Pekiti Tirsia is a melee weapon and empty hand combat system, a sub-discipline of Kali, which is an umbrella term for all Filipino Martial Arts (FMA). Kali is an ancient bladed art, which existed long before Spanish colonization. Its name is derived from the Filipino word "kalis", which means "sword". There are literally hundreds of different Kali styles. Often every tribe had their own style, which was kept secret from the outsiders. Thus many of the styles have unfortunately been lost. The roots of Pekiti Tirsia are in 18th century. It was founded by the Tortal family and mainly used to protect their land and property from the other clans. The art was formalized in 1897, but teaching to non-family members began only in 1972. Today Pekiti Tirsia is one of the most well known FMA style, that is being taught to the military, police force, private security and civilians across the world.

There are three pillars of Pekiti Tirsia Kali and Filipino Martial Arts in general: agility, inertia and interchangeability.

The origin of these pillars come from physiological characteristics of Filipino people. South East Asians are the smallest people in the world. In addition of being one of the shortest nation, Filipinos are quite skinny and have low muscle mass. The average height of a Filipino male is 163 cm, and the weight is 53 kg.

Agility

Due to the size of Filipino people they had significant disadvantage against European conquers in close quarter combat. Thus instead of physical strength they had to rely on their agility and speed. Therefore in Kali the emphasis is on several fast strikes, instead of one powerful knockout punch like in boxing. These attacks may not be devastating on their own, but every strike grants an extra second of the opponent's inability, and a chance to perform the next attack. Also in Pekiti Tirsia there's no grappling or wrestling brute force against brute force. All join locks are accompanied by the strike, instead of slow and tedious twisting like in Jiu Jitsu.

Inertia

A single hand sword or a machete weighs about 600-700 grams. When you have the muscle mass of a teenager, waving it around and doing fast movements will be pretty hard. Thus all motions are continuous. There are no full extensions of the hand or pull back movements like in other martial arts, where after the hit you have to withdraw the hand back. Each movement ends with the loading position for the next attack, which gives the impression of circular motion. This method effectively utilises momentum and inertia, thus allowing the person to operate even a heavy weapon without stressing his hand too much.

Interchangeability

All techniques in Kali are interchangeable, no matter what the melee weapon is. There's no point in learning new techniques for each new weapon group, when at the base level all weapons work the same way, because the attacks are based on the lines of motion of the human body. This philosophy goes far, that even empty hand techniques (Suntukan) are derivations of techniques performed with a weapon.

These pillars made the Art of Kali so effective that during the Spanish colonization era, Filipino fighter could easily beat Spanish warrior with a stick against a real sword. Thus only due to technological superiority, Spain was able to conquer the Philippine Archipelago.

Pekiti Tirsia is one of the few martial arts, where smaller and physically weaker person can truly win the bigger and stronger opponent. Due to these specifics it is particularly good for people who are below the average size, or for women, but it does not limit out the practitioners that are tall and strong.

The practise of Pekiti Tirsia, as well as all other Kali style, starts with the stick that is to simulate a sword. Only when the student is comfortable with the stick, the training is downgraded to knife and lastly to empty hands. The reason for such progression is because since all movements are interchangeable, it's much easier and wiser to learn them with large tool first, so that the trajectory is correct. Another reason is that when there's a limited time to train the person, it's much wiser to teach him to use a weapon first, because in real combat scenario having a weapon and knowing has to use it, would be a life changing advantage. A person who has trained one day with a sword, can already beat 99% of unarmed opponets. However to get the same results with empty hands, it would require several years of training.