nyone who’s been around the
martial arts long enough no
doubt has heard a certain box-
ing maxim: Make him miss and
make him pay. That’s all well
and good, but what if there was
a way to just make him pay
and immediately reverse the
momentum of the fight? It just
so happens that there is.
The Filipino martial arts
teach a strategy called
“defanging the snake.” It has you literally attacking your
opponent’s incoming limb before it can do any damage.
While this fighting tactic clearly stems from the influ-
ence that armed combat in the Philippines has had on
the greater martial arts community, one should not think
for a moment that it doesn’t apply equally well to empty-
hand skills.
In the empty-hand training sessions I organize for my
arnis students, we refer to this category of techniques
as limb destructions. Their role in armed combat is the
same as it is in unarmed combat: to exploit the fact that
the opponent is reaching toward the defender. Because all
martial artists intuitively understand where their body is
in space relative to their opponent, this path to victory is
clear: Deny him his target and replace it with your weapon
so that it’s the opponent, and not you, who is injured.
But just because the path is clear doesn’t mean it’s
easy to pull off. In reality, a limb destruction is a skill
that needs to be practiced seriously by any martial artist
who wishes to make it a reliable tool in his or her arsenal.
Once mastered, though, it will become a prized posses-
sion that can be used to bypass the purely defensive ini-
tial phase of a violent encounter.STAGES
If you dissect the art of fighting into
its various components, you’ll notice
that altercations have three stages. Yes, the stages can be
repeated several times within the same battle until a con-
clusion is reached, but basically they are the only distinct
parts of combat. They are the entry, the follow-up and the
finish. If you knock out your foe with a single punch, all
three stages are embodied within that punch. If you’re in
a fight involving multiple technique exchanges, there will
be multiple entries and follow-ups until the finish occurs.
The advantage that the defanging-the-snake con-
cept bestows is it allows you to remove an important
time suck, the delay that normally occurs between a
purely defensive action such as a block or cover and the
moment you inflict injury in an effort to end the threat. In
essence, you convert his opening move into the first part
of your counter. Once you’re able to seize the offensive,
you quickly can turn the momentum in your favor.
Clearly, defanging the snake operates on a physical
level, but it also can have a huge psychological effect.Tony Torre prepares to use his stick to fend off an opponent with a knife (1). The opponent initiates his attack (2), and the
defender slams his weapon into the man’s forearm (3). He quickly re-chambers (4) and strikes while the opponent is still
reeling from the pain (5). In the Filipino martial arts, this strategy is known as defanging the snake.2435162 BLACKBELTMAG.COM § AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019