Dumog of Filipino martial arts

Dumog of Filipino martial arts.

The dumog of Philippine Kali and Indonesian Silat is the art of wrestling of these fantastic arts of Southeast Asia.

Often during the phases of hand-to-hand combat it happens that you are grabbed or you grab the hand, arm, neck or other parts of your attacker and he does the same thing, grabs you, grabs you by the shirt, etc.

These situations are the classic situation where you can apply the joint levers in a mix of strokes and levers.

Now in the Philippine Kali the dumog as well as in the standing phase is seen as a real fighting system that also completes itself on the ground but since it is designed against multiple attackers it is not seen as in the Jiu Jitsu as a real fight on the ground but a completion of a technique that brought the opponent to the ground to complete a second lever in an instant and find himself in the sequence back on his feet or at least in a situation of control of the area.

This is a very important detail because the ground phase is the finalization of a “movement” or sequence of movements that ends with the aggressor on the ground.

In general, given an opponent standing, I can tell you that from hand to neck you have the option to apply 30 joint levers.

Now the good news is that for every lever there is in addition to leverage techniques there is a counter-leverage.

In my method in addition to studying the 30 levers from hand to neck you have to study two counter levers for each of them and you also have to study their applications.

To this you must add for each lever the method to bring the aggressor to the ground starting from that lever.

An important job but that allows you to acquire a good knowledge of human bio mechanics and the related imbalances related to the control of the body by exploiting the joint levers.

Consider that there are Chinese martial arts like the Chi Na where the system is totally structured on the joint levers.

Some mistakenly think that the art of applying joint levers is exclusive heritage of Jiu Jitsu, as well as choking but this is not the case.

Even in our medieval fencing there were joint levers to disarm and unbalance opponents.

Now to go back to the dumog of the Philippine Kali which is what I want to talk to you about.

In recent years many martial arts that did not integrate the joint levers have realized that they are the means to perform The disarmament of weapons such as knives And Sticks understanding that in addition to being useful in bare-handed combat it becomes essential if you have to Disarming a weapon (very popular topic in the forums) or check a aggressor.

Often you hear that the joint levers do not work in combat but surely those who say this do not know the correct training methods and above all do not understand that the joint lever should not be sought but is simply a correct response to a stimulus.

Surely if you want to look for a lever it means that you have not understood anything about how to apply them and how it works because if you can search for a lever with an attacker it means that you have found a chicken or you have found one that weighs half of you.

Unfortunately when it comes to such technical jobs as joint levers or how knife fencing can be the master begins to count a lot because a level of competence and training methods are needed that you can not improvise.

Today the spread of martial arts also thanks to the new means of communication has brought a great opportunity but also a great confusion especially from those who improvised to explain topics without having the necessary skills but I repeat that anyway for the knowledge of martial arts this is the most flourishing period ever existed because the communication means allow you to find and see masters also on the other side of the world , I was once forced to go looking for people, with their own feet, after hours of flying.

After this short parenthesis, returning to the dumog, there are at least 4 main functions that has a lever:

1 – Break or smooth the joint

The lever is a dry blow carried on the joint of the wrist, elbow, or shoulder at a precise point with a strong thrust action beyond the physiological limit of the joint.

The aim is therefore to limit or prevent the functional mobility of the aggressor with an action that breaks his articulation in two.

The principle is that of leverage so to function must have a fulcrum and a force to apply.

2 – Disarm the attacker

Joint levers are one of the methods of disarming an aggressor armed with any type of weapon whether it is a knife, a stick.

Joint leverage techniques are necessary to take the weapon away from the opponent effectively and as quickly and as risky as possible.

3 – Bring the attacker to the ground

In this case the lever applied does not take place with a dry blow on the limb of the aggressor but a determined and constant pressure with an adequate force to make the lever feel that leads him to follow the direction of pressure that usually directs him to the ground where it can be easily immobilized.

The projection can also be violent and often the attacker moves falling to avoid the fracture of the joint, so he goes to the ground not by your will but to escape the pressure, for this there are precautions on the levers and control with your feet to limit his exit movements.

These are tricks to make life even more difficult for your attacker.

Often the leverage techniques used to bring someone to the soles are used by the forces of order to bring to the ground and immobilize a criminal.

