Tabimina Style

“Imi­tate me as I Imi­tate Anciong, Under­stand Me as I Under­stand Anciong” — Bob Sil­ver Tabimina

Hall­marks of the Tabim­ina Style

Bob Sil­ver Tabimina’s Bal­intawak acknowl­edges the good in all mar­tial arts but observes that most of them assume:

a) the adver­sary is unskilled;

b) empha­size learn­ing many tech­niques, to the detri­ment of proper exe­cu­tion; or

c) suf­fer from the fal­lacy that their style is unbeatable.

He there­fore seeks to cor­rect these pos­si­bly fatal flaws by bal­anc­ing knowl­edge of tech­nique with devel­op­ment of the attrib­utes one needs to be a supe­rior fighter: speed, power, tim­ing, body mechan­ics, pos­ture, bal­ance, etc. Hence, all fight­ers, regard­less of mar­tial arts style, stand to ben­e­fit from Tabim­ina Bal­intawak train­ing. Tabim­ina Bal­intawak uses the sin­gle olisi to train its fight­ers. The olisi how­ever is only a tool. The move­ments of the olisi are directly trans­lat­able to empty-hand move­ments. Because of this, prac­ti­tion­ers of Tabim­ina Bal­intawak are equally adept fight­ing with var­i­ous weapons (stick, blade, knife, etc.), or without.

In Tabim­ina Bal­intawak, the stu­dent is always taught to assume his (or her) adver­sary is skilled and will not stand still for him. Hence, it empha­sizes the devel­op­ment of a strong defense in its training.

Tabim­ina Bal­intawak also rec­og­nizes that most fights are spon­ta­neous and fin­ish up-close leav­ing lit­tle or no oppor­tu­nity for an indi­vid­ual to arm him­self. Hence, it stresses close-range fight­ing, and equips its stu­dents with the skills and attrib­utes needed to be supe­rior in this range.

Finally, Tabim­ina Bal­intawak rec­og­nizes that every indi­vid­ual is unique and that one’s per­sonal out­look in life, inner-strength and self-determination are inte­gral to shap­ing his or her mar­tial approach. There­fore, learn­ing never ends in Tabim­ina Bal­intawak. Every fighter pos­sesses indi­vid­ual strengths and attrib­utes which result in a per­sonal fight­ing style that can range from hard and force­ful to soft and snake-like, and stu­dent and instruc­tor invari­ably walk away from every “fight” wiser and better.

Very Per­son­al­ized Instruction

The first stage of train­ing in Tabim­ina Bal­intawak is called the “heal­ing” stage. Here, the aim is to replace the instinc­tive human reac­tions that are inim­i­cal to effec­tive defense and offense.

The eyes are usu­ally the first to be healed. Eyes that instinc­tively focus on a threat­en­ing object (this could be a stick, punch, kick, elbow, knife, etc.) are trained to main­tain instead a holis­tic view, alert and open to any attack that can lit­er­ally come from any­where. The trained eye is cen­tral in Tabim­ina Bal­intawak and is the rea­son the eye dom­i­nates the Tabim­ina Bal­intawak logo.

Pos­ture, move­ment and dis­tanc­ing shortly fol­low. For exam­ple, the nor­mal human reac­tion to an incom­ing strike, is to move away from the threat. In Tabim­ina Bal­intawak, the oppo­site is taught. The stu­dent is trained to vec­tor into, while par­ry­ing the threat. This allows him to avoid the attack, yet stay at a dis­tance where he can con­trol his attacker.

Once there is improve­ment in a student’s eyes, move­ments, pos­ture and dis­tanc­ing, the speed and num­ber of attacks are keyed up, to refine the student’s move­ments. This is called the “sharp­en­ing” stage.

As the stu­dent pro­gresses, stronger, faster and more advanced tech­niques and move­ments are added, to fur­ther pro­voke the stu­dent to improve, lead­ing to an excit­ing and free-flowing counter-to-counter con­test of speed, power, tim­ing, and skill between instruc­tor and student.

At all stages, instruc­tion is con­ducted within a flow­ing form of play called agak wherein the instruc­tor, using the olisi, ran­domly deliv­ers a series of attacks which a stu­dent must defend against and counter. The “dummy” approach typ­i­cal of other styles where the attacker upon deliv­er­ing a strike freezes or poses in the attack posi­tion so the defender can deliver mul­ti­ple coun­ters is never used.

Because Bobby trained under sev­eral Bal­intawak mas­ters, his under­stand­ing of the art is deep, and the way he trains his stu­dents reflects the depth of his knowl­edge. On top of his own unique style, Bobby can effort­lessly fight using the force­ful style of Maranga, the weav­ing style of Teofilo Velez, or the twist­ing and evad­ing style of Anciong Bacon, enrich­ing his stu­dents in the process.

Words by: Jose Vir­ginio R. Martinez