A UC INSIGHT INTO THE
COMBATIVE STICK WORK OF
Carlos Hermanos
This tome is dedicated to my Carlos Hermanos
Instructors Sixto Carlos, Baste Carlos & Dax Cordera
Introduction
ARMED SKILLS: STICK/COSH (Heavy influence from Carlos Hermanos)
Carlos Hermanos is a small family brand of Filipino
Stick & Knife work, that unlike many others has done
away with anything superfluous to Combative func-
tionality! Many Filipino methods have between 12 and
24 angles of attack with many techniques that make it
fine-motor to learn, as well as unlikely to work in the real World! CH
has no more 3 major angles of attack, Over & Backhand Diagonal & a
solid downward Circular strike on a Vertical plane! This is combined
with both broken & fluid energy and constant offensive forward pres-
sure! It’s minimalistic approach suits UC so well and is why I am giving it
to you here! It basically teaches you how to become extremely efficient
at doing a few things well! CH employs a variety of cool drills and train-
ing methods to enhance the said Swings until the student quickly be-
comes ‘Caveman Efficient’ with ANY Stick or Cosh like tool! It is a great
combination of Primal effectiveness, fused with streamlined finesse!
DRILLS
1. Overhand Strike: Tight Power shot, with any stick or cosh-like structure.
2. Backhand Strike: Tight Power shot, with any stick or cosh-like structure.
3. Vertical-Circular Strike: Tight Power shot, on a Vertical plane.
4. Combined Strikes: Overhand, Backhand to Vertical Circular Swings.
5. Combined Strikes with Unarmed Skills: Side clinch Knee to the low-line.
Rag subject to the floor , continue Beatdown with Cosh, to fallen subject!
Basic Equipment
KIT:
Within the true Combatives fraternity, less is always considered more!
In terms of KIT caveman and low tech, is always my most favoured ap-
proach! One of the many things I like about Filipino people is how
they make the very best out of the very least!
For basic CH Training take a stick, piece of pipe or simply a piece of
wood stick shaped, now you can train! Want to hit something other
than people? Tires! With that said, any core Combative method will
have a very compressed curriculum but will seek to come up with an
infinitive number of ways in which to organise drills to train it!
Carlos Hermanos lives to this doctrine! Here are the basics, sticks and
poles and a tire tree. Tires are employed in a number of ways to pro-
duce attributes way beyond just striking power. Timing, distance and
range can all be greater understood with the innovative ways CH uses
tires. Not to mention a number of gadgets made by Sixto and his
crew. All of which are designed to maximise your attributes!
Here are a myriad of sticks, weighted poles as well as poles of greater length
all designed to build power in your swing along with strength in your hands
and wrists which comes with the completion of literally thousands of one,
two strikes!
The lighter long blades are blunt for training and are used, more to refine
the tight arc of your one, two movement! Padded sticks and hand protec-
tion are also used for practicing broken/fluid energy drills.
Then of course sparring! With what look like street hockey gloves along
with a decent Filipino stick fighting helmet fully protecting the face, head
and neck is used along with rattan sticks for full contact sparring!
The Carlos Hermanos Dummy:
This is one example, of the kind of inventions the Carlos brothers come
up with for training! This is the ‘Carlos Hermanos dummy’ and is made
up of a steel frame, braded in thick cordage, which when hit feels just
like the stick is sinking into muscle! At the bottom of each orange
corded section, is a base ball of leather coated wood structure, tied just
below it. When hit, this feels like bone!
So with this dummy, the stick has two types of target to hit. Soft then
Hard! This simulates the difference in feeling, from hitting fleshy
limbs and hard bone!
This will give the CH trainee a good understanding of energy and feel!
The tool is primarily designed for accuracy, target selection as well as
giving the right feeling for broken to fluid energy!
Here is one example of many that will follow, of broken to fluid
strikes! The broken strike hits the target and creates a sudden bounce.
This can happen when you clash with the other guys stick if he has one
but the stick can also bounce when it his the body! There is a sudden
break in the energy and the stick rebounds!
