Knife Review: Spyderco Endura 4 with the Emerson opener

I’ve recently added to my knife collection and I’ll start posting knife reviews here. First off, I’d like to make clear that I always consider knives as both tools and weapons, as they have always been since our hirsute ancestors discovered sharp flint. So my reviews will touch on both uses. I realize that my readers might want to go straight to the weapon usage info but I like to present all the information and let the reader decide on what they need. Please check your local laws on knife carrying in public and blade length limitations.

I’ll start with the Spyderco Endura 4 with the Emerson opener.


To begin with, here are some numbers. At 97 mm, the blade length of an Endura 4 with the Emerson opener is just 1 mm longer than the same knife without the opener. The blade thickness for both knives is 3mm. The overall length of the Emerson opener model is 224 mm, 2mm longer than the “simpler” Endura. A 97 mm blade is in my opinion a suitable blade length for most of what people will use this knife for, including self-defense.

The VG-10 steel of the blade is excellent, and sharpens to hair shaving sharpness easily and quickly. I did a few strokes on my Spyderco Sharpmaker’s fine rods and it brought the already impressive factory edge to my preferred hair-splitting sharpness. One thing I can say about Spydercos, the edge geometry on their knives is outstanding, even out of the box. The edge retention of the VG-10 steel is also quite good; the blade keeps its sharpness more or less even after moderately heavy use such as cutting up cardboard. Cardboard is notorious for dulling blades and my experience with VG-10 is that it only requires a touch-up to get the edge back after using the blade on this material.

For my hands – which are 9.5 cm across the palm - the handle length of 125 mm offers a full and stable grip. The FRN (fiberglass reinforced nylon) handle is tough and I’m confident it can take massive amounts of abuse. The FRN makes this knife quite light and yet you feel confident that the handle can take whatever stress the blade will put it through in regular use. The Endura 4 with the Emerson opener has skeletonized stainless steel liners that further reinforces the strength of the FRN handle. The Bi-Directional Texturing on the FRN handle ensured a good grip on the knife, even with wet hands.

The well made gimping right behind the hole and opener hook on the blade gives my thumb secure purchase for thrusts or cutting actions. The gimping, coupled with the graceful curve of the handle that follows the natural arc of the palm and the base of the thumb, gives this knife great ergonomics and feels really good in the hand. It feels just as comfortable when held in reverse grip, with the edge out.


The lockback locking mechanism engages solidly, with absolutely no blade play when the blade is locked in position. I’m not thrilled about the possibility of having a folding knife accidentally close on my fingers, God forbid when I have to use it to save my life, and the lockback on this knife really inspires confidence. The Boye dent on the lock bar lever minimizes the risk of accidentally releasing the lock when gripping the handle hard. Nevertheless, the lock has to be kept clear of lint or dirt at the pivot point, which may prevent the lock from fully engaging. There’s no excuse for not maintaining critical gear like a folding knife.

As far as I know, this knife and the smaller Delica are two of the only knives on the market that sell for about USD 70 with the patented Emerson opener. Spyderco also offers a model of their Rescue knife with an Emerson opener. If you don’t know what the opener does, here’s a video that demonstrates it. If that's too fast to figure out, Spyderco has a set of pics that show how this useful feature works. The opener hook on the knife is larger than what you’ll find on an Emerson knife and it really grabs securely on just about every pocket I’ve tested this on – slacks, jeans, shorts, etc. – and it opens the knife smoothly coming out of the pocket. The opener was my primary reason for buying this knife and it always performs flawlessly. The opener catches so easily that I have to make an effort to put my index finger over the spine of the blade to prevent the opener from engaging when someone asks me to take it out of my pocket.

Using the Emerson opener does need to be practiced for it to become an instinctive gross motor movement. The user needs to experience opening the knife from a variety of positions. It doesn’t work well while the user is seated. Unless the seat is a stool or something narrower than the user’s hips, the knife will run into the cushion of the chair if it’s deployed with the opener. Using the opener forces the user to hold the knife with the fingers away from the path of the blade’s opening, so the grip on the knife isn’t completely secure until the user adjusts his or her grip on the knife after the blade has deployed. When used properly the opener allows for very quick deployment, probably faster than a switchblade since it opens the knife as it exits the pocket. The phosphor bronze washers make the deployment of this knife silky smooth.

