The problems with Irish stick fighting
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- Опубликовано: 21 июл 2024
- In this video I cover some of the problems faced by those doing Irish stick fighting and those who want to practice the art.
Bernard Leddy
www.fightinghares.com/
Maxime Chouinard
irishstick.wordpress.com/
My School and social media:
/ kernschoolofcombat
/ theramblingkern
/ theramblingkern
My Patreon if you want to support my work:
/ ramblingkern
I think Irish stick fighting is one of the most underrated martial arts.
I’m based down south of England, and am part of a 14th/15th century reenactment group that portrays mostly Irish kern with some gallowglass.
Point 3 we face every season and have had all sorts of mud slung at us by english groups questioning our authenticity ect..
Your channel I have used on more than one occasion to set the record straight!
Big thanks
Ah mate I am sorry to hear that but truly delighted my work can help in some way. Especially the period you are showing off it is so unknown in Irish history unless you seek it out.
Thanks mate. As a Australian of Irish descent i found when i went over last year how different the real Ireland now is to how it`s past has been portrayed. It was better than the fantasy
Ah that's great to hear mate.
@@ramblingkern I concur most of breve heart movie was filmed in Ireland I love to go see Ireland kilorglin near Coast be where I go
My mum's Irish, I grew up around Birmingham England, huge Irish community, it's in the blood, I'm just getting to the age I'd like a stick for support and comfort , I'll be getting a stick 😉
Sounds like a good investment.
This is my first ever hear of Irish Martial Arts. This is fascinating and I can't believe I never heard of Irish Stick fighting as a trained school of stick fighters...😮mad isn't it..and me here and Shelagh not 5 miles away . I'm totally on board mate..I'll be in touch..🎉
I am delighted to hear it get in touch if you ever want to drop into a class the details to them are in my more recent videos.
Thank you for this. I found out I am of Irish decent. Proudfoot. I am writing older children books and since discovering about the chillelagh am putting it in the book. I am grateful to you, and also for the links to the coaches
Thank you so much for your kind words it really means a lot to know that my work can help others.
My age 71yr old I remember my grandfather Blue always had his blackthorn walking stick with him I think that they moved from nothern Ireland to Scotland back in the day
Good video. I'm an American of Irish descent and have started training in Antrim and am starting Doyle soon. I'm very keen on helping to keep these aspects of Irish culture alive.
Great job mate.
Wonderful video again !
Thank you brother
Seen video of father and son in Canda keeping Irish stick fighting alive since 80's need to keep are culture alive
For sure mate. I am doing my best to do just that.
Good stuff as always lad. I could be wrong, but I think some of the problem with popularizing Irish stick fighting is that it doesn't appeal to people who don't own and don't plan on owning Irish sticks. First the stocks themselves need to become popular. I mean why does HEMA attract people, because everyone loves swords.
I think our best bet is to first spread collar and elbow, it's a simple and fun sport that anyone can pick up, no need for equipment. Then once people are training C&E for a bit introduce stick fighting.
I tend to fully agree when I first started nobody wanted to hear about Irish stick as hema was viewed as only swords. Now things have matured a bit there is more interest.
I think the best way to get collar and elbow going is to get competitions going as most people I encounter here would rather do other grappling or you get a small group who are interested in Irish martial arts. Like any of these things it just has to be kept at to help it grow.
I only found your channel a couple days ago and I'm fascinated, I want to learn something about our own National Martial Arts.
Great content and information you have me hooked now. Merry Christmas and happy New year.
Thank you for the support and kind words. Merry Christmas to you too.
Rambling kern you had a small orb infront going down your chest . But I concur john hurley has a few books and in usa you can learn stick fighting I love the nostalgia with irish shillaglah fighting sticks is why I hand carve shillaglahs I even bought dvd gangs new York I plan on carving the shillaglah used buy big guy in movie I may use blackthorn or olive wood not sure yet 👍🇬🇧🦊🐾🍀
Sounds good mate I hope it turns out well.
thx 🙏
You are very welcome.
Thanks for the video. I have several comments.
First, I'm skeptical about the use of ballistics gel as an analogue to brains inside the human skull. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I've always heard that the brain is extremely soft material floating inside a fluid that behaves much like water. Ballistics gel better simulates muscles and other organs that have much more rigidity. When we stand, our leg muscles don't just sag to the lowest point possible. They have muscle tone that holds them in place. The brain tissue doesn't have that. I think a much better analogy to the brain inside the skull would be boiled noodles in water. If you boiled a large pot of noodles, drained most of the water, and poured the noodles inside the ceramic ball, you'd get an assembly that mimicked the human skull much more closely than if you filled the ceramic ball with ballistics gel. A layer of ballistics gel over the outside would simulate the thin layer of muscle and flesh on the outside of the human skull.
