Sikaran
A Filipino art of the legs from Rizal province. The hands only cover: in traditional competition a hand strike is grounds for disqualification.
Quick Facts
PhilippinesCharacter & Origin
Training
Who It Suits
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
About Sikaran
Sikaran is a Filipino martial art from the municipality of Baras in Rizal province on the island of Luzon. The name comes from the Tagalog word sikad, to kick, and captures the substance exactly: sikaran is an art of the legs. By its own rule the practitioner works ninety per cent with the legs and a tenth with the hands, the hands serving only to cover and to sweep. In traditional competition a hand strike is grounds for disqualification, a rule that has no equivalent in other combat sports. Kicks are classified by target and by whether they are meant to push the opponent away, to knock him down or to land at full force; the hardest of them have names of their own and in the traditional form were delivered without protection and bare-chested. The origin is rural. Sikaran arose neither in an army nor in a school but in the rice fields after the harvest, when farmers gathered to contend on the cut field. There are no written sources for its older history; it was passed on orally, and the claim that it was practised before the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century is local tradition, not a documented fact. Two men brought it into its present organised shape. Melton Geronimo, an air force officer and mayor of Baras, founded the World Sikaran Arnis Brotherhood and introduced a curriculum with belts on the karate model. Osias Banaag then founded the Global Sikaran Federation and promotes sikaran as a traditional sport at the international level.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.