Filipino Stick Fighting Techniques: The Essential Techniques of Cabales Serrada Escrima

by Mark V. Wiley, Darren Tibon (Foreword)

Filipino Stick Fighting Techniques is the authoritative guide to Cabales Serrada Escrima--a stick fighting art with its roots in Escrima, the national martial art of the Philippines. The popularity of these techniques has dramatically increased since they were used extensively by Matt Damon in action-packed fight scenes in the Jason Bourne films.

Developed by Grandmaster Angel Cabales when he came to the U.S., Cabales Serrada Escrima is a distinct system emphasizing close-quarter combat using highly effective stick-fighting moves in unarmed as well as knife fighting situations. This book offers a clear presentation of the basic strikes, blocks, counters, and disarms unique to this style of martial art--as well as explaining how and why the techniques work and when to use them.

Angel Cabales was a pioneer in the Filipino Martial Arts and the first teacher of Escrima in the U.S. He trained and certified Mark V. Wiley, the author of this book. Darren G. Tibon, an Escrima Grandmaster, was also trained by Cabales and has contributed a new foreword to the book.

This new edition contains:
Extensively illustrated with over 300 photos and detailed step-by-step instructions, this book lays the foundation for not just learning the system of Cabales Serrada Escrima, but understanding the traditions and philosophy of the art.

Genres: Martial Arts

192 pages, Paperback

Published March 19, 2019

About the author

Mark V. Wiley, B.A., received his bachelor of arts degree in sociology from Drexel University. He began martial arts training in 1979 and has focused on Cabales Serrada Escrima under Grandmaster Angel Cabales. As an author, Wiley's works included Filipino Martial Arts: Cabales Serrada Escrima (Tuttle 1994) and Filipino Fighting Arts: Theory and Practice (Unique 2000). He has worked in the publishing field, including Tuttle Publishing and CFW Enterprises, and now is self-employed with Tambuli Media.

Reviews

[Paul A · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wiley does a good job of introducing some of the history and a few choice techniques of the Cabales Serrada Escrima system. Fairly standard martial arts fare as books go. Illustrations are helpful, but normally insufficient unless the reader already has a sense of how these movements flow. Additional information on mental awareness and emotional control is also interesting, but seems to distract from the rest of the book's contents.

[Raymond Goss · Rating 5 out of 5]

I give this book 5 stars due to the historical content. The first half of the book covered the back story of Angel Cabales and Serrada Escrima. As a practitioner of arnis for nearly 30 years, I enjoy learning the emphasis of different styles and how they came to be as well as how they developed. The section on Dizon and the original Doce Pares was the most interesting to me. The second half of the book covered specific drills, blocks, disarms, and techniques with and without weapons. Dr. Wiley mentions in the text that the original edition of the book had different techniques not show in this version. Since I don't have that edition, I can't tell what is missing. I would say that the photos are hard to see and while I could understand all the techniques, it wasn't always easy to follow. In most cases, the photo shows the practitioners using different color sticks (white and black) which helps somewhat. The book is not comprehensive but serves as an excellent introduction to the style.

[Rai Keyri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the latest about Serrada Escrima. Currently reading the 1991 version.