One other drawback of the opener is that it juts out from the blade and prevents the knife from being held completely, to be used as palm stick or fist load. Either way you hold it, the opener will either smash against the inside of your index finger or the meat of your palm if you do punch with the knife unopened in your hand. The bottom of the handle isn’t pointed enough to deliver crippling blows but it will still ruin someone’s day, if applied with the right technique and power. I advocate using empty handed skills first before going for a defensive weapon and I would have wanted this knife to work well in a less-than-lethal role. But nothing’s perfect and this one disadvantage does not in any way overshadow the knife’s excellent advantages.


I really like the light weight of this knife. It’s only 1 cm thick and when I carry it as an EDC (every day carry) I almost forget it’s in my pocket. The clip is a discrete flat black and I particularly like how the tension of the clip on the handle is just right so it doesn’t damage my pants when I have to carry it daily. Some other folding knives I own have clips that are so tight it’s almost a struggle to take the knife out of my pocket. The clip is also cleverly designed to allow a lanyard to pass through it, and the clip can be position for a tip-up or tip-down carry, for either left or right hand carry.

I highly recommend this knife as an EDC. It’s light, compact, feels secure in the hand, features the Emerson opener, a very well made and sturdy lock and has an excellent blade of VG-10 steel. That pretty much covers what most people will want in an EDC knife. You can’t go wrong with this knife.

Dueling and Self-Defense

Lately I’ve been considering the differences between how edged weapons are used in a duel as compared to a self-defense scenario, and the inherent differences in training for either of the two situations.

First, let’s define the two scenarios. Personally, I understand dueling as two individuals facing off with weapons and the duelists have them already in hand, and are preparing to attack each other. This scenario is common to a lot of knife training I’ve seen and in FMA it harks back to the age when disputes and challenges were settled through duels. Some would say that age has never actually left the Philippines, but that’s another discussion altogether. This kind of training – for duels - introduces the student to a good foundation of techniques and strategies for knife fighting. FMA knife training in general is well known for its effectiveness and the training is done mostly in the dueling scenario. The student learns how to use the weapon, how to avoid getting hit and how to use strategies such as feints to win the duel.

In such an engagement, the duelists may be aware of each others’ skill and will likely NOT initiate or completely commit to an attack. Usually in knife sparring – if done with an appreciation of the realities surrounding edged weapons - the dueling scenario is played out and very often the participants resort to “sniping” with quick cuts and jabs to the nearest target, which will be the arms or the weapon hand specifically.

In my opinion self-defense with edged weapons, in a modern context, has its unique requirements and thus self-defense-specific edged weapons training must address these needs. The training will be related to the more familiar FMA dueling scenario, in the sense that the weapon and how it will be used will remain the same. The differences in training will be on range, initial action and intent.

The defender in a paired self-defense edged weapon exercise must have his training knife either in a concealed sheath or folded, as he would in every day carry. In contrast with the dueling scenario which will have the two duelists standing out of range of jabs and slashes with weapons drawn, the defender in the self-defense training scenario must prepare to engage the attacker with empty handed tactics first, to allow him to create that reactive gap of time and space which plays a vital role in just about any self-defense situation. You need to create time and distance that will allow you to detect and “read” the attack, determine its type and direction and react to it. Creating the reactive gap is also meant to allow the defender to access his weapon.

In self-defense knife training the defender must accept that the attack might be initiated at closer range than dueling. He must then act quickly and decisively to create the reactive gap to allow for deploying the weapon. Single-mindedly going for a weapon in the face on an attack at close range without dealing with the initial attack first is extremely dangerous. My own personal strategy is to use my empty handed skills to allow me to go for my weapon. if I can end the fight empty handed and the situation doesn't warrant deadly force, then my weapons stays in my pocket. Which is why I consider empty handed skills just as important to the armed defender as the weapon itself.

