Footwork

[Cthulhu]

The footwork tape from the Dog Brothers' first series of videos is particularly good. There's obviously a lot of Pekiti footwork involved, that being Knauss's background and all.

Cthulhu

 

[Rich Parsons]

Originally posted by arnisador



The answer is because they are...

...drum roll...

...karate forms. They are modified Shotokan karate kata (the Professor was also a high-ranking Shotokan practitioner). The footwork and techniques in them are largely Japanese, though at some points you'll notice Modern Arnis modifications.

You'll find some more discussion of this here.

Arnisador,

Very Good points, but if you watch the tapes, even
with the Japanese Shotokan influence, you will
see that the Professor does it slightly different
from that of the other people demonstrating.

At least from my point of view. No matter how
limited that point of view might be.

Good discussions and good reference links.

Thanks to all.

Rich

 

[arnisador]

Originally posted by Rich Parsons

if you watch the tapes, even
with the Japanese Shotokan influence, you will
see that the Professor does it slightly different
from that of the other people demonstrating.

I agree--but everyone does it differently. I see the anyos done with Isshin-ryu style blocks and punches all the time. I remember at camps being told to do the forms 'hard' (i.e. Shotokan style), then 'soft' (Filipino-style, though it often came out Kung Fu-style), and then one's own interpretation. I've seen the Professor do them very much Shotokan style, very much Filipino-nuanced, and in-between.

The issue of the Professor doing them slightly differently
than the other people demonstrating--the lack of standardization--is a two edged sword, allowing people their freedom/art-within-their-art as the Professor always liked to do, but leaving it unclear what was wanted.

Mr. Hartman was always the main forms instructor (for many years I was his principal assistant) and I do have his forms disk. It's Shotokan, in my opinion, slightly modified. It can be made to look more Filipino, and the Professor would often do so. Honestly, though, I am not convinced that he wanted them to be done that way as a rule.

The changes aren't nearly enough, in my opinion, to give them a Filipino feel. My son has learned anyo isa and I have to discourage him from ever using the reverse punch in any other thing we do. (That's an exaggeration, of course, but it's not what I want him thinking of in trapping hands as de cadena or as block-check-counter empty hand vs. stick or in any other basic drill we do. He tries to corkscrew his punches in many situations now and it ain't right. I feel like I have to say "We don't really do a lot of that stuff in the anyos--stand in stiff stances and corkscrew punch straight out". Sure, you can find applications in them--great ones--but not fundamentally Filipino ones. I'm actually studying Shotokan with someone now and like it but it just isn't Filipino in flavor.) Really, how often do people use things other than the stances that are found only in the anyos?

I'm not disagreeing with you that the Professor did them in a more arnis-y way, Mr. Parsons, nor that one can make them look more Filipino if one wants to do so, but it isn't clear to me that that was what the Proefssor really wanted. We may well disagree on this! To me it always seemd he was trying to add something that would give his students:

a.) Solid Stances
b.) Powerful Punches
c.) Credibility (as compared to other martial arts that did have kata)

and that for that he expected them to be done largely in Japanese style. This leaves me unsure as to whether I think we should keep teaching them as hard-style or emphasize the Filipino feel more and more. But, despite what's on the tape, I really think the Professor wanted them done in a largely hard, traditional way as the iconic way of doing them, with of course people expected to experiment.

 

[Matt Stone]

Now that was what I was looking for... Never having met Mr. Presas, nor having met anyone in Modern Arnis other than John Lehmann, I have had absolutely no insight (other than what John has given me, and I hold that in high esteem) on the thinking behind Modern Arnis' methods of practice.

Thanks for the info.

:samurai: :samurai:

 

[arnisador]

Originally posted by Yiliquan1

John Lehmann

Great guy--good deal for you! I haven't seen him in years. Hopefully he'll make it back to the States sometime when I'm in Buffalo.

 

[Rich Parsons]

Arnisador,

Of course you can disagree, but I do not think we are far from each other.

1) I also think the forms are very hard and do not 'feel' FMA like.

2) Experimentation and the art within your art is something that lead to one of our local requirements of translations. Purposefully changing the direction of a step or a turn or changing a strike to a throw, etc, ..., .

