This nunchuck seminar is designed to give Tama Martial Arts students exposure to the use of Nunchuck or Tabak Toyok (in Philippine Language). Showing them the Nunchuck (in Japanese language) basic foundation and beyond and teaching them the importance of safety during training. Each student receive a nunchuck for the seminar given by Grandmaster Taningco celebrating his 45th year teaching martial arts in the Miami Valley area.
The introduction of Tabak-Toyok covered safety training, foundation grips, how to hold properly, the directional power. The nunchuck in other Asian country primarily, Okinawa, the nunchuck was used for rice flail. The tabak-toyok (in some cases colloquially described as chako in Philippines) is a Filipino flail weapon containing a set of sticks linked by a chain. It is very closely related to the Okinawan nunchaku, the primary difference being that the Filipino version has a tendency to have shorter manages as well as a much longer chain than its Okinawan counterpart, making it much better suited for long range. Each handle is about 8 inches long. The length of the rope or chain that links the takes care of is approximately 6 to 7.5 inches, but the weapon’s suitable size relies on the customer. Since the small size of the tabak-toyok allows for very easy concealment, it is often utilized in street quarrels in the Philippines.
Tabak-Toyok (the Nunchuck) is taught in Filipino martial arts at Tama and it is offered in seminar setting like today’s nunchuck seminar given by Grandmaster Taningco. GM Taningco was taught first-hand by his older brother Alex Taningco in the use of Tabak-Toyok.
The exact beginning of nunchaku is vague: purportedly adapted by Okinawan farmers from a non-weapon rice-flail carry out for threshing rice. It was not a traditionally popular tool since it was inefficient versus one of the most commonly used tools of that time such as samurai swords and also naginata, and also couple of historic methods for its usage still make it through.
Bruce Lee famously used nunchaku in numerous scenes of the 1972 film Fist of Fury. Both Bruce Lee and his martial arts student named Dan Inosanto (also Bruce’s teacher in Filipino martial arts) introduced the Tabak-Toyok (Nunchucku) to Bruce Lee. Both had a fight scene in the final movie of the legendary Bruce Lee in “Game of Death”. Originally the fight scene was longer than it had shown in the movie. More exploration of usage of nunchaku and of other kobudo (Okinawan weapons training) discipline was by Tadashi Yamashita, who worked with Bruce Lee on and also in the 1973 film “Enter the Dragon”. Various companies educate the use of nunchaku as a call sporting and martial arts activity. The latest movie that have propagated the nunchaku is the fictional character of Michelangelo, one of the stars of the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”.
Future seminars will be held quarterly by Grandmaster Taningco. Next seminar will be on the two sticks of Filipino martial arts – seminar will cover the application of two stick movement called SINALAPID (sinawali), empty hand application for effective striking from the sinalapid movements. March 13, 2021 Saturday is the next seminar by Grandmaster Taningco. Sinawali application is rarely seen and shared by many FMA instructors. This is a rare opportunity to learn the devastating hand application of the Sinawali.