Customer Reviews

Modern Arnis By Remy Presas: Vol. 2

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This is an oldie and a goodie, but the production quality is quite good. And there won't be a lot more where this came from, because this teacher has passed on. That's sad, because he had a lot to teach.

This volume is a perfectly good standalone purchase, although you'll probably want to buy the others in this series after you see it. In this volume, Guro Presas demonstrates a ton of techniques and drills. Frankly, if you practiced nothing but the drills in this volume, you'd be in pretty good shape in a lot of situations. The drills present a series of useful blocks and checks and parries against the twelve angles of attack, and those have application to attacks with and without weapons.

While the primary emphasis in this dvd is on stick work, it's clear that exactly the same techniques will work just fine with empty hands (or for that matter, with a yawara or fistload or with a knife or just about anything else at hand).

The empty handed sequences and drills that are demonstrated are certainly worth the price of admission, and so are the structured competitive drills between his senior students.

You should be aware that this is a discipline which is primarily designed for real combat. While it's obvious that sports applications can be designed around the techniques of arnis, this is a martial approach that is not greatly removed from applications in real fighting.

It also looks like the sort of thing that could be picked up and added to the bag of tricks of an experienced martial artist in another discipline, and a useful addition for just about anybody.

Oh, and it's pretty easy to tell when somebody is at a very, very high level of proficiency in marital arts. Remy Presas was at the highest level.

This is the 2nd volume in the 3 volume set by guru Presas. It continues the format of the other two volumes. In this video, he covers many of the basics, such as stances, the male and female triangle and angulation footwork, advancing and retreating, the abecedario or the 12 classical strokes or feeds and their blocks, block-check-counter, many jointlocks and stick grappling techniques, including some long combinations of locks and lock flow, throws and entries for throws, trapping, empty-hand, and more.

The venue seems to be a big hotel meeting room on-stage, with his students filing out from behind the stage as he demonstrates various techniques. I don't know where or when it was videoed, but my perhaps uneducated guess is somewhere in the last 8-15 years. Those of you who know the set better than I will probably know that anyway. The pace is fairly brisk, so be aware of that and that it might be too much too fast for anyone other than an experienced student, although I don't think you would need to be an advanced student or black belt. There is a great deal of information in these three videos. Although this is not meant to be a systematic presentation of the system, you get a lot of material covering everything from empty hand to stick to joint locks to dumog (Filipino wrestling) to the knife. The videos are also closer to one hour long, compared to many of the his other videos where you pay more for only half an hour of material. I think these are a good value for the price. I also reviewed the first volume in this set, which has more detailed comments if you're interested.

I have to mention that 25 years ago I had the opportunity to do a demonstration of kung fu chin na (jointlocks) for guru Presas with my master. He was very impressed with our demo, and in fact wrote a letter at my request to O'Hara publications to recommend a book be done on the subject. I was proud to be able to participate in that demo, and 10 years later, I took up the study of escrima and became a certified instructor in both kali and escrima myself. I've since collected many of guru Presas's videos and seminars, and they are always among my favorite and most treasured videos covering the Filipino martial arts.

I also reviewed the first volume and there are somemore comments there if you're interested.

These videos make the art of Arnis, also known as Kali or Escrima, easy to understand. He has a way of making you very confident in your ability to learn his art. He has a very humble common-sense approach to training and you will quickly grasp the fundamentals. I love how he can show you one simple movement, then go endlessly showing how one technique if mastered, can be a handful in itself using it over and over until you start to think "imagine if I knew 10 of these principles" and hungry for more detail.

On a positive note, he does offer a more complete training set on his website along with his son's work. This DVD is a rite of passage for any new Arnis, Kali or Escrima student.