The goal for the CH trainee is to recognise this break in energy as it
happens, in order to exploit its slight forward momentum and continue
with a big fluid strike! The broken shot hits the orange cordage, bounc-
es back, then with a slight visual target change, the trainee hits the hard
base ball, cutting through with a fluid strike!
The fluid strike hits the ball and is rechambered immediately to the
should for your next broken strike. This particular training tool al-
lows you to go from broken to fluid strikes via an array of angles and
attack lines!
This is a really great tool to improve hand eye co-ordination, timing
and accuracy! This was one of my particular favourite pieces of CH
The Carlos Dummy:
Fundamental Strikes
Targeting for a level 10 Threat; ARMED/Stick & Cosh-like Weapons
Skull, all major Joints, Clavicles & all Limbs! Think & Apply OF-
FENSIVELY to any stick/cosh-like structure!
Some Examples of Everyday; Flexible Cosh & Stick-like Improvised Tools
Stance & Starting Position & Grip:
Stick chambered on the shoulder with the elbow pointing down. Stick
side foot forward, feet shoulder width apart with the rear heel slightly
raised. Both feet have toes pointing forward, feet remain this way
through out when striking. The hand is holding the stick with a simple
hammer grip. Bottom of the fist in line with the bottom of the stick. This
will allow you maximum range with the stick!
Number One Strike:
Stick chambered on the shoulder with the elbow pointing down. Stick
side foot forward, feet shoulder width apart with the rear heel slightly
raised.
For a RH dominant practitioner the stick swings an arc on an imaginary
clock face through 1 o’clock to 7 o’clock bringing the stick through to the
opposite shoulder. Here as we are just isolating this number one strike, the
stick is simply brought back to the shoulder and its original starting posi-
tion.
Additional points on mechanics; to make this strike effective the elbow is
kept generally down throughout.. You are not using just arm strength, in-
stead you let your body whip the stick down and through the target . Keep
your strike narrow and maintain both feet facing forward as you use your
body to whip through the target..
Number One Strike: Pad Drill
Work from a chambered position on the shoulder. Keep the elbow
down and all movement tight and economical! Swing the stick on a
downward diagonal line, stopping at your opposite hip.
You can throw an overhand strike with either foot forward. Allow the
weight of the tool to swing itself after a sharp initiation from the lats
shoulder pulling down, as the hips turn tightly into the swing! Be sure
to keep both feet with toes pointing forward towards the subject!
Resist the temptation to turn on the ball of either foot in order to
prevent over-commitment! Everything comes from the sharp down-
ward pull and snap of the hips, as well as letting the weight of the stick
simply swing through!
Be sure to practice all of these strikes on impactive pads, a heavy bag or
a hanging Tyre so that you immediately get to feel hitting through re-
sistance!
Here we are using a training stick with a partner and some focus pads!
This is important for the cultivation of Constant Offensive Forward
Pressure which will be employed as we put the strikes in combination
together!
All swings can be employed with a single arm swing or Power Assisted
by placing your off-hand to the wrist of the weapon bearing limb. This
will assist power greatly!
Practicing the Number One Strike: Long Poles & metal bars
Initially the number one and number two strikes are the real meat of
the CH method! In sparring, many bouts are won purely via these two
primary strikes! In addition to the number one and two, we will em-
ploy a downward vertical strike as well as a back-hand horizontal strike!
This pretty much covers the armoury of strikes used in CNH. With this
method, less is most certainly considered more!
The key difference with CH is the myriad of ways in which we train these
minimal strikes. On example here shows using a long pole, held right at the
very end of t stick, which is then swung from one hand to the next with
each co-ordinated step forward! This will also be done with a short heavy
metal pole and repped out into their hundreds!
Initially this kind of training will expose any weakness in hand, wrist and
grip strength. Which in-turn fix it relatively quickly. The idea is to build
power in your strikes, which this method does in prompt fashion!
