Bodyweight Exercises

In recent years and perhaps due to my martial arts background, I have increasingly begun to question the value of going to a gym to workout. At a typical gym, you see rows and rows of exercise machines that specifically target and isolate certain body parts. In addition, when it comes to free weight exercises, some in the weightlifting/bodybuilding industry have come up with such specialized exercises to work specific body parts that it seems to ignore the whole. Thus in recent years, I have come around more to the idea of bodyweight exercises, using the only the body’s weight.

Let’s think about it. Before the 20th century rolled around and exercise machines and weightlifting became the norm, folks got into shape with bodyweight exercises for hundreds of years. Look at the physical cultures of China, Japan, India and Europe before the 20th century. In many places, quite sophisticated bodyweight exercise philosophies sprouted in those places. It was only in the 20th century that the modern version of weight lifting came into being. Unfortunately, it seems that the value of bodyweight exercises is now overlooked by the vast majority of people. Whatever happened to the centuries of knowledge built up over bodyweight exercises? Unfortunately, it seems that, with the arrival of weightlifting and bodybuilding, all that knowledge has been ignored, never mind the fact that many of the “strongmen” of the late 19th century developed their physiques largely through bodyweight exercises.

Why spend hundreds of dollars in membership fees and gas to drive to a local gym to lift when you can arguably get more benefit from bodyweight exercises? For example, while the bench press works the pectoral muscles, the pushup does a lot more than work the pecs. In doing pushups (and remember there are endless variations of the pushup), you are working more than the pecs. You are also working the core, the hands, forearms, shoulders, back, abs, and glutes. You can do them anywhere and doesn’t cost you a cent. No wonder why every military organization in the world use pushups in basic training. Pushups is just but one example.

I have picked up a number of books on bodyweight exercises and while they contain a good variety of exercises that you can do, they are invariably disappointing in that they are all missing one element. They don’t give you the progressions needed to have a comprehensive exercise program. However, I recently bought the Kindle version “Convict Conditioning”  by Paul Wade through Amazon. Like many who bought this book, I was not too impressed with the title of the book, especially considering the cost.

I read through it as quickly as I could. Bottom line, this is a brilliant book on bodyweight exercise. The author makes a powerful and persuasive case for bodyweight exercises and recommends that we incorporate 6 bodyweight exercises. They consist of pushups, leg raises, pull-ups, squats, the bridge and the handstand pushup. He lays out a series of progressions for each of these exercises that anyone can do and lays out various programs ranging from beginners to advanced, with a strong recommendation that everyone start at the beginning and work their way up. He counsels strict form and performing the exercises in a slow controlled manner and without the use of momentum (think of a guy bouncing a bar off his chest during the bench press). He especially counsels taking the long view when getting into bodyweight exercises, particularly when it comes to strengthening the tendons of your joints.

All in all, the best bodyweight exercise book that I have read to date and once that I’m quite enthusiastic about. I highly recommend this book.

Modern Arnis 2 vs. 1 drill

My favorite developmental drill is the 2 vs. 1 drill that I have learned from Master Chuck Gauss over the years. Through this drill, one can develop tremendous skills needed for single stick fighting. At a basic level, a practitioner will learn how to use both hands while executing this drill and thereby develop ambidexterity. Along with this, major concepts of Modern Arnis such as sinawali, sweepstrokes, palis palis, abanico corto, locking, snaking, disarms and hitting are introduced.  If one can do this with two canes, imagine how much easier single stick techniques will be! This is an incredible tool for development.  Every time I see Master Chuck Gauss, I learn some new aspect of the 2 vs. 1 drill. The possibilities of this drill are essentially endless and leads to proficiency in tapi tapi.  See the brief video below:

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Baiting and Trapping

Whoops! It's been a couple of busy weeks since I've last posted. The above video, as the title indicates, about baiting and trapping in Modern Arnis, one of the essential components of this art. The core concept behind this is controlling your opponent's cane and reducing his options as far as his defenses are concerned. By controlling his cane, you can either hit him with his own cane or trap him and follow up with various techniques such as a lock, a strike or a punyo strike. Furthermore, by controlling his cane, you deny him the use of the cane, a valuable option. Bottom line: control his cane and you control him.

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Professor Wally Jay

One of the great influences on Professor Remy Presas was his long time friendship with Professor Wally Jay of Small Circle Jiu Jitsu. If one were to compare Professor Presas’ joint locks in the 1980’s instructional tapes versus those shown in the DVDs of the late 1990’s, one can see a definite difference and progression in the way he executed joint locks. This is attributed to his friendship with Professor Wally Jay.

