Combat Shillelagh

This is not “just a walking stick.” ☘️⚔️

The Irish Shillelagh was once a trusted tool of protection, survival, and fighting skill. Today, Combat Shillelagh has brought that tradition back to life through a complete online Irish Stick Fighting Black Belt Program built for modern students around the world.

This is a structured martial arts system that teaches you how to use the shillelagh for:

⚔️ Practical self-defense
☘️ Traditional Irish martial arts training
🔥 Footwork, striking, guards, targeting, and tactics
🎓 A clear progression from beginner to Black Belt
🌍 Distance learning you can follow from anywhere

Whether you are a martial artist, history enthusiast, self-defense student, or someone drawn to Irish culture, this program gives you a rare opportunity to train in a weapon-based system that is both ancient and highly relevant today.

No local school? No problem.
No previous experience? Start at the beginning.
No borders. No excuses. Just training.

Join a growing worldwide community of students across 50 states and 25 countries who are bringing the shillelagh back into the modern martial arts world.

Train from home. Follow the path. Earn your rank.

👉 Start your Black Belt journey today at www.combatshillelagh.com

Welcome to Black and White Wednesday!

Most people will never train with a weapon like this. ☘️⚔️
That is exactly what makes the shillelagh so powerful.

Irish Stick Fighting is a rare martial tradition built around one of Ireland’s most iconic tools: the blackthorn shillelagh. Once carried for protection, presence, and practicality, the shillelagh now has a place in modern self-defense training through the Combat Shillelagh system.

Our online Black Belt Program gives you a structured path to learn from home, at your pace, with a complete curriculum designed to take you from the foundations to advanced skill development.

Inside the program, you’ll train:

⚔️ Strikes, guards, footwork, and movement
🔥 Defensive tactics and practical applications
☘️ Traditional Irish stick fighting concepts
🎓 A clear rank progression from beginner to Black Belt
🌍 A distance learning system used by students around the world

This is not a novelty.
This is not a prop.
This is a real martial arts path built around an ancient Irish weapon.

Whether you are interested in self-defense, Irish heritage, weapon-based martial arts, or simply want to train in something truly unique, Combat Shillelagh gives you a way to begin today.

Pick up the stick. Follow the system. Walk the path to Black Belt.

👉 Start training now at www.combatshillelagh.com

Join us on Saturday July 18th for our next Shillelaghs and Shenanigans Irish Stick Fighting Seminar!

We are hosting our next Shillelagh Irish Stick Fighting Seminar, where we will train in the foundational defensive aspects of the Irish Shillelagh. All are welcome, no prior experience required. Just bring a positive attitude and a willingness to train hard! If you have never explored the Shillelagh as a martial arts weapon, then this is your chance to try it out and have a blast doing it!

Shillelagh Stick Fighting Training at the seminar will be from 10am - 3pm, then we will start the Shenanigans at 3:30pm! Irish themed food and refreshments (translated beer) will be served until about 5pm or as long as the group wants to enjoy.

This is an opportunity for us as a community to celebrate how far we have come since launching our system in 2019. We now have students in 45 states and 25 countries around the world!

Seminar Fee: $65.00
10:00am - 3:00pm (10am prompt start) Training
3:30pm - 5pm+ Shenanigans

Event will be held at the Pittsburgh Bujinkan Dojo
6901 Lynn Way, Suite 205
Pittsburgh, PA 15208

Please wear comfortable clothes to train in. No outside shoes or bare feet allowed on the training hall floor (socks are fine). All training items will be provided, however if you own a shillelagh or practice bata, you are welcome to bring it and train with it.Items will be available for sale at the end of the Seminar.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/shillelaghs-and-shenanigans-irish-stick-fighting-seminar-tickets-1992368914055

For students in the Combat Shillelagh System, our core 9 Gates footwork Diagram rug. Great way to ingrain the fundamental footwork angles inherent in our system.

https://www.combatshillelagh.com/product/footwork-diagram-rug/

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=122119652768950245&set=a.122107851416950245&type=3

Eight thousand Irish immigrants are buried in unmarked graves in New Orleans beside the canal they dug. They were hired for one dollar a day to dig the New Basin Canal through mosquito infested Louisiana swamps because local farmers refused and enslaved people were considered too valuable to risk. They died of cholera and yellow fever by the thousand. The death rate was so high they could not dig graves fast enough. A Celtic cross on the New Orleans lakefront is their only memorial. Eight thousand men. Not one named headstone. Share this with every Irish family that never knew their people built New Orleans. 🇮🇪

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=122111621913318726&set=a.122103251673318726&type=3

The Irish came to Pittsburgh first, before the Poles and the Slovaks and the Croatians and the Italians, arriving to dig the canals and lay the railroad beds and build the physical infrastructure on which every subsequent wave of immigration would ride into the city.
They settled in the Strip District and East Liberty and eventually climbed the South Hills into neighborhoods like Carrick, where they built parishes and taverns and the particular kind of working-class community that the Irish built wherever they went in industrial America.
The corner tavern on Carrick Avenue was not just a bar. It was where the neighborhood took its temperature, settled its arguments, and maintained the social bonds that held a community together between Sundays.
That tradition runs deep in Pittsburgh's South Hills. It did not come from nowhere.