Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Please be advised that this review is actually on the set of videos that Kelly Worden did on Escrima and FMA, which included two videos on knife-fighting featuring Mr. Keating, and so he collaborated on this effort. This was the only way I could review the items, under one of his other videos, since it's not listed on Amazon. I wanted to do it since although they comprise one-fifth of the total videos in the set, they're possibly the best overall knife-fighting videos that I've seen from Mr. Keating or anyone.
The set itself is Datu Kelly Worden's comprehensive 10-tape series on Escrima, Kuntau, and Filipino martial arts. For those of you who know him he needs no introduction, but for those of you who don't, he is the only person ever to be certified by the late Remy Presas as "Datu," or Chieftain. (By the way, I once had the honor of doing a demo with my master for Guru Presas many years ago, and he was pleased and impressed with our display of kung fu Chin Na holds and locks, especially the counters and escapes).
This is one of the greatest sets ever done on FMA and it covers a huge amount of information and material, literally too much to describe here. But hundreds of techniques, drills, combinations, and sequences are shown, ranging from empty hand to weapons to holds and locks to takedowns and finishing techniques.
Two of the videos, the Intensive Blade and Progressive Blade, also feature James Keating, who as I said, collaborated with Mr. Worden on those tapes, and the result is two of the best videos on the combat knife ever produced. Mr. Keating covers the basic and advanced techniques, including dozens of combinations and concepts that you can use to take your knife-fighting skills to the next level. A unique feature is the regular and reverse grip knife flow drills designed by Gurus Worden and Keating and not available anywhere else. Guru Worden mentions that he and Mr. Keating did extensive research and training to create these drills, and this is the only way you can get them.
Another nice feature is most of these videos are 80-90 minutes in length, rather than 40 or 50 minutes like you get in most martial arts videos these days. So compared to most video sets this would be more like a 15-18 tape set, so it's a great value there. The videos by Mr. Keating are no exception.
The tapes are easy to learn from and Guru Worden and Keating are known for their abilities to present even difficult and advanced techniques in a clear and concise way and easy to understand way. I consider myself already a pretty strong practitioner and I still learned a lot from these tapes. As you probably know the ultimate goal of the Filipino martial arts is the ability to flow naturally and smoothly and these videos will give you or enhance your ability to do that, from entries to counters to final finishing techniques. It's all here in one outstanding series of tapes.
Some other notable features of the set are:
1. Regular and reverse grip knife flow drills designed by Gurus Worden and Keating, and as I mentioned, not available anywhere else.
2. Extensive coverage of puter kapala takedown and its variations and many finishing holds and locks and takedowns
3. Very nice tapes on the sibat, the long pole, the best one I've seen, including defenses against it and disarms and takedowns
4. Complete beginning and advanced videos for solo doble, doble baston, knife, long pole (sibat) and kuntau
5. A special sibat tape where Worden connects and integrates the different systemsHere are the titles of the videos:1. Natural Spirit Kuntau volume 1
2. Natural Spirit Kuntau volume 2
3. Solo baston level 1
4. Solo baston level 2
5. Combat line progressive blade
6. Comtech intensive knife with James Keating
7. Doble baston
8. Progressive long pole level 1
9. Progressive long pole level 2
10. Sibat--connecting the systems
All in all one of the greatest sets ever done on the Filipino Martial arts, and a big part of that was the contributions of Mr. Keating to the two knife videos.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Crossada - American Blade Concepts Vol. 1 - Bowie and Arkansas Toothpick Knife Fighting Styles
0 comments:
Post a Comment