Modern Arnis Århus
The standard disclaimer applies. Comments very welcome.
Mabuhay!
In Arnis there are techniques without weapons (kick, punch, boxing, wrestling), and with (one or two) sticks, knifes and/or machetes/swords - and more. The main technical stuff includes blocking, trapping, disarming and various lock- and throwing-techniques. After having acquired some skills, one will also be able to selfdefend with other things, like an umbrella, a newspaper, even a towel. In the daily training there is also focus on coordination, timing and reaction-abilities, and also concentration. The focus on strict discipline isn't as high as in some other martial arts, which mainly is because the philisophy is to use the time for training, and not formal stuff. Background-stuff (culture, history etc) is also covered, and is a part of the theoretical requirements in graduation/promotions. The Filipino Martial Arts (which also includes Eskrima, Kali and others) are (at least) documented back to 1521 when Magellan was defeated by grandmaster Lapu-Lapu.
The graduation/promotion-system is similar to other budo-sports.
Usually the training preceeding white-, yellow-, green-, blue- and brown-belt graduations/promotions takes relatively short time (ranging from 3 months to 1 year), whereas the training to blackbelt (1st dan and up) takes longer. A Filipinish' fellow, that had trained (and studied) for 71 years, was grandmaster with 12th dan when he died at the age of 88 years. The graduation/promotion itself to whitebelt can take about 1.5 hours, and to brownbelt longer (perhaps an hour longer). If there are only a few trainees it doesn't take that long though. To greenbelt-graduation one must know the "self-defence-section" (according to present danish law).
Click here to see some descriptions of techniques and stuff.
Links and stuff...
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Don't think. Don't try. Do.
--David C. Winters