Regarding the whole idea of "Irish martial arts" or "Historical European Martial Arts" or any other kind of martial arts, one has to consider the different purposes for which one might want to learn the martial arts. All of these have some kind of value, but each will have a different appeal to different people. Some people will enjoy the re-enactment aspect of these things. They want to act out scenes of the past. To some extent, that helps them better understand history. To some extent, they just see artistic value in acting out scenes of the past. In that sense, they are engaging in something more like dance or acting than fighting. Some people enjoy the sport aspect of these activities. They want well-defined rules and a well-documented system for deciding a winner and a loser. They want actions that will make them more physically fit even if they never compete and never win or lose. Other people want to learn a skill that would allow them to defend themselves and their family members or friends if they were attacked by someone who was intent on doing them real harm. They don't care about rules. They don't care about re-enacting the way things were done a few hundred years ago. They want to take an available tool and stop an attacker from hurting them. I think each of these reasons for participating is legitimate, but different people will be motivated by different goals.
I also accept that there is some crossover. Few people will reach their highest level of ability in the use of any tool (whether that's a material object or just a skill) without some kind of active resistance testing. Essentially, that is sparring or sport fighting, and these activities must always be treated as a sport with strong rules to protect the participants from injury. Even the pageantry of a re-enactment approach can have some practical value. A simple wooden dowel with a brass footing and an expanded head looks a bit like a weapon if carried in public. A beautifully-finished shillelagh looks more like a fashion statement. A person who is carrying a shillelagh or other stick that appears to be primarily for decoration rather than self-defense will be less likely to be harassed by police enforcing laws against people defending themselves. If the person carrying the stick knows a few theatrical moves, knowing those moves only strengthens the idea that he (or even she) is carrying the stick as a kind of jewelry.
I'm neither a performer nor an athlete. I have no interest in trying to put on a demonstration to show people who some historical weapon was used. I may appreciate the beauty of someone doing motions with swords of various times and places or doing katas of various martial arts, but I'm just not someone who can do that. I don't enjoy it, and I'm not good at it. I'm a little bit of a sportsman and would enjoy the competition aspects of things like wrestling, boxing, or HEMA, but I would never be good at them. That places some limits on how much I want to participate. My primary goal is to be able to defend myself if attacked. The world is becoming a harsher and harsher place, and I want to be able to respond effectively if necessary. There's some appeal in being able to use an attractive, traditional, tool of self-defense, so that drives me to want to learn to use a shillelagh effectively.
The problem for "Irish martial arts" is that so many people who have an interest in these arts will have so many different reasons for wanting to participate. You start with an already small number of people who want to participate, and as they are further divided in their interests, finding a way for one school to appeal to all of those interests will be even harder. If my health hadn't failed, I would probably be interested in any local school that was teaching Irish martial arts, but I live in a small town of fewer than 10,000 people in a county that is 100 miles long by a 100 miles wide with this town being the largest population center. There's barely any martial arts of any kind in this location.
In many ways, I think your best chance of getting some kind of Irish martial arts to become extremely popular might be the collar-and-elbow wrestling. For the cost of a sturdy shirt that wouldn't tear from being gripped, anyone could participate. Unlike traditional freestyle wrestling, participants wouldn't need to get special helmets to avoid getting temporary and then permanent cauliflower ear. This sport seems as if it would develop balance extremely well, and that would make it an ideal sport for developing children and for adults who want to keep training their balance even when they spend much of their days in an office chair. I wish this sport had been available to me when I was a child fifty years ago.
If collar-and-elbow wrestling became popular, that might open the other types of Irish martial arts to a large crowd.
A lot of excellent and well thought out points here. On the gel the manufacturers of the skull has a specific formula for doing it that I need to read up on and will update further once I have.
I think you raise some really great points on how many people come to martial arts for very different reasons and the Irish ones even more so. Many want to dress up and move about and some want to learn how to defend themselves in a desperate situation these are two very different things.
While collar and elbow might grow in popularity I find it will struggle as there are so many very popular grappling arts out there like bjj or judo that already fill that niche. However I am always happy to be proved wrong on that.
