I've not posted about Kali lately, so bear with me, since Gura's getting married next weekend, and she's (understandably) taking a couple of weeks off for the occasion. I'll be jonesing for it, and pestering Malaya to play some, and maybe even driving way the hell down south to a class or two at Tuhan's house. But that's for next week, and the week after. For now, I'd like to recount the fun class I had last night.
There were but three students; me and two guys who have been doing it for 2 and 3x as long as I have, and while they're better than me at most everything, I'm close enough that we can all work on the same stuff and interact somewhat evenly. That's one nice thing about Kali the way we do it; a 4th year student can go full speed with a brand new student, and both can get something out of the exercise. The new guy is just learning the basics, while the older student is doing those, but working in advanced techniques while still keeping the rhythm and form. Triple punches and kicks and elbows, along with the basic single punch the beginner is working on, for example.
Anyway, with three of us in class Gura had us do numerado with a wide variety of weapons. Numerado is basically a controlled type of sparring, where one person leads and the other follows. The lead initiates each exchange, always swinging first. The follow counters or parries the attack, lands a counterattack, and then waits for the next attack. It gets far more complicated, of course, with pace changes, sneaky lead attacks that you try to land with misdirection, combos, change ups, constant attacks without pause in between, and so on, but the basic form is one person throws and the other follows, rather than you both hitting at the same time, or going without any preset sequence, as in actual sparring. Leading is much less work, in numerado, and it's nice with three people since you sit out a turn, then follow and get tired, then lead and cool off, then sit out one, and so on.
We did that with, in order: stick vs. stick -- stick vs. open hand -- stick vs. double stick -- stick and dagger vs. stick and dagger -- double stick vs. double stic, and were just starting broadsword vs. double stick when 9 o'clock rolled around and it was time to quit (not that I or the other two guys had any desire to do so, since we were having a blast).
I could go into a long discussion of every permutation, how I did and didn't do, what the other guys were better and worse at, and so on, but eh... The most interesting thing for me was the double stick, since as I've blogged in the past, that's the weapon(s) that I most enjoy using, and that I feel the most natural affinity for. I like staff a lot too, actually, but we hardly ever use that, largely due to space reasons.
Anyway, after watching me do double stick vs. stick, and then double stick vs. double stick, Gura said that I looked the most natural, relaxed, patient, balanced, comfortable, etc that she'd ever seen me in Kali, and yes, that includes when I'm going open hand. Which, you'll note, doesn't mean I was great with double stick. Just that I was more relaxed and better with it than I am the rest of the time.
It's funny, since I've spent far, far, far more class time with single stick than double stick, and I don't work on doublestick all that much alone, or with Malaya, and yet I fully agreed with Gura. I do feel more comfortable with two sticks than with one, or none, and when I'm going smoothly I get into a mood where they aren't just sticks I'm holding in my hands, but are more like extensions of my arms. I don't feel them all the way to the tips yet, but I'm getting close, and I'm far closer with them than I am with just one stick, which seems illogical.
The trick, as Gura told me, is to transfer my confidence and comfort with double stick to all other types of Kali. Single stick, sword, knife, open hand, staff, etc. It's not possible to be equally good with everything, since everyone's got something they prefer or dislike a bit, but Kali is meant to make you a weapons master, and for that you need to have the same ease and control with any weapon (or none at all) that you do with your favorite. It's sort of a state of mind, or a type of confidence. You know you can do it, you've done it with a different weapon, so you just do. It's not about memorizing weapon lengths or weights or endless drills or anything like that; it's all about improvisation and having control over your body to do what you want it to do, no matter what sort of tool you've got in your hand. Tuhan dragged a shovel out of his tool shed at a past workshop and proceeded to dominate with it. A big ass heavy dirt-clotted shovel he'd never fought with before, against guys using sticks they'd handled every day for the past few years.
I can sort of see how that works at this point, but I'm far from putting it into practice. Of course we also get better with a given weapon the more we use it, but there are basic principles of movement and form and technique that transfer across all weapons. Students often make a breakthrough with one weapon, or empty hand, and then find that their new ability to fight very close with short punches (for example) translates perfectly to stick, or dagger, and that they can basically use those weapons in the same way they were using their arms in open hand. Finesse learned with open hand translates directly to the broadsword; fast swings and hard hits learned with stick translates to open hand, and so on.
As always with Kali, the theory is far easier to grasp than the actual. Anyway, class was a lot of fun, I enjoyed working with a variety of weapons quickly, and by doing that I could see how they translated across. People were trying or seeing others do things with double stick that they'd never thought of, and then taking those moves and using them with single stick, or with stick and dagger. Which is just what Gura wanted us to do, I'd imagine.
As for my Kali, it's odd, but I'm now far better attacking than I am defending. I was throwing for the best student there (and he was throwing for the 2nd best, who was throwing for me when we rotated and my turn came up), one who has excellent offense and defense, and that was a challenge. I could get in some hits, but only by being very sneaky and deceptive and clever. I could hardly touch him with single stick, though I had some luck with stick/dagger, and double stick. As I was landing my hits though, or watching him block combos I didn't think he could possibly have survived, I realized that I would have been nearly helpless against the battery of attacks I was using. If I'd been fighting myself, I wouldn't have had a chance and I would have had to turn down the difficulty of my attacks quite a bit to keep the numerado session interesting.
That was far from news, since I've worked with that student and others in the past, used tricky moves to get hits, and then watched them use it against me and score hits more easily than I did when I used it in the first place. You'd think that knowing how to do the attacks, and inventing many of them up in the first place, would make me able to block them. And I do, in theory, but getting the body to flow and react and do what I need it to do quickly enough is quite another thing. At this point pretty much any complicated or tricky combo will get through my defense, and while I'm improving, (I don't walk into simple attacks hardly at all, anymore.) my offense is improving as well, and more quickly.
I'm sure there's a Kali lesson in there as well; a parallel to the "translate your skill with double stick to other weapons" one. If I can do the moves, why can't I block them? I'm not (often) facing something that I've never seen, or that I don't know how to do myself. And I'm not being beaten by speed or power. So is it all mental? How much of it is muscle memory and control? And if I master the "see it/do it" principle, can that be applied to other physical endeavors? I can juggle 3 or 4 balls, which means I know the principle to juggle 5 or 6 or 7 or more. So why can't I do it? Could I if I believed I could? Do or do not, there is no try?
(Actually, with juggling it's all about the throw. Catching them is easy; you've just got to gain enough skill in your hands to make the throws consistently the same height and distance and angle, so the ball comes down within reach of your hand. Juggling five balls isn't really that much harder than three; you've just got to throw them a bit higher so you keep your hands don't have to move super fast. It's just that a higher throw means a harder throw, which means that any slight inaccuracy is multipled by the greater height up and then the longer fall back down. And no, I don't think it's mental; it's muscle memory training to get your hands to catch and release with nearly perfect accuracy, every single time. Perhaps a Kali/juggling master could convince me otherwise, though.)