4 – Trapping

However, intended as trapping the attacker in an uncomfortable position for a moment in order to hit him possibly primary targets or in ko areas.

You can use it to lower his head and hit him with the knee or kick him in the face.

Provoke the opening of his legs to easily hit him in the genitals.

Unbalance it backwards to hit him in the throat or with a direct elbow to the face

Etc. etc.

So you can also use the lever to open the attacker’s guard so you can hit it with headbutts, punches, elbows, kicks or knees, or even grab it in a fight projection technique.

Now you have to train the levers with a method designed to train the correct answers in case of a real fight because the lever should never be sought but is always a response to a stimulus.

How the joint lever works in principle without going into the details of an orthopedist.

If you look at your arm you will see that there are parts that can move, your wrist, your elbow and your shoulder.

Let’s leave our fingers off even if you keep a specific article on your fingers that I will probably do.

Now look at your wrist, it’s a very moving articulation, which allows for a rotation close to 360 degrees with an opening of the hand in different directions at different angles.

Try with one hand to bend your other hand in the direction of your forearm or anywhere on your wrist, you will find that each position has a limit and forcing you over you begin to feel pain and if you continue to push it will damage the wrist joint by luxoving or breaking it.

Now look at the elbow area and you notice that it bends in only one direction while when we stretch it out it is not possible to continue to bend it in the opposite direction.

Any forcing in the direction that does not bend leads to acute pain until rupture of the joints.

Now do the same thing by lifting your whole arm and bending it back towards your back you will see that there is also here on the shoulder a limit beyond which our limb freezes and any form of additional force in that direction causes severe pain and damage to the shoulder joint.

The ones I just listed are the three zones that you need to use to apply the dumog levers standing but also on the ground.

Then the areas on which to apply the lever are the wrist, elbow, and shoulder.

Fingers, neck, but in general all the bones and joints of the human body can be applied painful levers and pressures but now the focus I want to talk to you about is on the standing dumog and the thirty levers that go from the wrist to the shoulder, fingers we use to help us control and bring to the lever or amplify the pain.

Now the joint levers act on the extension beyond the physiological limit of the joint but there are complex levers that act instead on multiple principles as well as extra rotation also on the twisting of the bones.

Now let’s see some steps to learn the joint levers.

One of the most used methods is to study levers in phases

Step 1:

Study all thirty lever techniques, one at a time with a training partner.

Without haste and above all tap out when the lever is really coming in.

This stage with your partner is important because if you or your training partner bat first actually being still unexaverable you do not realize that the lever has not yet entered.

When you become more experienced, you actually felt it on your partner’s joint that you’re not yet at the bottom of the race or in the first extra run phase.

You know for yourself if the lever entered without your partner beating because he felt it beyond the lever also by the changing stiffness of your training partner’s body.

Step 2:

Now concatenate leverage techniques by running them in order 1 through 30 and vice versa by adding the new one only when the previous ones you know how to apply them.

You have to do it like this:

• Perform lever 1 and 2 then the 1 again
• Perform lever 1 – 2 and 3 then the 2 and 1
• Perform lever 1 – 2 -3 and 4 then the 3 – 2 and 1

continues according to this scheme until you get to perform all 30 levers.

Basically you have to go round-trip of the 30 levers.

Ps. One important thing is NOT to make the robot, you have to be fluid because the fluidity of execution and chaining from the lever n. 1 to Lever No. 30 are important.

Step 3:

Perform the round-trip levers on your training partner’s right arm and left arm.

It is important that you can perform them regardless of whether it is the right or left arm.

Step 4:

Once you know the lever try it with different people, such as physical structure, height, weight, constitution, etc. you will find that with some of them you have to adapt your movements to those of the new companion.

You will find that there are “clinical” cases where some levers are unenforceable because some people do not suffer some joint levers because their mobility is beyond normal.

In this case it is useless to insist and you need to understand this right away and quickly switch to another attack solution or another joint lever.

Quiet are rare cases but then exist then consider that maybe on that given lever do not suffer with another instead enters earlier than normally happens.

What I tell you is that if the person has a very elastic wrist joint you have to immediately change technique maybe always on the wrist but combined that goes to act on a different angle of the wrist.