In such a self-defense scenario, the defender has the odds already stacked against him, as compared to the relative “equality” granted to both parties in a duel. The attacker may or may not have his weapon drawn, but as anyone with good knife training experience knows, being within range of an edge weapon is not good at all. As I said, the odds are not in favor of the defender. The creation of that critical reactive gap of time and distance is very much a product of good training – and to some extent, favorable circumstances - which will include using the non-weapon hand to strike quickly and effectively, parry and deflect incoming strikes, footwork and body angling to protect the vital points and highly instinctive deployment of the weapon.

The third difference is intent and I feel this is the biggest difference between dueling and self-defense training. In dueling, the element of surprise is absent. The duelists are prepared to fight and are well aware of each others capability and are equally aware of the risk of engaging the opponent. Which is why knife sparring almost always starts with the cautious and probing sniping and slashing and will only progress to close range tactics once one of the duelists decides to initiate and remain within contact range. On the other hand I feel that an attack in a self-defense situation will be initiated in earnest. The attacker will probably not know of the defender’s skill or weapon so he’ll take the initiative and commit to the attack, whether it’s by accosting the defender and threatening him with the weapon, or worse, as a sudden slash to stab to kill or disable the defender right away. Although they can sometimes appear to be duels, prison stabbings are somewhat different because the weapons used, improvised knives called “shanks”, are often short and don’t have the effective edge or blade length to make dueling practical. To compensate, inmates often stab for the head and neck since these provide the most accessible vital points for their makeshift weapons. Thus a prison "shanking" is more of an ambush than a duel.

On the street, the attacker has likely already selected the victim based on his assessment of the situation and the victim’s self-defense capability. So if the attacker is initially robbing the victim and decides to escalate the situation to murder, the edged weapon attack will not be encumbered by any consideration of the possibility that the defender will have a weapon as well and the skill to use it. Thus any self-defense training must have the attacker promptly initiating the edged weapon assault on the defender, without the cautious regard that a duelist will have.

Depending on various circumstances, this full and committed attack can be both a blessing and a curse for the defender. A committed attack by the unskilled will most probably be slower and more telegraphic than what the defender is used to in practice, depending of course on the quality and quantity of the defender’s training. However, a committed attack will not be a simple stab or slash but rather a series of quick thrust, which the defender has to deal very quickly and decisively. At that point the choice of whether to be simply robbed or killed has already been made for the defender. The defender must use the sum total of his training in what will be a fight for his life. The response must be swift and violent, the skilled response of a trained fighter with the savage will to survive.

A story of survival

Recently a friend of mine survived being assaulted by several attackers, one of whom tried to stab him. He was able to draw a folding knife and use it to survive the assault. Naturally I interviewed him to gain as much valuable information on the attack and how the folding knife worked in a multiple attacker scenario. It’s sobering and somewhat gruesome information, but it’s extremely useful to discuss the details of a life-or-death knife fight with someone who’s experienced it, and if one wants to stack the odds in his or her favor for surviving edged weapon attacks, facts gleaned from actual experience should be used to develop better skills and training.

For a number of reasons, I can’t go into detail on some aspects of the incident, but here are some interesting points and the lessons that can be learned from them.

Practice to draw quickly under stress - The attacker with the knife didn’t know the defender had a similar weapon. The attacker drew and opened a balisong and lunged with a stab to the abdomen of the defender. Apparently the deployment of the balisong wasn’t quick, and this gave the defender enough time to detect the attack and draw his own weapon. He deflected the attack and responded with two strikes to the chest of the attacker. The entire sequence happened in a blink of an eye.

Two skills were crucial for the defender surviving this knife attack: the ability to sense and deflect the strike and the ability to draw the weapon for a counterattack, both actions accomplished almost simultaneously. It’s been said that you can’t do a gross motor movement – in this case deflecting the knife strike – and a fine motor movement like opening a folding knife at the same time, but this situation is a good example of having the ability to do both under stress. Lucky for my friend, his Pekiti Tirsia training paid off and he was able to draw the weapon and successful responded to the lethal attack.

Blade finish is a key consideration – After stabbing the knife wielding attacker, two of the other assailants friends sucker punched the defender. On the verge of collapsing from the punches to the head, the defender spun around and responded with two strikes to each of the attackers, immediately stopping their assault. One assailant staggered away and the other ran from the scene.

