Transferable techniques in Kali: One Technique, Many Weapons

Summary: Kali teaches its techniques in a way that makes them quickly transferable from weapon to weapon and is thus a highly effective fighting system.

I was reading an article about "Cane-fu" today and it made me think about the transferable techniques of Kali / Escrima / Arnis.

As far as I know there's no universal name for this so I'll brainstorm a few:

• Transferable techniques
• Interchangeable weapons
• One technique, Many weapons
• Motion grouping

The idea is that you should be able to learn one technique and apply it to just about any weapon you pick up or the empty hand. It is a central idea to Kali and makes the art extremely versatile and quick to learn. You do not have to re-learn much as you switch between empty hand, stick, sword, knife/dagger, nunchaku, etc. This makes Kali one of the best ways to learn weapons fighting.

Here's a good video that demonstrates this topic. The fighter shows a few techniques all with different sets of weapons, including empty hand and an improvised weapon:


I think I'm going to stick with "One technique, many weapons (OTMW)" as my term for this as it is the most descriptive.