Jan 12
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GM Vasquez of Modified Tapado
GM Vasquez, second from right. Darrin Cook in white. Tony Aguirre in red jacket.
I’ve added GM Vasquez’s site to my blogroll, and I’d like to take the time to acknowledge him and his group.
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I originally studied in Kabaroan under GM Estalilla. Kabaroan is one of the rare long stick styles in the Filipino martial arts. For years I wanted to grow in my studies –to “advance the art” in GM Estalilla’s words– but I knew that the short stick styles I saw were incompatible with what I knew. Adding a short stick style seemed to me like selling cold cuts and baloney in an ice cream parlor, not a good combination.
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Then I saw an article on Modified Tapado, and what I saw seemed compatible with kabaroan. I contacted the Modified Tapado group, who were very genuine and accommodating, so I decided to check them out.
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When I first went to Bacolod to study I was immediately stunned by the sheer power of GM Vasquez’s strikes. (I was privileged to study with GM Vasquez one on one.) Seeing pictures of him hitting doesn’t do it justice. A unique aspect of Modified Tapadio is that they train full contact, but safely. My palms, fingers, wrists, arms, and shoulders took one hell of a beating. I had blisters on my hands, which I carefully wrapped up every day before training. The muscles and even the bones of my wrist and palm were sore.
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GM Vasquez was going easy on me, maybe 30-50%, but he was still pounding the hell out of me. Occasionally he would
GM Vasquez in Action
give me a sample of full power strikes, and I couldn’t help but wince. And I realized that in my training I had no way of countering his style. I know what you’re thinking –yes, I thought roof block, parrying, two-handed block, but ultimately I was confronted with the fact that what I knew was insufficient to counter the sheer power of his strikes.
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I also began to see an amazing depth to Modified Tapado technique that I hadn’t expected. If you’ve ever seen a golf swing and thought, “That’s easy!” you understand what I’m talking about. When you swing the stick, you’re not hitting anywhere near as hard as GM Vasquez. And when you spar, you get beaten easily, time after time, but you don’t know why. I can’t tell you how many times I felt like a total beginner, and was clueless as to why I was getting beaten.
The single most important lesson I learned is that the long stick is a two-handed weapon, and that the the two-handed baseball bat strike is the most powerful strike that can be delivered by any weapon short of a firearm.
But to top it all off, the Modified Tapado people were a very hospitable group. Nobody had any egos, and they treated me very well.
Something else that I hadn’t realized is that Bacolod City in the province of Negros Occidental (next to the island of Cebu) is a thriving hub of a number of unique indigenous martial arts.
I wholeheartedly recommend that anyone with the opportunity to study with the Modified Tapado group should do so. Here in the US, Master Joe Tan is another tremendous resource, who has studied with both the original and modified Tapado groups, among others.
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It’s been several years, but I plan on returning to Bacolod this summer, so stay tuned.
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