Stick or sword training first?

When I began my journey, I first studied Olympic fencing, and then focused mainly on the sabre, while also cross-training in boxing and some combatives.

I had some basic instruction in what we would now call Irish stick and some English cane techniques. Neither was a complete system; in fact, the Irish stick training was how to crack somebody about the head quickly. No blocking or even a hint of the great systems we see today.

The English cane training came from my father who made sword canes in his spare time, it covered how to walk with them and use them if needed.

Not long after I found FMA and spent the next 30 years or so studying it, I was solely interested in stick fighting. Occasionally we would do some machete, and I did blend my Krabi Krabong successfully into my stick fighting, thanks to my Dog Brother friends. That was solely for using it in stick fighting.

Since around 2018, I have been studying sword use, primarily with an Ilustrisimo sword teacher. The system blows my mind every training session and has led me to do a lot of additional research.

From a coaching perspective, I have been thinking about whether you should start with stick or sword training.

Today I start my students off with sword and dagger and then add the stick fighting in later. This seems to supercharge our training and build the kind of focused intent that works so well. The sword and stick arts are in my view two totally separate arts, they can be blended but I think it is better to separate them, despite some of the obvious crossovers.

There is a theory that impact weapon skills are more useful in the modern world and should be taught first, but lately, in my local area, which is going decidedly third world it’s more likely you will be facing a long or short blade and to stand a chance, you need to be training constantly against that.

With my group and also the people I coach privately we follow the local law with regard to weapons, and it’s unlikely we will be carrying a knife or a short sword, but I contend that understanding how they work is a major help in surviving that kind of close encounter.  

The hybrid sword I now teach goes well with our KORA Pencak Silat system and requires a similar skill set and core body mechanics. Training with steel builds a strong, limber body quicker than the sledgehammer handles we used for stick fighting. Steel on steel has a different feel to stick on stick. Sometimes the blades do bind and bounce off on a slightly different path.

To sum up, I think we start with the sword and add the stick in later as a separate art, much the same way we start with the dagger and add in blackjacks and saps later. This is the way, well at least for our group.