Bennett S.

I was the assistant instructor of the largest active Pekiti Tirsia Kali class in Texas for roughly four years in my hometown of Frisco,TX. In that class, I worked with all types of students: Men, women, beginner, advanced, young and old. I currently hold the rank of "Guro" under Tuhon Tim Waid, and Mataas Na Guro Clinton Grumbles.

Unfortunately there are no collegiate or professional Pekiti competitions. However, the top level practitioners of Pekiti Tirsia Kali spar quite frequently, and I have gained a fair level of renown among them because of my knowledge and skill. I've attached a link below to a video of my instructor, Mataas Na Guro Clinton Grumbles, and myself technical sparring which I believe demonstrates my proficiency in the Pekiti system. In this particular sparring session, we restricted our manipulations to only basic broken, fluid, and circular strikes, and we emphasized our line recognition, timing, and distance regulation.

Contrary to the structures of many other contemporary martial arts, the traditional curriculum of Pekiti Tirsia Kali actually begins with the long weapon, and ends with empty hands.

The thought process behind this is that the greater the length of the weapon, the greater the difficulty of distance and timing recognition, and so by training the most difficult weapon category first, we increase our skill in every weapon category (especially those which require less skills to use, such as empty hands).

As you can see from my example videos above, footwork is integral to the proper execution of the system and is also taught from the first class onwards (as we almost always move as we strike). Once a new student has a grasp of the fundamentals, they’ll be taken through the entirety of the Doce Methodos System, as well as the Contradas System (these two are referred to as systems, but really they are subsystems).

Of course significant fighting skills can be developed relatively quickly, and knowledge of the entire system is not necessary to be a competent fighter.