Do not fix yourself on a lever if it does not enter immediately changes with a lever to the elbow or shoulder.

Or there are levers that act simultaneously on a painful pressure and lever on the wrist like lever 7 the 8 and the 9 that I explain in my method.

A technique used in Martial Arts Philippines consists of “softening” the muscle with punches or elbows to put the muscle to sleep because on people strong at the muscle level and therefore particularly resistant, usually those who have a very strong connective tissue withstand more of the strong pressure of a lever and also the rotations of the joint, but shots to the musculature allow to eliminate the problem.

For this reason, gunting and direct punch and elbow blows to the muscles of the arms and shoulders are often used.

Step 5:

Perform the 30 blindfolded levers on both your training partner’s right arm and left arm.

This is a very important step because you are learning to use the kinestic sense and therefore to feel you always need to maintain contact with your attacker to feel and recognize his position.

This is a very important step because it teaches you never to break away so to always maintain a certain pressure and control of your opponent a fundamental phase when you switch from one lever to another.

Step 6:

Put an aluminum stick or knife (no rubber or wood bullshit) in your hand to your training partner and try using the lever techniques you’ve learned to disarm it.

Again you will find that you will have to make several adaptations in case the technique succeeds.

This phase is also important and will make you discover many aspects of the levers you have studied and learned.

How you’ll find out how to use the weapon to use it in the lever as a fulcrum or as a force

Step 7:

Since we are talking about Kali Filipino and Indonesian Silat surely you have to practice sensitivity exercises such as the hubud (cadena de mano) of Filipino Kali and Indonesian Pencak Silat, chi sao (the exercise of adherent hands) of Wing Chung and Jeet Kune Do or even the exercise on the thrusts of Tai Chi Chuan or some other martial art, try to insert leverage techniques within these sensitivity exercises.

Do this with your training partner because here you discover your ability to effectively perform joint levers during a moving action and this exercise will exponentially improve your ability to apply a lever.

You also have the option to apply them to the context by entering the leverage number that best suits that situation.

Step 8:

Now comes the beauty, the phase of sparring joint levers, you can do this only when you have really assimilated is understood their functioning.

After a series of boxing, Muay Thai, or Grappling shots you have to insert controls and levers.

Here is very important the ability of the control because you risk doing damage to your training partner.

If you learn this stage well in reality you should find yourself better because the time of application of the lever is enclosed in an instant with a force that must be controlled something that you do not have to do in reality where you apply the maximum force in an instant.

This ability to control is more difficult and should make you more effective in reality however sometimes the habit of controlling leads some people to do the same thing in reality giving too much time to the attacker who can find time to free himself or react with a shot.

Attention!! My personal opinion but also tested, so I follow what I tell you.

The lever should always be applied after a hit.

Because you have to fill the time space of the attacker’s non-reaction following a shot to put your lever.

If you apply it without hitting him in that list, he lands a blow to you.

Important details

There are important details that you need to take care of in a maniacal form in reality if you want the lever to work to your advantage and to train them correctly without doing damage to your training partners:

Balance

To perform the thirty joint levers you use your hands and arms but it is not enough, because to allow your hands and arms to effectively control the limb of your attacker, you need to make sure that the entire posture and balance of the body is perfect.

Balance is extremely important, if you are unbalanced you can not apply force correctly and even your fulcrum can be precarious and unstable which prevents the lever from running properly.

Balance is an important aspect to make the technique effective.

Being that in reality there is a reaction hardly the grip will be perfect and often you have to look into the flaw of the grip the perfect execution not only in the way you grabbed the aggressor but also and especially in the position you have of your body and that made to assume to your attacker.

For this you need to know perfectly the operation and the bio mechanics of the body to feel and adapt the technique of the lever in the instant.

Stay hidden and always look at your attacker

When you apply a lever pay constant attention to what your attacker does, test this thing during workouts.

Check what it can do with the other arm, head and leg, look at your position and see what it can do with all the free parts it can hit you with to stop you from running the lever.

Always check your attacker’s center line (that imaginary line that divides his body in two parts in a longitudinal sense).

Make sure you are always out of reach of his attacks, whether staying distant or always trying to reach his side or what is called the blind spot, that is, the point from which your opponent can not hit you without having to change his position.

