In this video, GM Rodel Dagooc demonstrates some of his flow drills/sequences. Please note that I do not know his flow drills or training sequences. This is the first time I’ve seen him do those flow sequences. I enjoyed watching GM Rodel’s brief demonstration of his style.

It is not clear from the video how many drills or sequences he teaches. This may be a bit of a leap, but I would not be surprised if he has a set number of flow drills. Many FMA instructors use flow drills to impart their art. For example, many Balintawak instructors use the “grouping” methodology as part of their teaching. The late Professor Remy Presas utilized many drills to pass on his beloved art of Modern Arnis.

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

As many of you know, I teach 20 Flow Drills.

Many are ridiculously easy and designed for quick installation of Modern Arnis concepts. Then there are the knife flow drills, joint lock flow drills, left-hand flow drills and a group of unrelated drills that I have named “the parking lot drills.” As in, “I’m not sure which group this flow drill belongs to, so I’ll just put it into the parking lot.”

My overall aim is to translate the flow drill concepts to empty-hand self-defence. After all, we are not in a stick-fighting culture here in North America. But we do have to consider improvised weapon scenarios such as defending against baseball bat or club attacks and knife or machete attacks.

Those scenarios are far more likely to happen than getting into a death match duel with someone from another Arnis style.

Having not met GM Rodel Dagooc, I have no idea if he uses empty-hand applications of his flow drills/sequences, but I assume he does.

Anyway, back to the video. I detect a Modern Arnis flavour to his drills. This should not be surprising since he trained under GM Remy for a while and also learned local styles in his area.

In the video, GM Rodel incorporates disarms, hitting, locking, and takedowns into his repertoire. At 4:04, he demonstrates that he can break the pattern with different strikes, which is somewhat similar to the variations of my flow drills.

There is so much more to these drills than mindlessly repeating them. GM Rodel Dagooc hints at the depth of these drills with various techniques that one can insert. Ultimately, a good instructor will translate these concepts into practical street techniques.

This was quite an enjoyable video to watch. Have a great weekend!

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