife then empty hands until at the end of the 12 weeks you got the sur-prise line of a mixed bag of stick, knife or empty hands with kicks and punches. As all of the students were already Karate they had skills for Empty Hands fighting. Knife was a hunting size knife, strikes were be the same angles as knife but targets are adjusted to soft tissue instead of bone and joints. Grip will be the same as the stick. Block was cut and the check was at joint methods for control. Empty hands was the use of a Hammer fist and checking for offense and defense will be two hands up with double palm block at joints, concept was how do you open a heavy door. Knee strikes are bladed Shin kicks to the knee joint from the outside. Thrust -strike #7 is a vertical punch to the solar plexus area, blocking is to pivot off - side when attacked with a jab. A rolling back fist is to the face and nose area two hand heavy door

method is the block. Using boxing gloves for practice tuck in together when blocking. In the second month we built upon our lessons working with the Karate students. We intro-duced them to Largo using the up and down method of striking with stepping off with V-step footwork. Offense- this means when you step with your left foot, you strike up-wards and when you step with your

right you strike downwards. The stick stays on the right side on you body as you do this. Defense is using the mir-

ror method- this means you strike downward stepping with your right as the counter to them striking upward, and when the when they strike downward you will strike upward and step with your left. This gets you body out of align-

ment on the weapon. We explained to them that Largo range is when you can strike hand (and forearm). This was what got called fighting in a doorway method. We introduced them to block check counter using striking blocks with footwork. Defense-Ex-ample when your opponent strikes with at you with a #1 forehand strike. You respond with a right lead using a strike block, striking his stick, checking his hand and clearing his weapon and stepping

left with you left foot, counter striking with a #2 backhand strike while pivoting your body out of alignment. You would pivot on the front foot and tuck your rear foot behind you. Knife work was done just like the method used in the stick the only difference the reach of the weapon, in-stead of blocking, use the cut, check, counter strike method. Footwork was the same as the stick. The motion was done a one, two, three Abasadario method. Targets for cutting

were soft tissue instead on bony joints. Empty Hands was done just like the method used in the stick the only difference the reach of the weapon now was the student’s hands and feet! Instead of blocking, they used the check/block, counter strike method on the out-side. Footwork was the same as the stick. The motion was again one, two, three count Abasa-dario method. Targets were the joints of the limbs and main pressure points for counter strike targets of the body. All counter strikes are with rotational force for full effect. For our third month we covered the introduction to basic curv-ing strikes with the stick. We taught Arcos (two Circulos- circle strikes) from a horizontal and ver-tical angles, using the eight count striking patterns combining verti-cal and horizontal strikes- pattern was collar bone, collar bone, ribs, ribs, knees, knees, head and head. Second we taught Abanikos (the fan motion) with an eight count

going head, head (side), ribs, ribs, using the Rainbow Abaniko (an inverted Abaniko) to right knee, left knee then groin and center line head. Then we taught the figure-eight pattern from both overhand and underhand methods. We had them us an eight count pattern-collar bone, collar bone, ribs, ribs, knees, knees, head, head. Disarms were taught using the vining method with both fore-

hand and backhand vining on the eight count we have taught them. The other disarm is the block check, grab strike the hand with the tip. Using the eight -count pattern established in the beginning of the class. Empty hand verse stick was the block check vine with live hand and strike disarm. Using the eight-count pattern. For the forehand strikes use the counter clockwise

vine. For the backhand strike use the clockwise vine. With the knife there are no vining disarms taught student was taught that you would cut yourself with a knife if you vined it. The students were taught to use the cut - block method,

coupled with the grab pull method on the eight count. We stressed that they learned to grab the back of the blade when they do this. This was so student would not get the bad habit of wrapping their fingers around a blade edge. Empty Hands was taught as hand on weapon, using the lessons

taught already about vining for the stick. We made it a game with one side of the class having the stick and the other side not having the stick. The goal was to disarm your opponent and get the stick were you could use it to strike back. We

called the game the Banda-Banda game (Spank-Spank Game). This was because if you did not do it correctly that is what would hap-pen. We had decided to video the class and pro-duced a DVD for

sale with some additional items attached for further training. This was done on the request of several students, as they wanted a visual reminder

of what they had learned. We found that we had to have sticks and wooden knives available for train-ing as many students did not own them or had substandard ones.

Final Comment

I feel the classes went well because of the support my instruc-tors teaching the classes when I was on duty at the Fire Station. This solved the logistical situa-tion of my schedule to the request for classes. I have to thank Sensei

William Ford of Kaizen Dojo who hosted the class, instructor Eric Jue, Guro Boris Fritz and Assistant Instructor Ray Melchor, my wife’s cousin Victor Labarintino who helped in the second class with shooting pictures as well as shared

his life experiences of knife work from Illocos Norte Province. Com-munity classes do not happen like this without a team effort. It seems to take a village to teach a village fighting art.

Arnis de Mano Class#1 - Students were Sensi William Christopher Ford, Jay Takaki, Brandi Yamagucki, Stu-dent Instructor Ray Melchor, Instructor Eric Jue, Guro Boris Fritz, Mataw-Guro Marc Lawrence

Arnis de Mano Class #2 - Andy Trinadad, Jay Takaki, Ted, Kyle Labaritino,the boys “Phenus and Freb”, stu-dent Instructor Matthew Lawrence, Student Instructor Ray Melchor, Instructor Eric Jue, Guro Boris Fritz and

Mataw-Guro Marc Lawrence

The Basics of Filipino Martial ArtsBy Marc Lawrence

Master Marc Lawrence Academy of Masters Hall of Fame - Life Time Award, developed this book based upon information gathered over years from 37 different Grandmasters, Masters, Guros and Instructors of what makes up the basics of the Filipino martial art known as Arnis, Eskrima, or Kali. The book contains photographs, diagrams and detailed information that explains what makes the basics any of the Filipino Martial Arts styles is use today. This book serves as companion to any Filipino mattial arts style and this information will enhance their skill. (92 pages)To Order: Click Here

TRIBAL FIGHT WEAR came about when two martial artists saw a need to represent the Tribal Culture that is the spirit of Martial Arts. This occurred due to many requests from people asking if one of the clubs would sell their shirts, which were only available to club members. The re-sult was the creation of a Logo that would incorporate the company name and reflect the culture of the tribal spirit & country. The Logo is broken down in three parts, a flag representing tribal spirit, three weapons of traditional heritage and the company name which all combine to create the logos of TRIBAL FIGHT WEAR. The products are made from high quality materials that proudly reflect the heritage and culture of the tribe or country. The first

shirts and hats are reflecting the Pacific Islands Tribal Spirit.Visit: www.tribalfightwear.com

Hand Made Sticks and Daggers

All items are craftsmen made and signed by the maker. The maker’s works have been displayed at the FPAC festival.- Hand-made, Rattan Arnis sticks made from furniture grade with the skin on and fire hardened in 21” or 28” length are $6.00 USD each plus shipping - Hand-made hardwood Filipino-Hunting style training knife, varnish finished 10’’ are $10.00 USD each plus shipping - Hand-made hardwood American-Military style training knife varnish finished 10” are $10.00 USD each plus shipping - Handmade hardwood Filipino Barong Style training Bolo varnish finished 28” are $ 35.00 USD each plus shipping.Contact: mjlawrence@sbcglobal.net or (310) 961-1266

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