This is very important!!!

An important thing to do is also rotate his head to the side so as not to show you, he must feel that you are there but does not have to see directly your position and where you are.

Difficulty getting the lever in.

If you find it difficult to execute a lever because the position is not good or the aggressor has reacted do not insist even a moment more than necessary but switches to the next lever, better if in the opposite direction to the resistance of the aggressor to exploit his own energy.

The necessary strength

Pay attention to the effort you make to execute the lever.

If you feel you’re making an exaggerated effort like when you play a strength game then there’s something wrong with the execution.

Analyze how you grabbed your workout partner, where you put the focus, where you apply strength, your potion, and how you distributed weight, the distance between you and your training partner.

There must never be room between you two, you must always feel the pressure.

Remember that only a critical and careful analysis allows you to improve the techniques until you get closer to perfection.

The point of no return of the lever is personal

Remember that all joint levers have a different point of non-rhythm for each individual.

Until you have reached the point of no return of the aggressor he will react to your grip and turn the situation upside down by freeing himself, hitting you, performing a counter-lever.

A joint lever when applied on its feet cannot be maintained for long to immobilize the aggressor.

If you apply the lever for the purpose of immobilizing your attacker you will find that you will not be able to maintain the lever for long to control your attacker because your ability to keep the tension on the lever and your attention over time varies by loosening the strength of the grip without you noticing and at this moment your attacker who feels less pain can take advantage to get out of the grip.

Never use lever techniques for standing stillness but only for a temporary passage, to bring the aggressor to the ground, for disarmament or more.

It is true for example that they say that the Chinese handcuff is used for the standing control of the person however do not abuse this.

Unbalance your attacker

One thing that makes the lever even more effective is the imbalance of the opponent.

If your attacker is subjected to the lever and the organization of his
reaction will be completely disrupted and rendered ineffective.

He must be uncomfortable in his base so he won’t have strength.

Breathe

Breathing helps the lever run.

Also in wrestling and brazilian jiu jitsu and the same thing.

Learn to produce a long and constant extraction while applying the lever technique, this will allow you to relax your entire muscle apparatus and facilitate the smooth execution of the technique.

It can also be useful to make a constant sound of equal intensity.

In training and reality

When you have learned to perform the lever technique with sufficient confidence and mastery you can gently bring it to a high degree of pressure without damaging the joint of the companion.

Attention!!! Never abuse this security.

Remember never to take shots in both the application and the outlet release; In fact, often in the gym the damage of the companion takes place in the phase of release of the lever, which must take place slowly gradually because remember that the tendons are elastic.

In reality, however, there must be no gradual application of force in reality.

Hit

Before making the lever you have to hit the aggressor, this is a fundamental rule, do not fixate yourself or look for a lever without first hitting because you have to eliminate for him a time and use it to apply leverage, otherwise if you do not hit a lever never works in a non-cooperating context unless the person is a real aggressor.

10 control points on the human body

These points correspond to the joints but read the post dedicated to these control points of the human body.

Below is a simple list but deepen in the post.

• Fingers of the hands
• Toes
• Wrists
• Elbows
• Shoulders
• Hips
• Knees
• Ankles
• Spine
• Neck

Conclusions

The dumog remains in my opinion a fundamental study for a practitioner of Filipino Kali but of self-defense in general.

Many fighting arts deal with the dumog but the approach to the fight of the Filipino dumog has the important difference that it is thought to be used against an opponent who is armed or potentially armed and this allows you to have an approach with a mentality that is outside the sporting context.

There are many martial studies, and as in this case the dumog that are preparatory to their martial art.

Already in itself the study of the struggle in general makes us understand the bio mechanics of the human body and makes us understand what gives strength and weakness to the movement, what makes you lose balance and the directions of pushing or pulling that generate this loss of balance and ability to move, as clearly the levers that allow joint breaks, as well as the studies of suffocation that are however inserted in the Filipino dumog standing and on the ground.

As I told you, being an art also designed not to say above all armed with percussion and cutting weapons in particular, these are used to carry out techniques both in attack and defense.

An approach that makes you see the fight standing and on the ground from a different perspective!

Have a good workout with the joint levers!!!

Stay Tuned!

Street Fight Mentality & Fight Sport

Andrea