The importance of sparring in escrima

Sparring is one of the most important aspects of training in the Philippine Combat Arts of eskrima, kali, or arnis. You do not learn to fight just by watching movies, reading books, practicing forms, hitting the air, or memorizing scenarios. You learn to fight, by fighting. Would you trust your brand new car to your teenage child, without your supervision, if they had only taken the written portion of their driver's test, and had never even driven one mile?

Traditional Escrima training, consisted of the student playing with their instructor, someone who was already an experienced eskrimador. In other words, the student would try and defend himself against his instructor's attack, and if he had progressed enough in his arnis training, maybe attack as well. Or more succinctly, they would spar.

Now just like you would not expect your teenage child to be fine to handle nascar with just a short read of a car manual, sparring at the Philippine Combat Arts Club is not just a man test, where we throw a novice to the wolves. Instead, our coaches emphasize a progressive sparring program, that builds students up in the skill and ability in fighting, so that when they do finally engage in more intense sparring, they will be more than prepared to hold their own.

Sparring also helps instruct a student in the true and traditional practice of the Philippine Combat Arts. Traditionally an eskrimador did not teach by asking his students to blindly parrot movements and memorize patterns, but instead he would teach a student the strategy of fighting. Learning your basics, is like giving you hammer and nails, but sparring is where you learn to use your hammer and nails to build a house.

We emphasize many different aspects of sparring in our club, to help student progress to ever increasing skill ability. From light contact, heavily ruled sparring, to heavy contact no rule sparring. We tailor the sparring experience to the students. From padded stick sparring, hitting with 100% power with armor, to light contact hard stick sparring with no armor, to heavy contact hard stick sparring with minimal armor. Each scenario gives students a different aspect of fighting, and allows a more experienced eskrimador to share with them the benefits of their experience in arnis.