Arnis Alliance

The tournament is full contact continuous sparring with padded sticks, with a head guard and groin guard only (Chest guard for ladies), NO gloves, NO elbow/knee pads and NO arm pads for all adults in single and double stick divisions. Although for 5' Long stick division gloves are mandatory and all children's divisions must also additionally wear chest guards and gloves.

There are 3 x 2 minute rounds in each bout with 3 judges, a referee, a score keeper, a timekeeper and a ring adjudicator. Finals are 5 x 2 minute rounds.

The fighting area must be a minimum of 4 metres by 4 metres square to a maximum of 6 metres by 6 metres

Target areas

The target areas are anywhere from the toe up, but players must pay careful attention to protect their heads as a priority to keep this as realistic as possible. Checking (short, sharp palm strike) and parrying is allowed with the empty/live hand to the body and arms/hands as a means of defence, but please ensure it is not pushing. There is NO grabbing, throwing, holding, punching or kicking as all strikes must be done with the weapon with downward thrusts allowed to the body and leg areas but NO head thrusts, upward thrusts or any butt strikes as they can be dangerous and have been the cause of serious injuries in the past.

Aims and Objectives

The aim in each round is to be the first to score five points and this is achieved by obtaining five clean shots against the opponent while applying various combinations of attack and defence techniques, which is harder than it sounds, as hitting each other at the same time cancels out that shot which is loosely sword based to appeal to both sword based and stick based FMA systems equally. This is usually best achieved by making a clean shot on the way in or on the way out of an attack on the opponent.

For more info about this competition format, please click on this link >