The trainee new to CH will have to do these drills for hours on end until
accumulated reps enter in to the thousands! With blisters to prove it,
now your number one and two strikes will build some real power!
In CH, Sixto and Baste its true founders, have created a myriad of gadgets
and training kit that take the number one and two strikes to a totally new
level of power, timing and accuracy not found in the FMA!
Number Two Strike:
Stick chambered on the opposite shoulder with the elbow pointing down.
Stick side foot forward, feet shoulder width apart with the rear heel slightly
raised.
For a RH dominant practitioner the stick swings an arc on an imaginary
clock face through 11 o’clock to 5 o’clock bringing the stick through to the
opposite shoulder. From here the stick is simply brought back to the
shoulder and its original starting position.
Additional points on mechanics; to make this strike effective the elbow is
kept generally down throughout.. You are not using just arm strength, in-
stead you let your body whip the stick down and through the target .
Keep your strike narrow and maintain both feet facing forward as you use
your body to whip through the target.. There is a slight whirl with the
shoulder as the body whips the stick through the target!
Number One & Two Strikes combined:
One these two strikes are understood they are put together. Remember a
really good overhand and backhand strike is the core of the CH curricu-
lum, so spend a LOT of drill time here!
Vertical-Circular Strike:
The Vertical Strike, as its name suggests comes straight down on a ver-
tical plane as if dissecting the target right through the middle! It is
thrown from the same chambered position and can be employed (AS
WITH ALL STRIKES) with ‘Broken Energy’ where the strike comes
straight down into the target & is then immediately retracted to the
chambered position!
The second kind of energy employed is ‘Fluid Energy’ here now the
strike is explosively pulled all the way through the target. Again on a
Vertical plane but this time with a Circular motion! Hence the name
Circular Strike!
This is an extremely powerful and somewhat deceptive strike that is re-
ally good as a finishing shot! The motion completes in a full circle and
is bought back to the chambered position at the shoulder, so that the
strike can be repeated as needed!
Broken & Fluid Energy
The Vertical Circular Strike is basically a Cycling HF with a club in your hand! The HF motion lends
itself very well to hand-held weapons also! Other commonality's to the Principle of Cycling include
attacking with Constant Offensive Forward Pressure & attacking with a series of 3 or more of the
same strike which is known as Cycling!
Practice this strike on a hanging Tyre for the best feel and effect!
Broken & Fluid Energy
Tire Work
IMPACT Weapon-Combative Sequence:
This Combative Stick sequence is worked here with a Training Stick & a Partner with 2 focus Pads! Se-
quence is initiated by the Pad Feeder by feeding a target for the Overhand Swing followed by taking a
step back to feed the Backhand Swing!
This would be your ENTRY! Using this same principle breakdown to build back up format, that we em-
ployed with the Unarmed ‘BLITZKRIEG’ Example previously! This is how all Combative & Tier 1 Skill-
Sets should be approached!
With that understood, the second component or part of our sequence is the ‘BEATDOWN’ middle
phase! Here the Pad-man takes a full step back, programming his student to COME FORWARD OF-
FENSIVELY as the attack continues with a Vertical Circular Strike, striking solidly through the 2 pad
target presented by the feeder!
Now the feeder offers a low-line transition in Target which triggers a Transition from Pad to Partner
control! Trainee now blasts forward to obtain a side on attachment for a Knee strike to the low-line !
This initiates the ‘FINISH’ of the event or Termination phase of our Combative sequence! From the
low-line Knee the subject is Snatched face-fist into the ground!
The sequence is concluded with a series of Cycling Vertical-Circular Strikes to the fallen subject!
Notice how the pad feeder offers an immediate target transition with 2 Pads the second he hits the
floor! This allows the Trainee to perform his or her skill-set at full speed with a seamless flow, Safely!
This kind of training is very unique to UC as it builds a realistic depiction of what a FIGHT DYNAMIC
looks and feels like very quickly!
HERE IS THE SEQUENCE DEPICTION FROM A DIFFERENT ANGLE PERSPECTIVE!