Now consider this: why would two unarmed assailants chose to attack someone with a knife? It doesn’t make sense. Unless they didn’t know the defender was armed.

The attack occurred on a dimly lit street. The defender used a folding knife with a liner lock and a black coated blade (which closed on his fingers in the midst of the attack, but that’s for another blog post). It’s not difficult to imagine that his initial defensive strikes - to the chest of the knife attacker – did not look like knife thrusts to anyone watching the assault. A blackened blade moving rapidly in low light is very hard to spot, much less if you’re not expecting it. I think the most likely scenario is that the two empty handed attackers did not know the defender had a knife and probably thought their fellow assailant was merely being punched in the chest.

This brings me to what I consider the pros and cons of blackened knife blades. A lot of tactical folding and fixed blade knives have coatings on the blade to provide stealth and low visibility. It’s gotten to the point that anything labeled as a tactical blade virtually requires that the blade be coated. I can understand the need for stealth in some situations. I make Ginunting swords for the Philippine Force Recon Marines and we Parkerize the blades to provide the low visibility the unit requires.

But is stealth really that important for a self-defense knife? Realistically, a knife drawn in a self-defense situation will not benefit much from a stealthy finish. The weapon is drawn because the owner felt his life was in danger and he had to use the weapon ASAP. There’s no need to hide or disguise the fact that a knife has been drawn and is going to be used. I believe a self-defense knife needs to be seen. There’s the considerable intimidation factor of seeing a gleaming blade, one that can be quite useful in such a situation.

If I draw a knife and defensively strike at an attacker, and his companions see that I have a knife, there’s a good chance they’ll back off. If they don’t, I already have a weapon in hand and I’ll very soon find out if I survive the attack or not, depending on what other weapons and circumstances come into play and if they’ll improve or worsen my odds. By then the color of my defensive blade will have absolutely not bearing at all. Any reasonable and unimpaired person will not want to risk being cut or stabbed by someone else with a knife, once he sees the weapon is now in the hands of his “victim” and has already demonstrated skill in using it (unless of course the attacker is a skilled and experienced knife fighter, a nightmarishly worse scenario) .

This incident reinforces my preference for uncoated blades in my EDC (every day carry) knives. I would prefer to have the option of stopping the attack if I can without further violence, and if the sight of a knife does that, then so much the better.

Stab and slash, repeat as often as needed – Among the three who were stabbed by the defender, one died on the scene, the other died a few days later at a hospital and the other survived. Between them, they received a total of 5 stab wounds and 1 deep slash.

These facts can be appreciated from two points of view:

a) The strikes were directed to the upper torso and were apparently well placed and effective. It only took two strikes on each attacker to make them stop the assault.

b) The 6 counterattacks were effective but they were not immediately fatal as most people would prefer in such a situation.

The ideal self-defense situation with a knife will be to do a single, precise counterattack that will drop the attacker immediately. Given the extremely dynamic and chaotic nature of a physical assault and the actions used to defend against it, I think it’s highly unlikely that a defender with a knife will get that golden opportunity to end it all with one thrust. It has happened but I wouldn’t bet on it. I won’t go into detail as to what and where the “kill switches” are, for obvious reasons.

Adrenaline is flowing all around, drugs or alcohol maybe be present to block out pain and shock so the most likely scenario is that the defender may have to counterattack numerous times just to create the opportunity to flee the scene. Notice that I said “flee the scene”. Unless circumstances prevent fleeing (like having a loved one with you who cannot run), there’s absolutely no reason to engage in a drawn out battle with multiple attacker, who may themselves be scrabbling for their weapons as the fight starts.

In this particular case the defender did the right thing. He did the knife equivalent of a “double tap”, making sure the attacker he engaged had more than one wound to deal with. Multiple strikes by edged weapons even in self-defense situations have been questioned in numerous court cases, often by judges and prosecutors who fail to understand and appreciate the need for multiple disabling knife stabs or slashes in the midst of a fight for survival. For the defender, the goal is simply to survive. There’s no time to study the legalities and moral quandaries of stabbing an attacker more than once. To survive, the defender must make sure he’s causing enough immediate and disabling damage to stop the attack, and very often more than one counterattack will do the job.

