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Make stepping out of your comfort zone a habit, for reward and adventure.

Recently, I participated in a four hour Stick Fighting seminar that ended up being much much more than about martial arts by the end of it. For me, it ended up being about courage and resilience. I have a renewed sense of vigor and wanting to take on the world, and this is why...

First, some context: Since stepping aside from Social Focus Consulting, I've filled much of the time focusing on my health which includes Filipino Martial Arts (aka FMA). FMA was employed by ancient Filipino tribespeople to defend their homelands and has become a weapons-first combat art taught around the world. It uses sticks, as an impact weapon and as a proxy for edged weapons such as swords, and knives to teach techniques. As you progress, you learn the same techniques but empty handed. 

Doing FMA is a fun way for me to add on to my typical gym routine. I can get bored easily, but the vastness of learning in FMA is one of the reasons that attracted me to the art. Another reason is my heritage. Lastly, I love the challenge inherent in FMA. I used to watch, in awe, videos of people swinging sticks at one another while the other person skillfully defends themselves. I never thought I could be coordinated enough to do that, until one day, I told myself to try. And I'm so glad I did.

Forward about one year later from first picking up sticks to participating in my first sparring match which was way overdue. It's one thing to learn drills and forms. It's another level to test out those skills against an opponent who is hitting you back. This was a huge mental and physical hurdle for me, but thankfully I had an experienced opponent that gave me enough challenge to show me what sparring is like while not doing anything to dissuade me from continuing. This was in December 2024 and ever since then, I've been hooked on FMA sparring.

In March of this year, I learned of a Stick Fighting seminar which would be led by a Dog Brother, Rene Cocolo. While part of me was excited, another part of me felt fear and apprehension. Dog Brothers is a fighting organization that was born from FMA'ers who wanted to test their skills with minimal protection. Think of the movie Fight Club but with sticks or other weapons. Traditional FMA sparring gear is a helmet and a fully padded outfit from neck to thighs. When wearing full protection, however, you often find combatants just wailing at each other continuously (we call it mutual destruction) as one doesn't learn to fear the pain from the stick. This prevents true skill expression. The Dog Brothers wanted to change that.

With this intensity in mind, I doubted whether I should join the seminar especially since I was nursing an injury from January. I stopped doubting and decided to say "yes." And I'm so glad I did. Rene did a great job of ramping up the effort, starting with a simple contact drill, and ending in multiple full-on hard contact matches with people punching, kicking, and stick swinging at me while I did the same to them. Toward the end, I was physically spent. I keeled over completely out of breath and sat down on the mats, but Rene encouraged me to keep going. He said that fighting when you have nothing left in the tank is one of the best ways to learn because it teaches you efficiency. I got back up. 

Me in black hoodie/pants, doing hard contact stick sparring with a very experienced martial artist. We're doing an exercise called "puppets" whereby a 3rd party steers and controls my opponent, learning to deal with circumstances beyond our control.

The second half of the seminar was with Mark Medeiros, a specialist in using sticks as a grappling and submission tool. Prior to this seminar, I had near zero grappling experience, but I had awesome training partners that guided me through it. The experience was so positive that I definitely want to learn more grappling.

I left the dojo that day hobbled. My injury came back but worse. My back ached. My neck was sore. I found bruises on my arm. What I gave up in physicality, though, I more than got back in mental and spiritual awakening and toughness. I learned that my own mind, no one else's, is a rate limiting factor. The key was stepping out of my comfort zone and I was rewarded with a mindshift, adventure, and a memory to last a lifetime.

~ John Paul de Silva, MBA ~