The simple figure eight. Escrima's bread and butter attack movement. Thrown with or without a firm grasp upon the stick or blade: The figure eight is and will remain frighteningly effective. Few movements in Escrima offer quite as hard an exasperating riddle to solve. Figure eights come at you in almost one unbroken movement. The first portion of the figure eight can deflect your weapon off line and the next almost seamless strike can be the finishing blow. The figure eight is a one-two and almost evil combination that is an unquestionably very hard riddle to solve in the heat of battle. When the figure eight is thrown at you with weapons that have any reasonable weight: The figure eight conundrum becomes an even harder riddle to solve. Imagine a given distance between yourself and an opponent. Imagine that you are one beat from one another. It will take at least one full beat for you to clear the distance between you and your opponent to deliver a meaningful strike. Your body cannot clear the distance between the both of you faster than your opponent can begin his first revolution. I repeat: You cannot easily clear the distance between you faster than he can deliver his first revolution. All your opponent has to do is wait, twirl his wrists and watch you stress. Your bodies given mass is harder to move around than the lighter mass of his arm. If he can deflect your weapon, hit you, or avoid your first strike: He can possibly finish you with his next revolution, especially if he can get off the line of your attack. One-two and you may be through. Even if the man starts his attack behind your attack and he than comes in behind your first strike with his second blow (especially) off line: He can still beat you to the first hit even tho he started behind you, by connecting with his second hit. Who is faster between two men? The one who hits first! The figure eight is a bread and butter movement that has worked in jungles, in alleys and bars and may have dropped more opponent's than any other Escrima combination because of its utter simplicity and ruthless effectiveness. I have been tagged in my back yard more times than I care to remember by the bread and butter figure eight. No complicated movements and setups have hit me more than the simple figure eight. Let your attention or timing wander just a little bit and the sound you are soon hearing is a stick bouncing off of your body. Angel Cabales loved to attempt a figure eight attack with a beginning back hand and then immediately coming back up with a return blow and repeating the process. He said a good Escrimador should than go to a tighter figure eight as a response to the repeated down and up blows. It works. If you can break your opponent's timing or strike a hand, you should immediately come in with a finishing blow. Unbelievably simple, but effective. I wanted to give my teacher's response to the figure eight attack. I have developed other answers and hope to put up video to explain my reasoning. Seeing is believing. We are not going to the mountains, but are going fishing tomorrow. Maybe, we can shoot some video between fish. Everyone please have a great weekend. By the way my graduate Master has just promoted his first Master in the U.K. Escrima has a newly minted Master. I want to Thank Master Lee Gagnon for his hard work, it is deeply appreciated. Here here!
