History

Simhota Ko Dong Anciong

Bacon
What is Balintawak Arnis?

Venancio Anciong Bacon

Balintawak Arnis is a combat system developed by Anciong Bacon
in the 1940s. Believed to be named after a small street in Cebu
where its first club was founded, it was developed by Anciong to
enhance and preserve the combative nature of arnis which he felt
was being watered down by other styles.
Various forms of the art of Arnis, which include Doce Pares, Doce
Musa, Punta y Daga, and Amara, utilize long range fighting skills
and are geared more towards an offensive style of fighting.
Balintawak varies from most martial arts in that it uses close range
fighting exercises, applying all the known foul blows conceivable

to street fighting. It was conceived to supplement and correct the

missing defensive fundamentals of Arnis.
Its primary training tool is the single olisi or garote eschewing
the traditional double sticks and espada y daga. However, it is not
just a stick or blade-fighting art. Balintawak fighters are equally
adept at both weapons and empty-hand fighting. In Balintawak,
the arnis or garrote is only used to enhance and train the
individual for bare hands fighting, and to achieve perfection in the
art of speed, timing and reflexes necessary to acquire defensive
posture and fluidity in movement. Balintawak aims to harness
ones natural body movement and awaken ones senses to move
and react. It guarantees that its practitioner will experience a
revelation in the fundamentals of street fighting.
Practice of the art is independent of body-type, be it fat or thin, big
or small. Its goal is to eliminate the natural human instincts in
fighting and replace it with purposeful reflexes refined with speed
and timing. Balintawak also promotes well being and good
relations among practitioners.
Balintawak is battle-proven. Fights of Balintawak practitioners
against fighters of other styles and martial arts, whether empty
hand or weapon-based, are usually over in seconds. Its strikes are
direct and fast, its footwork natural and short, almost like walking,
for mobility.
It has no fancy movements and assumes at once that an
adversary is skilled and has a strong attack, thus necessitating a
strong defense. For this reason, defense is taught first to all
Balintawak practitioners.

Why Defense First?

Balintawak aims to develop a defensive posture because one
should always assume that ones opponent is skilled. Most practitioners of other arts are taught speed and timing in offensive
moves, with the ideal of downing an opponent with successive
attacks, whereas only a few arts practice speed and timing in the
realm of defense. Balintawak bridges the gap between offense and
defense. Once speed and timing in the defense are developed, the
offensive attack follows automatically. The contrary is true when
one only practices offensively.
Since Balintawak is defensive in nature, it allows mental, as well as
motor movements to develop and synchronize. It also constantly
places the practitioner in high-pressure situations, by means of
defensive sparring, which also makes for good cardiovascular
exercise.
What makes Balintawak Arnis different from other Arnis,
Kali, and Escrima?
Balintawak uses a unique method to train its practitioners. After
learning the basic offensive and defensive techniques, the Balintawak student is, from day one, placed in harms way. He is
given random and continuous attacks/strikes by his instructor,
generally at a speed just beyond his (or her) current ability to
defend against. The students mission is simple: to defend and
counter the attacks. The result is an instructor-led training
framework called agak that immerses the student in a
dynamic state of attack and counters that he must strive to
overcome. This free-flowing duel programs the student to respond
instinctively to random attacks, with crisp, effective offensive and

defensive techniques executed fluidly and, if called for,

continuously. Quickness, power, and economy of movement are
emphasized. As the student improves in this counter-to-counter
play, the attacks become stronger, faster and more complex,
progressively pulling the students skill level upward. At all
times, the instructor guides the student, from the most basic, to
the more advanced, techniques. Eventually, the students defense,
timing, speed, body mechanics, and techniques improve to a level
where he is able to overcome his instructors attacks. However, as
the student improves, so does the training level. The higher the
skill of the instructor, the higher the student can go. A good
Balintawak instructor constantly keeps the student in a state of
jeopardy, challenging but without overwhelming him to strive
to match the instructors intensity and skill level. At the highest
levels, the distinction between instructor and student diminish as
both attack and defend with equal vigor and skill. This is known as
cuentada. Because of this, Balintawak can only be taught one on
one, by an instructor more skilled than the student. It cannot be
taught en masse. It is this personalized tutelage that
distinguishes Balintawak from other arnis/kali/eskrima and martial
arts styles. Practitioners of other styles might think this is
equivalent to what other styles call freestyle or laban-laro. This is
not so. It has been observed that the freestyle and laban-laro
exercises of other styles are choreographed. In Balintawak, the
give and take is truly random. There are no patterns. Moreover,
it is taught from the very beginning, unlike in other styles where
sparring and pseudo-freestyle drills are usually reserved for
advanced students. In Balintawak, there is no such thing as a foul
blow. At advanced levels, all conceivable attacks are allowed,
including punching, elbowing, head butting, tripping, kicking,
pushing, pulling, grabbing, butting, trapping, spitting, etc.

What are Balintawaks Systems of Instruction?

The grouping system of instruction was developed by Atty. Jose
Villasin in an effort to systematize the random teaching style of
Anciong Bacon. Under the grouping system of instruction, a
student is taught twelve basic strikes, and the corresponding
twelve basic blocks and counters. Once the student is familiar with
these basic movements, the instructor attacks the student with a
series of basic strikes, first in sequence, then later randomly, to
which the student must respond with the basic blocks and
counters. As the students ability to defend and counter
progresses, the instructor increases the speed of the attacks,
varies the timing, introduces feinting, footwork, twisting, etc. and
introduces more sets of attacks, counters, counters to the
counters, and so on. This advanced set of attacks, counters, and
counters to the counters which are called groups are what
characterize this method of instruction. The groups address the
variables that arise in combat, the what ifs such as what if the
attacker holds your hand, or what if he moves left, etc. At the
higher levels, the groups form a corpus of movements that can be
combined in an infinite number of ways, allowing the student to
express himself in combat in his own unique way.
As its name suggests, the random method does not use groups. In
this system, after a student is taught the basic strikes, blocks and
counters, the instructor randomly delivers a series of attacks with
no particular order in the way the student is guided through the
attacks and counters. This is the traditional method of teaching
Balintawak and is favored by the older masters.