3) Master Jim Power, Master Jeff Owens and Mr. Dorris and myself were all told together and independently, The Professor, that many of the people studying Modern Arnis, 'needed' something to grasp that was similar to their own arts. The soft arts had no problems grabbing onto Trapping Hands and De Ca Dena. The hard styles needed something else to grasp and then to flow into the workings of Modern Arnis. This makes sense for the hard influence of the forms.

4) I also do not think the forms represent Modern Arnis, and I do not like them personally. Do I teach them? Yes I do. Do they teach, movement and understanding, etc, ..., as forms in general are used to teach in other arts? Yes they do.


So, I do not think we are far from the same page, just maybe looking at it from a different view. Personally, I think I am the one who would be reading that page upside down.

Have a nice day

Rich

 

[dearnis.com]

I always did the anyos "soft" and Professor seemed to like the end result; I also "left out" a lot of the reverse punches that didn't fit with a grappling break down, and so on. Again, Professor always seemed to like the result. The Anyos can be made very Filipino, but with different emphasis they can be anything but. I think in part Professor used them to help people bridge between their parent or "other" arts and Modern Arnis.
and I second Cthulhu's call on DB tape 1. I had the good fortune to get some mat time with Marc Denny at what (looking back) was a pretty critical juncture for me. After two days of being blown away by the DB material, and frustrated by how quickly my training had flown out the window in my first exposure to hard sparring, I went into several months of being really down about what I had done in Modern Arnis to that point. Then after some work, a lot of thinking, and even more work I started to see what Professor was doing in whole new light.
Sometimes outsiders have to show us the obvious things we already have...

 

[arnisandyz]

If you consider the process of learning an anyo, it goes against the very thing that we are trying to achieve which is fluidity of movement and mind. I think this might be why is sometimes comes out "stiff", your body AND mind are holding you back, trying to position yourself in a specific stance. But forms do have there place in teaching basic body positioning, etc. Most of the advanced practitioners I have come across in the FMA stress the Carenza far more than forms. As a matter of fact when I first started in FMA, I asked my teacher to show me a form (I didn't know back then, but he did a Carenza). When I asked him to teach me that 'form" he said he couldn't because it was his and he does it different every time. Needles to say, I was puzzeled.

 

[arnisador]

Originally posted by Rich Parsons

Master Jim Power, Master Jeff Owens and Mr. Dorris and myself were all told together and independently, The Professor, that many of the people studying Modern Arnis, 'needed' something to grasp that was similar to their own arts. The soft arts had no problems grabbing onto Trapping Hands and De Ca Dena. The hard styles needed something else to grasp and then to flow into the workings of Modern Arnis. This makes sense for the hard influence of the forms.

I had heard him say something very similar to this.

You're right, I think we are fairly close in opinion when you come down to it! This is always a tough issue for me--I love kata in the Japanese arts but hate the ill fit of them in Modern Arnis.

 

[arnisador]

Can someone expand on the footwork that is shown in the Dog Brothers' tape?

 

[dearnis.com]

The DB tape focuses largely on attacking and retreating triangles; it is not so much that the footwork is radically different as the subltle change is distance to really hit your opponent rather his stick, or to pull the blow.
A better take on their training methods is probably the new tape 'combining stick and footwork.'
All the tapes are availible from www.dogbrothers.com and it is probably possible to borrow the older ones fairly easily.

 

[Cthulhu]

Originally posted by dearnis.com

The DB tape focuses largely on attacking and retreating triangles; it is not so much that the footwork is radically different as the subltle change is distance to really hit your opponent rather his stick, or to pull the blow.
A better take on their training methods is probably the new tape 'combining stick and footwork.'
All the tapes are availible from www.dogbrothers.com and it is probably possible to borrow the older ones fairly easily.

Going with what you've just said, if I remember correctly, you get to see Knauss demonstrate Pekiti footwork and how it allows angulation with minimal body shifting. He uses it particularly well on a rushing opponent.

I always find myself reverting to the Pekiti footwork, particularly in close range. It works very well with close range knife drills. I also rely a lot on what my instructors call the 'right triangle', which is kind of a bastardization of triangle footwork.

Cthulhu

 

[dearnis.com]

that sums it up well. I've also had the chance to work w/ David Wink in western Maryland (briefly), an old Pekiti training partner of Knauss; very fluid application of the same concepts.
other thing to remember is that Knauss is a big man, his body shifting and so forth need to be tweaked for the vertically challenged.