In my opinion questioning someone who had to do that to prevent from getting killed from the comfort of a courtroom is in itself unfair and unjust.

Easier said than done

One of the most commonly suggested tactics regarding defending against a knife attack is to gain control of the weapon and retain that control. That makes sense and is in fact sound advice. It’s a common knife defense strategy for many martial arts. But that strategy does not reveal the complexity and reality of being empty handed and defending against someone with a knife. It’s somewhat like being advised to avoid hitting the ground at high velocity when you find yourself thrown out of a plane without a parachute. Good advice nonetheless but hardly provides a suitable solution.

Getting hold of the hand or arm holding the knife is much easier said than done against a knife attack. It presumes that the attacker isn’t trained to use that weapon efficiently or he will allow you to get hold of his weapon hand. Never assume that the attack doesn’t know what he’s doing. Making such a false assumption against a knife attacker is fatal.

Someone trained to use a knife already knows that the defender will try to control the knife. If he’s properly trained and highly skilled, he may even use the hand holding the weapon as bait to cause the attacker to lunge or commit to grabbing it, leading him to a trap that ends with multiple slashes and stabs on the defender. Even the untrained know that his weapon gives him the advantage over the empty handed and you will literally have to take the knife out of his cold and dead finger to get full and final control of the weapon. Just by watching a few videos of prison stabbings will make one realize that the rapid and repeated thrusts to the head and neck by the average inmate will be difficult to stop if the strategy is to simply grab the weapon hand and control it.

I’ve seen a number of videos of realistic knife defense training done by different systems that don’t practice using the knife realistically. The result is almost the same every time; the defender tries to grab the weapon hand right away and apply a lock to disarm or to restrain the attacker. The defender gets cuts and stabbed as the single-mindedly focuses on going for the weapon, mesmerized by the thought of controlling the weapon.

One common misconception is that stab or slash to the forearm is an acceptable and bearable injury in a knife attack. Some even advocate leading with one forearm out as a “shield”, allowing the limb to be attacked as the defender closes the gap, and attempt to grapple with the attacker. This is a dangerous assumption. Even a short reflexive slash with a small folding knife will create large and gaping wounds, on a forearm or on anything that’s in the way of the edge. Paul Vunak demonstrated this in one of his videos, where he slashed a hanging slab of beef with a knife. The resulting deep cuts should be enough to convince anyone that it’s not a good idea to lead with a limb.

I do respect those who try to go out of the box, for practicing their system outside of its usual set forms and dealing with realistic knife attacks, but the problem is more strategic rather than technical. Controlling the weapon indeed works but only after you’ve made it possible to get hold of it without getting yourself badly cut and stabbed while doing so. Chasing after the knife in the hands of someone trained to use it won’t work because the knife will always be in motion. No one attacks and leaves the knife out in midair, for the defender to deftly grab and apply a wrist lock on to. In reality the knife will be zipping from one slash and stab to another, too fast for the defender to track and follow and if he tried to do that, he will have already been stabbed and cut to shreds without actually getting full control of the weapon.

The attacker’s other hand is not going to be motionless and paralyzed either; it will be grabbing the defender when the opportunity presents itself, parrying defenses in the path of the weapon or even applying hand or elbow strikes when the opportunity presents itself. When blocked or deflected, the trained knife attacker will redirect his attack immediately, either moving from a stab to slash or vice versa, with his other hand clearing obstacles for the weapon to finally land on its target. This reality of knife attack will only dawn on most martial artists after they themselves learn to use the knife effectively.

Most people will argue that it’s illegal to carry a knife in their city or country, so training to use one is impractical. That’s a valid point, but in my opinion one that only considers half of the benefits of knife training. Learning to use the weapon teaches the weapon’s capabilities from the point of view of the user and that insight will help immensely with forming a realistic knife defense strategy.

A visitor’s guide to practicing FMA in the Philippines

It really warms my heart to see foreigners coming over to learn my country’s fighting systems. I’m not just talking about Pekiti Tirsia but Filipino Martial Arts (FMA) in general. The Internet has triggered a "rebirth" of sorts in FMA, making information available to more people and getting students to visit the country to learn it at its source. Of course the Internet has also brought its own set of irritant to the martial arts in general and to FMA.