I feel part of the problem within Ireland is an element of "Sure why would you be bothered with that".
It's definitely an issue.
Great video as always....perhaps less of a "problem with" the ISF arts as "challenges to" the growth of the art?
Yes the title is a wee bit click baitish
I think there's a definite gap in the market for present day manuals on Doyle & Antrim style Bataireacht, and for DVDs & the like. I also think that if folks are going to try to revive a martial art then it needs to be extensively tested with e.g. foam-padded weapons and armoured participants. As long as it's tested then great. Now, as regards a functional MA as opposed to a traditional MA, if you want it to be fully functional it should be tested against other stick and club fighting techniques - how does it hold up against escrima/kali, la canne de combat, or African stickfighting forms? If you see something in another stick art that works well, would it work well with a shillelagh? Test, drill & spar. You're doing great work there.
Check out my sparring videos. My group is also a dog brothers group and while the only one we extensively test and spar with minimal protection against other styles. I agree on manuals and videos but I also understand the hesitation as many people have created fake styles based on them in the past which has caused issue.
Is there footage in one of the official gathering trailers, would be cool to see moving action of these fights, mate 🙂
The one you can see me best in is the 2015 one although I'm in a few others as well.
I will be posting some sparring footage from my group by the end of summer too once we have a nice backlog.
@@ramblingkern ah yes, I saw that one 👍🏼
I came to know about Irish stick fighting because i love weapons,martial arts and walking sticks. In these fields,Shillelagh have a quite the fame.
Irish stick fighting strikes me as very practical,able to compete with Kali based systems like Dog Brothers.
It seems more like a feeling of inferiority than a lack of potential.
It has its own stark identity among european stick fighting styles ,and i believe that it only need a little more publicity.
Kinda like seeing how seeing Jason Statham beating punks made me want to buy a hurley.
I haven't any Irish ancestry, as far as I've ever been able to discover, but the history and culture of the place have always interested me. And I live in Australia, which has had a lot of immigration from Ireland (willing and otherwise). I'm really glad there are people like yourself preserving the martial traditions of your country, and I love to learn about them. Aside from that, I walk with a stick, and have a history of training in various martial arts, so naturally think about how to train to use my walking stick for self defense. I get great inspiration from traditional stick arts, but they almost all deal with stick v stick combat, while these days it's far more likely to be stick v gun/knife/aggressive-drunk. What do you think about adapting a traditional art for changed circumstances?
Thank you for the kind words I appreciate it. Yes most arts deal with stick Vs stick we do a lot of sparring with other weapons and I think and important part of stick fighting is not stopping when a hit is landed. A stick is not a sword and if someone is determined to grab you eg a drink then it's important to know how to grapple and retain the stick.
I could go on and on about this but it would take a lot of writing.
@@ramblingkern Or another video?... 😁
@@Poohze01 it's an important one but also one outside the realms of traditional Irish stick and often that can cause a bit of outrage haha.
@@ramblingkern Fair Enough.👍
Maxime is a super nice guy, he linked me to an online course by some folks in the US, good course for the time could use a bit of polishing, but I always wanted to know how to fight in close range, which the Doyle family seemed to have worked out, and practiced in real life. In addition to that there was another website I had copied I believe it was called Celtic combatives that went through a lot of the stages of fighting in the north from the trash taking all the way down to the fight itself, very interesting.
I will say I have no skill when it comes to grappling or any ground skills, so that seems to be needed to round out the whole package…
It's a big misconception that Antrim style doesn't have a lot of close range fighting which it does. The Doyle style is centered around that. But yes any weapons style needs to be complimented with striking and grappling to be a whole art.
@@ramblingkernI’ll have to finish my course then and see if the close range is in there!
@@jasamkrafen what's the course you are doing?
@@ramblingkernit’s with Danny Hoskins, who does workshops with Maxime.
@@ramblingkernwhen I bought it in 2016, it was just links to private RUclips videos
"By God does it work!"😂 As my many bruises can attest to, it does.
Looking at my bruised hand. Yeah it does 🤣
Im only discovering that this was even a thing, is there anyone near Belfast who teaches this?
What I've found with online training is that it's good for learning technique (if you're paying attention), but not for pressure testing.
There is a Doyle instructor in Michigan (US) who I've worked with personally, and that was good, as it really made the technique concrete. As far as the Antrim style, it'd truthfully probably be easier for me to try to find a way to get to Canada. I've done the Antrim and Doyle styles via online, and I've worked with Glen Doyle himself at a seminar, but I'd really like to do the in-person training again.
