Dog Brothers, and on

**Hiro Protagonist** · Posted On: 12/04/2012 3:56am

Hehe, thank you very much, guys!

I can't make any promises, though, and I will keep true to an earlier statement, and not visit the site in quite a while. But when I return, ahem, to keep with the moniker I have got from my years on this site... Let's say that when I get back, a certain cat will have become a Dog. :)

Thank you so much for your help. It's been so long since I really had this spark burning for martial arts. Escrima seems to bring it back. - And without you guys, I would not have gotten as involved.

Take care, and an early happy holidays, everybody!

Yours,

Rafe

**Bezmond** · Posted On: 12/04/2012 8:10am

Hello there,

I don't know nuthin about stickfightin, but I remembered an interview I read with lonely dog in Martial Arts Illustrated which might interest you:

http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index....ic=1203.0;wap2

"MT: So it was 4 years before you had any formal training under Marc Denny?

BR: Yes I just trained from the DVD's, I would watch them again and again, hundreds of times, perfecting each specific move until the tapes eventualy broke!. But, after a few years I knew that if I wanted to go any further I would have to go to the USA. So I wrote a letter to the Dog Brothers address in Hermosa Beach California. Mark Denny replied to my letter and invited me over. Some months later I made my first visit to Hermosa beach.

MT: How did the training differ from what you had been doing on your own?

BR: It was pretty interesting, Marc just asked me to do some Carenza (shadow boxing). He commented that I moved quite well and he asked me who my teacher was, to which my reply was 'My teacher is VCR!'. During the 5 day PTP we covered a lot of material and mostly he was surprised at how fast I could adapt to the material. It was not until the 5th day when Marc showed me some techniques really gave me a hard time and I think he was he was quite glad to find something I could not do straight away...Over all he was impressed that someone could learn so much from just videos."

All the best.

**Fuzzy** · Posted On: 12/04/2012 8:31am

Originally Posted by Hiro Protagonist

Hehe, thank you very much, guys!

I can't make any promises, though, and I will keep true to an earlier statement, and not visit the site in quite a while. But when I return, ahem, to keep with the moniker I have got from my years on this site... Let's say that when I get back, a certain cat will have become a Dog. :)

Thank you so much for your help. It's been so long since I really had this spark burning for martial arts. Escrima seems to bring it back. - And without you guys, I would not have gotten as involved.

Take care, and an early happy holidays, everybody!

Yours,

Rafe

Good luck man.

My offer to do some stick sparring next year still stands.

**RynoGreene** · Posted On: 12/04/2012 12:52pm

Originally Posted by Permalost

Caveat: grappling with weapons is different than unarmed grappling, and the differences can make one lose a fight. However, a good grappler needs only to tweak their game, while an "anti-grappler" needs to do something far more complex.

This is an excellent point. I've been doing stickfighting for about 20 years off and on. I teach it. I've only been grappling for about 6 years. Knowing both sides of things a bit, here's something to consider.

I am very confident that I could take a skilled grappler, and train him in stickfighting for a couple of weeks, with an emphasis of closing range safely so as not to get his head bashed in. At the end of those few session, he'd be capable enough to avoid taking major damage from a few strikes and close the gap. At that point, it's hands-on, and I'd easily give the grappler a 90%+ chance of winning against someone with zero grappling experience once it came to that.

Given, it can take awhile to become a really good grappler. But I'd still say the good grappler with only basic stickfighting skills has the advantage over the good stickfighter with only basic (or less) grappling skills.

**Permalost** · Posted On: 12/04/2012 1:31pm

Also, someone with grappling experience knows the principles of making a choke work, so adding stick chokes should be easy, and they know how to move their bodyweight on the ground so they should easily pick up attacking from the jackhammer grip, even though neither of those things are taught in any conventional grappling style.

**Honey Badger** · Posted On: 12/04/2012 11:46pm

Originally Posted by RynoGreene

This is an excellent point. I've been doing stickfighting for about 20 years off and on. I teach it. I've only been grappling for about 6 years. Knowing both sides of things a bit, here's something to consider.

I am very confident that I could take a skilled grappler, and train him in stickfighting for a couple of weeks, with an emphasis of closing range safely so as not to get his head bashed in. At the end of those few session, he'd be capable enough to avoid taking major damage from a few strikes and close the gap. At that point, it's hands-on, and I'd easily give the grappler a 90%+ chance of winning against someone with zero grappling experience once it came to that.

Given, it can take awhile to become a really good grappler. But I'd still say the good grappler with only basic stickfighting skills has the advantage over the good stickfighter with only basic (or less) grappling skills.

At this point, you're no longer teaching the student Kali, you're training them for stickfights.

**RynoGreene** · Posted On: 12/05/2012 12:52pm

That's true. I don't actually do that, but I do approach stickfighting and combat with a more modern approach. I teach stickfighting, and do introduce some fundamental grappling aspects as part of our curriculum. If for nothing else to avoid my students being ignorant of the risks a grappler can present. I also encourage them to get proper (focused) grappling instruction if they are interested.

It has bugged me in the past when stickfighters disavow the very obvious risk that grapplers introduce. My statement above was just a way to clearly illustrate that. It just drives me crazy when stickfighters continue to think that they're too deadly to be at risk to a grappler. We all saw how that line of thinking worked with unarmed competition fights.

As someone who started in striking and weapons, then moved on to grappling, I feel like I did things in the reverse order of how they should be done. Wrestling ability should be a fundamental skill learned early. If you connect with strikes on an opponent, they will not stand there at range taking more beating in a fight. They'll run away or clinch up in most cases. So unless you've got enough confidence to say you'll knock out an opponent with a strike or two 100% of the time, you have to be ready to grapple.

**goodlun** · Posted On: 12/12/2012 2:02am

Ok so I have been looking at getting into stick fighting. I do however have one rather major concern, I don't have medical coverage in those cases where I get hit just right/wrong. Is this a fairly legitimate concern or is it a lot safer than it looks?

**Chili Pepper** · Posted On: 12/12/2012 9:18am

Originally Posted by goodlun

I don't have medical coverage in those cases where I get hit just right/wrong. Is this a fairly legitimate concern or is it a lot safer than it looks?

Depends on what sort of fighting we're talking about. In class, I'll end up with a few stick-hickeys on my arms, torso or leg, but they fade in a few days. During last year's Beat The Crap Out Of Cancer, I fought Lazy Dog and basically my entire right thigh was a bruise, which resolved into individual stick lines as the bruising cleared out. <knock on wood> I've never received a serious injury stick-fighting.

I'm normally wearing a fencing mask, hockey gloves, mouth guard, elbow pads and knee pads.

**Diesel_tke** · Posted On: 12/12/2012 9:24am

Everyone does it a little different, but the way we do it: helmet, gloves, knee pads; it is pretty safe. Matter of fact all of my injuries have been from grappling after the clench rather than having to do with sticks.

Other than your random bruises on the arms, chest, and sore knuckles, you are usually fine. The Dog Brother gatherings get brutal but most of them don't even train that way too regularly. The cool thing about stickfighting in my experience is that there is a high level of respect. So if you tell people that you only want to take it so far, people are cool with that.