I won’t go through the details on the usually travel tips on coming over and staying in the country. You can get that from Lonely Planet and countless other sources. Instead, I’ll give info on what those source don’t tell you about coming to the Philippines to study Filipino Martial Arts.

First, let’s get a myth out of the way. Filipino Martial Arts is not available at every street corner over here. The systems are still a bit underground, mostly unappreciated by the general public and one has to know precisely where to look for it. Tae Kwon Do and other foreign arts are more accessible to the average Filipino than their own martial arts. That’s sad but it’s the unvarnished truth. For many Filipinos, the only exposure that they have had to FMA is probably a class or two in high school or college and that may have perpetuated the myth that FMA is only practiced with sticks. So going around Manila looking for FMA by asking cab drivers is not the most efficient way to get the training you’re looking for. The cabbie may know a school or two, but the quality of training will be up to you to determine. It may be different in Cebu though but I’m not sure. Strangely, I’ve traveled all over this country and the one city I haven’t visited is Cebu. I should though; it’s a hotbed for FMA and I hear the food is delicious.

I suggest you visit some excellent online source of FMA info to get contact details. I highly recommend FMA Forums. It’s run and inhabited by a lot of Filipinos who do FMA in the country as well as top practitioners from all over the world. Discussions will sometimes be conducted in Tagalog, blended with English here and there but a polite inquiry will get you the information you need.

If you’re already studying a particular system, contact the national organization for your style and they can give you contact information of clubs and teachers here. If you’re a new to FMA and want to learn it here, I suggest you do research on what system interests you and then plan your visit. Arriving in Manila looking for something to learn is not a plan I would recommend.

For training the best time to visit, weather-wise, is around January to March. That’s among the coolest months of the year and is right before the brutally hot summer months of April and May. The monsoon or rainy season is from July to November and can be uncomfortable if your not use to tropical downpours and high humidity.

If you use a stick longer than 28 inches, I suggest you bring your own training weapons. Getting good quality sticks at custom lengths here is not going to be easy. Ironically really good quality sticks are already somewhat hard to come by so I suggest you bring your own. As you practice here you’ll find the sources of suitable sticks and you can always hoard a batch for your return flight. If you’re new to FMA, the school can refer you to their source of sticks.

Obviously you need to check in your FMA weapons for the flight but call the airline first to make sure there won’t be any problems. For God’s sake do not travel with edged weapons, especially balisongs. If your instructor tells you to bring one, make sure you’re not breaking any laws by traveling with them. For that, I suggest you call the Philippine embassy or consulate in your country.

Humility is an absolute requirement. Don’t come over and try to impress the locals with what you know, what you do, what you’ve done or who you’ve train with. I’ve seen that from some visitors and it irritates me and it’s safe to assume other Filipino FMA practitioners find it annoying as well. Instead, visit with a willingness to experience FMA from a different perspective, to learn it from the land that created it. A know-it-all attitude will just make you unwelcome to the people you train with, at the very least.

Relax and don’t live by a rigid schedule. We Filipinos have an often irritating habit of not being too particular about time, schedules and plans. The same applies to bus and ferry schedules, travel agendas and yes even FMA. If your instructor decides to be a little late to class or changes the training curriculum without prior notice, don’t be offended and alarmed. I for one don’t tolerate “Filipino Time” i.e. failure to understand the concept of punctuality. But I do understand it as part of how we are and so should you. So kick back and let things slide a bit.

We Filipinos are a social bunch so take time to socialize with your fellow students after class. A few drinks, a little karaoke and some strange food made from animal parts you never considered edible will go a long way toward moving from “visiting foreigner” to “one of the guys”. Avoid getting stinking drunk but always be willing to lose some dignity by singing some cheesy tunes. More Filipinos have gotten beaten, shot and stabbed after drunkenly crooning “My Way” than many other causes of death so avoid that little ditty.

One popular method of drinking here is the infamous “tagay”. Everyone drinks from the same glass, which is refilled continuously and passed around to be emptied by everyone involved. It guarantees that everyone gets totally hammered at the same time and helps break the ice between you and your fellow students. San Miguel beer in its many forms is popular in the cities and large towns but in the provinces and in smaller towns gin and rum are their preferred intoxicants.

