AS A tribute to the birthday of Gat Jose Protacio Mercado Rizal Alonzo Y Realonda or just Jose Rizal, a known arnisador himself as mentioned in one of his writings and accounts on his life, let this author honor one significant arnisador for the sake of those who would like to have a point to ponder about arnis, the national martial arts and sports of the Philippines.
This author has written several articles about arnis and tried to set things straight or in a way shed light to many confusions surrounding the Philippine National Sports and Martial Arts.
As an addition to pondering ideas that might help ease the unfamiliarity, arnis connotes the system or the art and not the stick. It is just one of the many weapons in the art of arnis, be it physical augmentation like blades of many kinds and shapes or sticks that come in different sizes and kinds of wood or material used to make them short and long.
Arnis, as claimed by many legit grand masters, masters, maestros and or guros is the most complete martial arts, thus it should not be labeled as a weapons art that uses only material augmentation.
By saying weapons art, it must include the human body as the primary weapon before any augmentation or extension.
Second is the blade or a stick? A question that gets many so confused, and to add to the idea for enlightenment or elaborate confusion, blade came first before the stick as a developed augmenting weapon used by our ancestors. The stick only came about during the rule or colonization of the Spaniards where practice of blade as a martial arts or form of fighting was prohibited, so our ancestors became innovative into substituting the blade with a stick and in the long run, discovered it has a potential as a weapon on its own. Compared to the blade strikes, stick could come from any direction with ease, but even with great potential, blades were preferred as weapons of choice during encounters back then, but the stick carried on to be used as an iconic weapon of arnis.
Learning arnis includes the human body as the primary weapon which serves as the foundation of any weapon that compliments or enhances human movement or technique.
Having arnis as our national martial arts and sports proves that we have our own just like the other countries and significantly, arnis became a part of Philippine history as a tool that helped our heroes to attain freedom. We just hope it be given proper recognition, not just in papers for publicity but in the IRR set forth for the Republic Act 9850 that should be followed and improve to serve the majority. Mabuhay ang Sining Pilipino.