Professor Jay was born in Hawaii to parents of Chinese descent. While living in Hawaii, he studied boxing, Danzan Ryu Jiu Jitsu and judo. In 1948, he was awarded a certificate of mastery in Danzan Ryu Jiu Jitsu by the founder of that art, Henry S. Okazaki. He then later studied Judo under the former Hawaiian judo champion, Ken Kawachi. During his two years of study under Kawachi, Professor Jay would learn the principles that would learn to the formulation of Small Circle Jiu Jitsu. In particular, Kawachi emphasize the use of wrist action to gain superior leverage over opponents. As many Modern Arnis practitioners have learned over the years, this wrist action is prevalent in many of the joint locks that we employ. Through his friendship with Professor Jay, Professor Presas incorporated elements of Small Circle Jiu Jitsu into Modern Arnis. Painful elements, to put it mildly!

Professor Jay was well known for the 10 Principles of Small Circle Jiu Jitsu which are as follows:

(1) Balance
(2) Mobility and Stability
(3) Avoid the Head On Collision of Forces
(4) Mental Resistance and Distraction
(5) Focus to the Smallest Point Possible
(6) Energy Transfer
(7) Create a Base
(8) Sticking Control and Sensitivity
(9) Rotational Momentum
(10) Transitional Flow (which includes):

Many of concepts are present not only in the joint locks of Modern Arnis but apply to Tapi Tapi as well.

Below is an interesting clip of DanZan Ryu Jiu Jitsu from the 1940’s. Can you spot the young Wally Jay?

Dance of Pain!

In this video I demonstrate a joint lock flow, showcasing another area of Modern Arnis. As alluded to in this previous post, Modern Arnis is more than just stick fighting. We cover stick fighting, empty hands against cane, joint locks, takedowns, ground controls, trapping hands, knife self defense, forms, espada y daga, tapi tapi, self defense and a few other things.

When it comes to joint locks, Professor Presas was influenced by Prof Wally Jay's Small Circle Jiu Jitsu. Those two had a long lasting close friendship and Prof Jay's influence on Professor Presas is readily apparent when you compare Professor's instructional videos of the early to mid 1980's to those produced in the late 1990's and see the refinement of the joint locks over those years.  I remember being uke for Professor Presas at a Detroit seminar where he put me into an incredibly painful standing center lock.  Talk about ouch! 

Speaking for myself, my joint locking is continuing to go through refinements through Master Chuck Gauss and Master Ken Smith.  I'm getting there (evil chuckle)!!

Modern Arnis on Rogers Cable!

On Thursday, March 22nd, we had a somewhat unusual class. Two journalism students from nearby Durham College came by to shoot footage of a Bamboo Spirit class and to interview myself and one of my students, Terence.


More specifically, they were working on a video that will be produced for a Rogers Cable program called “My Community is Durham.” It was a partner project where one (Stephanie Cooper) was the reporter and the other (Mickey Dujuric) was the camera person.  According to Ms. Cooper, the video has received the approval of Rogers Cable. As of today, I do not know the air date. I will post the information as it becomes available.

I raised the topic of whether there is a chance that the video would be uploaded onto YouTube. I was informed that it would likely be on the Rogers Cable website. If so, I’ll be sure to get the link out.

So, to give a fair representation of Modern Arnis for their footage, I taught a mix of empty hand and stick material during class. I did a “flashy” tapi tapi demonstration. It remains to be seen whether that makes the cut!

As mentioned above, I was interviewed by Ms. Cooper in the hallway outside of the training area. I had difficulty with the considerable background noise and that prompted me to ask Ms. Cooper to repeat her questions a few times before I understood what she was trying. I joked around, though, looking at the camera and saying “you’re going to have to do one hell of an editing job here!” to a few laughs.

This was a fun experience and I’ll post an update when I receive information regarding air dates.

Premiere Date for the Bladed Hand Documentary Set!

Jay Ignacio, the producer of the long awaited "Bladed Hand" documentary recently announced the premiere date on the "Bladed Hand" page on Facebook. According to Jay, the documentary will premiere on July 7, 2012 in Quezon City.

As of now, there are no further specific details with respect to further showings, locations and dates. Furthermore, it is currently unknown as to when the documentary will be released on DVD. There is the possibility that it will be streamed on the internet before being released on DVD. Once I find out more details, I will post on here.

I think that it's fantastic that another FMA documentary is coming out, two years after the successful release of the "Eskrimadors" documentary. This can only help heighten and increase awareness of Filipino Martial Arts. For those of us who practice FMAs, we should find a way to support these documentaries!  Here is a trailer for the "Bladed Hand."