Try to finalize your training fees and other details before coming over. Expect to pay more than the locals. You may find that unfair but realize that you’re coming over to train may mean being personally taught by the club’s instructor or have changes done to the club’s practice to accommodate you. It’s up to you to determine if the training fee is fair or worth what you paid for.

Be smart about staying healthy. The Philippines is a third world Asian country so prepare for the nasties. Only drink bottled water and only have drinks with ice when dining at decent restaurants. Get all your shots and get ready for mosquitoes. Street food is delicious and popular with a lot of FMA practitioners I know but be aware that double dipping in the sauces exposes you to the risk of disease. If you want to try street food, choose the vendors that serve them on little cardboard trays. Usually they have the sauces in jars with spoons and discourage dipping the food in them. What exactly is this street food? Let me put it to you this way: not a single part of a chicken is thrown away in this country as garbage.

But don’t let me discourage you. Eating is an important part of our culture and you’ll discover that we have a delicious culinary tradition to match. Try the local food in restaurants and you’ll discover the delights of traditional Filipino cooking. I recommend “kare kare” and “crispy pata”.

There’s no other way around this next tip so here goes..

Bathe and bathe often, once in the morning and again before sleeping. It may be ludicrous and insulting for me to advise you on personal hygiene but there’s a good reason for it. Caucasians and “Westerners” (Americans, Europeans, etc.) in general have a reputation among Filipinos for body odor and that reputation is not completely unfounded. I’m not saying that all foreigners will start to smell halfway through a class – I’ve trained with a few Americans and only one or two were “ripe” - but it’s happened often enough to become a familiar problem for Filipinos who have trained with foreigners.

You may be offended by this insinuation if you think you don’t smell but Filipinos have learned the hard way that Western men and women often exude an…interesting…odor regardless of race, gender, nationality, body weight or any other physical attribute once they arrive here. It’s probably the humidity, and which may explain why we Filipinos have this obsession with bathing.

Take it from me, unless you prefer to practice alone, bathe as often as possible, don’t wear the same training clothes twice in a row without washing them and use deodorant. If your practice partners advise you to bathe with “tawas” (alum), they’re telling you there's something you need to deal with.

As with all cities, Metropolitan Manila has safe areas and places which you must avoid. Your fellow students can tell you the parts of town you should stay away from. If your school happens to be in those parts, then I suggest you make it a habit to travel to and from the training venue with your fellow students, as many of you as possible. Strength in numbers, I always say. Most probably the school is known in the area and the local thugs will leave you alone.

If you do travel to the provinces to train or just to see the sights, I suggest you don’t wear anything remotely military looking like olive drab cargo pants. Trust me, you don’t want your jeepney stopped by a rebel checkpoint while heading out to see an obscure style in the middle of nowhere and have to explain that you’re a tourist and not a member of the CIA.

Metropolitan Manila is a city of 11 million people and covers 636 square kilometers. Depending on where you’ll be staying, the experience of staying in this metropolis can range from thrilling to ghastly, which is why I suggest you take time out to travel outside of the city to see the best of the country. Don’t take a trip to the countryside to seek out more FMA styles, but rather just to take in the essence of our culture and understand it. Be a tourist but see it from the eyes of someone who already studies a part of the culture, a part that remains hidden and misunderstood by many Filipinos. Go off the beaten path and see the rest of the country that isn’t in the tourist maps. For example, experience village life among the mountain tribes of the Cordillera. Or take a boat ride around Northern Palawan, and chose an island to explore. Watch how they gather tuba (coconut wine) and taste it fresh from the tree. Attend a town fiesta and discover why we are known for our hospitality and home cooking.

The county has so much to over, so many facets to experience. If you’re already studying Filipino Martial Arts, consider yourself lucky. You’re already seeing our culture from a perspective many of us do not understand.

A tool for edge awareness

A few months ago one of the Force Recon Marines who makes training weapons dropped by our club with some plastic ginuntings. I got two of them right away.

