Baston
Also known as: olisi, yantok, escrima stick
A rattan stick of Filipino eskrima about 61-71 cm long; training starts with it even before empty-hand combat, and it is also practised in pairs in sinawali.
Quick Facts
PhilippinesAbout the weapon
Baston, also called olisi or yantok, is the stick of the Filipino martial art eskrima (arnis), roughly 61 to 71 centimetres long. A longer stick of 71 to 91 centimetres is called largo mano yantok. We have not been able to establish in the sources since when the stick has been used in eskrima training. The traditional material is rattan, the stem of a Southeast Asian vine: hard, tough and light, it frays only under the worst treatment and does not splinter like wood. Fire-hardened kamagong and bahi (palm heartwood) are sometimes used too, but not for sparring, since they are so dense they can cause serious injury. Some schools train with aluminium or tough-plastic sticks, others with padded bastons. Eskrima training begins with the weapon: students first learn to fight with stick and knife, and only move to unarmed combat once they have mastered the armed techniques. The weapon is treated as an extension of the body, so the same angles and footwork apply with or without it. A typical drill is sinawali, "weaving", a set of paired exercises in which each partner holds two weapons; the name comes from the sawali mat. In 1969 Remy Presas began teaching school instructors his style, Modern Arnis. Drills such as sombrada, sinawali and hubud-lubud were presented to the public as an organised set by Dan Inosanto's school.