Comment by Joshua Morale on February 19, 2010 at 8:04pm

Good luck, just remember it takes thousands and thousands repetitions to gain proficiency , this comes with time and practice, once you do its in there. I guarantee that almost all members of this board are able to do the 6 count/ heaven 6, sinawali in their sleep. The key to getting things right in my opinion is to take notes and ask questions a good teacher will take the time and will want you to progress, just don't disrupt constantly.

After the first few sessions your shoulders and upper back will be sore , take it easy at first. warm up the shoulders before you start. be cognizant of blisters too trying to be hard and ignore blisters is just stupid. a pair of gloves for tire time at first is a good idea. after a while blasters arent a huge problem.

Also if this is your first pair of sticks do yourself a favor and buy a roll or two of electrical tape you will need it to extend the life of your sticks. The "secret" life of the eskrimador is all the time the spends taping and re taping sticks lol. that first pair goes fast.

The most practical piece of training equipment you can get is also the cheapest. An old tire or two. If you cant install something permanent a length of rope and an old tire tied to a tree can be one of the best training tools one can get . Well good luck hope this helps -Josh

Comment by Kurt Schanaman on February 19, 2010 at 8:18pm

Thanks for the pointers Joshua. From what I've been reading, even the "highest quality" sticks tend to only outlast lower grades by perhaps two to four months. Guess I best prepare to buy two or three pair of sticks per year especially if I end up with a brutal sparring partner.

I have quickly discovered why oak dowels and such aren't used for training already. I had a couple here at the house and cut two sets of 28-inch out of them. I watched a video of Guro Dan Inosanto doing the heaven 6 and the earth thing. Started just playing with duplicating his moves as he demonstrated in the video and have gotten good for an amateur, but I guarantee once I start training with GM Millspaugh, he will probably laugh and will immediately notice a lot of things I'm doing wrong. My two oldest daughters and I "think" we have the moves down but probably don't. And we've noticed that hardwoods splinter pretty quickly! Lesson learned: Hardwood dowels make for miserable training implements and videos are ok to watch, but don't try to learn from them without your instructors input.

Because I've tried to learn heaven 6 and the six-count Earth from Inosanto's video, I bet I'll already have to be corrected for bad habits I'm not aware of.

Looking forward to getting started with REAL training, for sure.

Thank you again for the advice. Something tells me my instructor may not like sticks with tape on them, but we will have to see. If anything needs taped, I certainly hope it is the sticks and not hands, arms, jawbones, etc. lol

Comment by QuadZeroRoute on March 24, 2010 at 7:43am

Kurt,

If you are looking for training equipment that you can create yourself I have another idea.

You might hang one to two old rattan sticks by string and strike at them. Get two rattan sticks, tie the first one off at the midsection of the stick at approximately the top of your head, then a second rattan stick down around your waist. They will spin around the string freely if you tie them close to their balance point. If you can hit the sticks after they are in motion that would make for good practice. I have videos on my portal at YouTube regarding this method. They use this method as well as the tires in the PI. I think I've got videos of practitioners from both Bahad Zu'bu, and Lightning Scientific doing this.

http://www.youtube.com/EditorialResponse

Talk to you later,
Thomas

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