Each one is 60 cm long and weighs about 250 grams. I’m not sure what plastic it’s made from, but I can tell you its extremely tough. Tuhon Gaje used my pair in a class at our club recently, when he demonstrated florete with lots of weapon to weapon contact. Needless to say, if it can take getting whacked against each other by the heavy hands of Tuhon Gaje, its tough enough for me.

I instantly realized the training potential this tool presents, despite its light weight. I’ve long suspected that practicing with an edged training tool will make me more precise with my strikes and it has done that. The difference between using this and a stick is that when I practice with a stick I have to continuously remind myself how the weapon will contact the target and how I need to keep it aligned, edge-wise, toward it to make a hack or slash. This problem is most pronounced in panastas (upward slash), because I have to twist my wrist to get the “edge” of the stick to face forward, perpendicularly to the target. With the training ginunting, I know exactly how I need to position the weapon to get the edge forward. The training ginunting also gives me feedback as to how the weapon is tracking throughout the strike.

I for one don’t mind the light weight. I’m going to develop a dulled ginunting for training anyway and this plastic practice weapon already serves its purpose, as a tool for developing edge awareness. I’ve had my share of tendonitis after training with pipes early in my PTK education and I’m a little wary of making the same mistake, of going crazy with heavy sticks and pipes in training. So for now, this is the tool of choice of getting edge aware for blade use.

Defanging the snake

The concept of “defanging the snake” - striking the arm of the attacker to disable it and make him drop the weapon – is found all over the Filipino Martial Arts. It’s been described as a merciful strategy of sparing the opponent’s life, but it is also a brutal tactic which quickly ends the fight and leaves the victim helpless to the coup de grace that will surely follow.

At largo and media range in PTK it’s called “non weapon contact”, a direct strike to the opponent’s body, which at those ranges will be the opponent’s arms. Lately the defanging the snake concept has also taken a bit of beating (pun intended) from by those who can’t appreciate its practicality. The skepticism of the concept often originates from the viewpoint of MMA or the grappling systems. In that light, defanging the snake seems to be just another traditional martial art concept or myth that has been disproven under the grounding and pounding of octagon matches. Ironically the concept does exist in MMA; probably the best example of defanging the snake for them would be leg kicks, a tactic derived from Muay Thai. In the context of empty handed combat, it has been argued that defanging the snake is not practical or worthwhile, since the body and all the points to hit on it are within easy reach.

Personally I think that defanging the snake makes perfect sense with the use of weapons, particularly in FMA. Keeping out of range of the attack is a wise strategy in edged weapon combat. As the gap between opponents is strategically bridged in combat, the first body parts that will most probably come into range of the weapons first are the arms. It’s easier to cut an arm at a distance than to close in and try for a neck or head strike, and having to contend with the opponent’s response in the process. The arms are vulnerable to fight-finishing cuts, if tendons and nerves are shredded and arteries are sliced open.

Applying the concept to empty handed combat, particularly for hand strikes, can be tricky to do but not at all impossible to pull off. A well directed strike to a nerve point can numb an arm enough to make it unusable. Recently during practice I was hit on my right hand by my partner's stick and it went completely numb. The strike wasn’t particularly powerful or fast, but it obviously hit the right spot. I could barely hold the stick and if it was a fight to the death, I know I would be in deep trouble. That same spot is easily accessible in a fight, either by accident or by design.

Defanging the snake is self evident when practicing with knives. An oft quoted bit of wisdom concerning knife dueling is that one gets badly hurt and the other dies. Practice with knives long enough and you’ll realize that the arms will be the first to be nicked and cut, and in so many gruesome angles. It’s not because of some exotic knife design or technique, but rather simple proximity: the arm extending the weapon to attack will the closest in range to the opposing weapon. With blades zipping all over the place, it’s not difficult to understand that the arm holding the weapon will be a target.

This is a simple enough concept and one that was surely arrived at by other cultures. To dismiss the concept in light of the current popularity of controlled empty handed combat is myopic at best or worse, extremely dangerous. An empty handed defender will be expecting a direct attack to the body and will fail to consider defending his arms from the blade. A devastating slash to key tendons or an artery will mean death to the defender. With edged weapons, one cannot make slight mistakes.