Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Disarms play a significant role in Filipino Martial Arts (FMA). By mastering disarms, practitioners develop a deep understanding of range, timing, leverage, and body mechanics. Moreover, this skill teaches students the inherent danger of facing an armed attacker, fostering respect for the devastating potential of weapons.

Also, they are just plain fun to do!

If you dig this aspect of Filipino Martial Arts, check out this fantastic video of GM Rodel’s disarms!

He does a head-spinning demonstration of various ways to deprive his opponent of his weapon!

Among the concepts highlighted in this video are the following:

(1) Following disarms with strikes;

(2) Utilizing leverage to take the weapon from your opponent;

(3) Using the body or legs to disarm;

(4) Striking or thrusting before a disarm;

(5) Using locks as a backup if the person does not let go of the stick.

If you are not able to view the video, go here.

Wait! There’s more!

He also demonstrated this skill set within counter-to-counter situations. Some of my students will recognize this exercise.

Lastly, he demonstrates finding disarms within flow drills. This section brought a smile to my face as I taught all of my students this exercise. It’s fun to insert disarms into any of my twenty flow drills!

I teach my students not to look for disarms. Let the game come to them. Go with the flow. The disarms will present themselves. Not magically, mind you. This exercise is great for recognizing what angle of attack is coming at you and knowing which disarm may work.

Then you start inserting hits, thrusts, empty hand checks, pulls and pushes. These can be done before or after a disarm. The key is for me to layer those concepts after the students become proficient at disarming within flow drills.

See my video below. This is one of my favourite videos to date.

If you are not able to view this video, go here.

There are a few gems in GM Rodel’s videos. I’ll watch this a few times in slo-mo over the next few days. I’m hungry for knowledge!

One may ask, “What’s the point of practicing disarms?”

While the odds of getting into a stick fight in the neighbourhood are practically nil, there are situations where this skill set might be useful. Baseball bat attacks come to mind. Ditto for clubs and batons. Disarms against machete attacks? I’d run away from a machete attacker. As an absolute option, if you have no choice, I’d defend and try to disarm. But it would be quite dangerous.

Disarming someone in a real-life situation is unlikely to succeed because performing under stress is difficult. It is well established that fine motor control quickly degrades in violent situations.

What, then, is the purpose of practicing these techniques? As a result, you gain a greater understanding of range, leverage and body mechanics. More importantly, you appreciate how incredibly dangerous it is to face an attacker with a baseball bat or a club.

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