Originally Posted by Michael Wright

The following is purely my personal opinion from my personal experience. It is in no way a criticism of Filipino Stick work or anyone who teaches it, this is purely my thoughts – my JKD.

I removed all stick work from my personal training some time ago. I now only train stick if it is being covered at a seminar by one of my teachers, or if someone comes to me and asks me to specifically teach it. It is not something I would ever now choose to allocate any time to. I am comfortable in this decision because I didn’t do it for a week then drop it cos I couldn’t do it, I trained in it for over ten years to a good level and made an informed decision. In JKD I think we need to practise what we preach, and stick is just not something that I have personally found to be an integral part of my own expression of the arts.

If I analyse the typical benefits people attribute to stick work, I have to challenge most of them in terms of what I have personally found:

1. Stick is very good for your co-ordination. The co-ordination you gain from stick work is very good at enabling you…. to do more stick work. I cannot hand on heart give a personal reference to the benefit of the stick in my empty hand art. I see very tenuous links taught in terms of the shapes from double stick that apply to Panantukan, these moves in Panantukan can be taught perfectly well without the stick. It is just retrofitting a comparison to prove a point, like saying you can improve your hammer fists by dancing the monkey (that’s dancing the monkey)

2. Stick work is good for your body mechanics. Yes it is, but it is no more beneficial than the body mechanics you could achieve in 6 months at a good Boxing gym, and those body mechanics would have functional application, as opposed to aesthetic grace.

3. Stick work helps your flow. I believe the opposite to be true. The vast majority of stick work traps you within the confines of set patterns, what many people see as “flow” in stick work I see as a rehearsed routine. When people break these patterns it usually turns to sh1t, or you are “free flowing” with a training partner who knows what you are going to throw. Lets say you are at a high level and you do “flow” with the sticks, what exactly are you achieving? 6 months of BJJ training on the mat will give you flow, and a whole other bunch of functional attributes into the bargain.

4. Stick is good for your footwork. No, footwork is good for your footwork. The reason that stick feels like it is “challenging” your footwork is because you have to divorce your hands from your feet, making it feel like you are really “working” your footwork. You aren’t, you are just moving your feet with two sticks in your hands – that is what you are working. Who has the best footwork in the world? Boxers. Why? Because they train their footwork.

5. You need to train stick to understand the empty hand art. I personally feel a good Panantukan instructor can teach the art in isolation. If you put two equal students into training, one doing 2 years of stick then a year of Panantukan vs. one who does 3 solid years of Panantukan – I know who I believe would be more proficient in the empty hand arts.

6. Full Contact Stick sparring is…..a gas, I completely agree – but that is the benefit of any sparring, not the benefit of stick.

7. Stick work is fun. I won’t take that away from anyone, if you enjoy it then fair play to you.


If I can sum all of this up. Recently one of my teachers came over to my place from the US to do a seminar. On the Sunday morning he started with double stick and pulled me out to do some Siniwali patterns. I hadn’t picked up two sticks in about a year, and we did about 10 patterns in a row, I just had to follow his lead, and he was going very fast. He said to me afterwards “See, you write off the stick but look what it has done for your ability”. But the truth is, doing stick drills has got me good at doing stick drills, that is what it has done for my ability.