The Barong
As I stated on my karambit video, the use of sharpened weapons is very dangerous. Please do not try this at home. I highly recommend the use of training knives or swords for martial arts practice. The use of real, sharpened weapons in drills should be attempted by only the highly trained.
The barong is a Filipino short sword or long knife, depending on your perspective. The two barongs shown in this video are from Cas Iberia, are made in the Philippines, and are sharp. As I stated on my karambit video, the use of sharpened weapons is very dangerous. Please do not try this at home. I highly recommend the use of training knives or swords for martial arts practice. The use of real, sharpened weapons in drills should be attempted by only the highly trained. There comes a time when you should practice with a live blade, if you are actually going to carry or use that live blade, just so you know exactly how the weapon that you are contemplating using in a real life situation actually handles. In the case of these barongs, even I, who have been known to carry some rather interesting knives from time to time, am not seriously contemplating using these in a combat situation. However, they are beautiful, they are the only matched set of barongs that I currently own, and I think that they look very good indeed in this video. Please turn the sound on your computer on, if you have it muted, as this video is narrated. I have had a few people ask if my videos have been sped up. If you have read this site closely, you will notice that I have previously stated that none of my videos are sped up, and that, in fact, in many of the videos I move at a pace that is slower than what I can move in real life, simply so my relatively inexpensive, consumer grade video camera can keep up with the action. During the next series of videos which will be uploaded to this site, the sound that was recorded during the filming was not muted, as I have done with my other videos. You will notice that the action matches the soundtrack, that, since I do not sound like I have been breathing helium, the sound has not been sped up, which should indicate to you that my motions have not been sped up. I am sure that there are many sophisticated video technicians who could edit my videos and match lip movements to a dubbed soundtrack, but I am not that sophisticated. On these videos, what you see is what you get. I hope this answers any questions about speed of the videos on this site and the motions that have been captured on that video.
The first demonstration is sinawali with double barongs. Notice that I start out in a standard pattern, turn so you can see the motion from different angles, and then go into other patterns, including reverse sinawali (angles 5 and 6), and various iterations of forward and reverse grip on the barongs.
Tuhan Holloway, July 2007