I totally agree imho the most important part of training any martial art is to pressure test and spar regularly which is why my group does that every week. In person training is always ideal.
I wish I could could learn it, but I live in Utah, and there's no one who teaches it.
There are many teachers who offer online options so that is always and option and like myself traveling to learn is always a future option too.
Hi, Where can i learn in Ireland? Thank you
Hi Noel where abouts are you in Ireland?
I agree a big problem is no one knows about Irish Martial Arts except those who know about Irish Martial Arts. Cu Chulain went to Skye a very lng time ago to learn Martial Arts, it maybe legend but its an old legend. Everyone has their own martial art, for example wrestling--pankration / greco roman in Greece, glima in Viking land, backhold in England and so on, so why not colar and elbow in Ireland. I first heard about Colar and Elbow from my Judo instructor back in the 70s and it stayed with me every since that we had our own martial art. He wasn't one to BS. There are no old bo0ks on filipino stick fighting, but the portugeese talked about it a long time ago and its accepted as real, so why not Irish stick fighting. I could go down a differend rabbit hole here of course, but lets just say some people need t get over their inferiority complex. I know yuo commented on John Borter's post recently about the guy wh took offence to him (the Amerikan) telling an Irish man about Irish fighting. That's ok. He now knows that Irish stick fighting exists... once less to convince 😂😂😂
It's a very weird mentality I encounter a lot here and I think it's partly a hangover from colonialism. People will agree everyone in Europe had their own martial arts and that we fought with sticks but for some reason was not a martial art it was just drunken guys swinging sticks. I think part of the issue is also what people interpret martial arts to be. People picture a dojo and belts not simply people training together and sharing knowledge.
@@ramblingkern 100%. Lok at all the bare knuckle boxers of 100 yrs ago, Corbett, O'Sullivan etc, where did that pugilist tradition come from. The "Fighting Irish" isn't a joke and its not just bar room brawls, it says real pugilism to me. The people of Okinawa developed stick fighting as a result of being oppressed, so could'nt we or are we just too stupid (as some would have us believe) to be able to create something like that. IDK--that mentality drives me nuts. Emmigrants took these things (stick fighting / wrestling) with them and kept them alive. We should be thrilled that they did. A left over of colonialism absolutely. Its funny, but this is why Joyce, Wilde and the like left Ireland 100 years ago and Lizzy and other musicians were still leaving in the 70s and 80s and why I left in the early 90s. The negativity drove me bonkers 😂😂
@@conlethberry1236 it's interesting that the fighting Irish was used as a slur against the Irish but was instead embraced by many Irish of the time. But yes begrudgers are very common in these fields and make life difficult for everyone.
I would love to help solve the "not enough people", but I run straight into the "Not enough coaches" problem. If anyone knows of a group in the US Pacific Northwest please for the love of the gods let me know.
There are a number of online options from a number of coaches with opportunities to eventually become a coach too.
Thanks, if you have any recommendations I will check them out! Online is second best to in person, but you do what you can @@ramblingkern
Yup. The diaspora keep irish heritage alive, albeit romanticised, far more than the natives.
So very true there has been a lot of change in Ireland over the years but it's important to hold on to our heritage too
Maybe its time you wrote a manual.........why not?
I'm part of a few different styles all who teach their own thing. While what I do has become it's own thing it would still cause a lot of issues if I was to do that.
This channel posts some great content but the low talker Mr Mumbles thing doesn't translate well to CC for the hearing impared.
As much as I wish I could enjoy the videos that hold a great deal of interest to me I usually just bail out after a few minutes just out of frustration.
I have a nephew that talks the same way and have long since given up any hope have having a conversation with him.
I have boosted the audio on all of my videos to accomodate viewers as best I can. I dont have a professional setup with microphones etc so if you can offer a solution I am happy to try.
That is also very unfortunate for your nephew
@Rambling Kern Speak up, enunciate clearly and loudly.
You really do post some great content but it's just so frustrating straining to hear what you have to say.
The fact that the CC can't hear and translate you either just illustrates how difficult it is to glean information from this channel.
I really do like and appreciate what you post but it's just so frustrating to understand.
@@slowturtle6745 as I said due to my setup aside from actually shouting which would destroy the audio there is not much I can do. Until I can afford better microphones.
Thank you for your support of the channel.
yup, a sword is always, more effective
Ok