Convince Me That Silat Doesn't Suck Completely

[raylawley]

Curious. According to this rational, in a "spontaneous fight" the martial artist should have full access to his fine motor function, unfettered by the impeding effects of adrenal flush' tunnel vision & restricted gross motor function.

Uh-uh. You're confusing what I was saying. I was talking about the longer term effects of stress and adrenaline. The effects of stress become more pronounced if you are subjected to it for a longer period; that's why chronic stress has different and generally more severe symptoms than short term stress.

What is the universal cry of the Knife Attack or Multiple Attacker Scenario? RUN AWAY. How you gonna do that when you've drilled over & over & over & over to take your opponent to the ground?

Are you arguing that your training and competition conditions your mind to abide by the set of rules and circumstances by which it is conducted? Because I'd argue strongly against that.

If the mind was so rigid in its ways, then competing in a grappling tournament would severely impede you when you had your next MMA match. Working from the above quote and this section:

Funny, that wasn't my point. I'm not surprise that that is what you heard tho. I think Silat could be demonstrated very well, and I also think that Silat practitioners should pressure test, absolutely. But, many things that are part & parcel to my particular style of Silat are totally illegal in anything that would be considered a friendly or organized competition match, & I'd probably have to train my ass off to try and get rid of it all. I may be willing to do this some time in the future, but not now. It would ruin my current learning curve.

It appears this actually is your train of thought. I don't believe that training with these techniques would require backward conditioning for you to actually participate in MMA. If this were the case, MMA fighters would constantly ground and pound their opponents in grappling matches because their minds were conditioned to abide by a different ruleset.

After all, striking is part and parcel to MMA. So are you arguing that entering a grappling tournament will "ruin the learning curve" of someone who fights under an MMA ruleset?

What's more, the disparity in rules between, for example, a BJJ tournament and an MMA match is far greater than the disparity between an MMA match and t3h d34dly str33tz.

I also draw your attention back to this piece of text:

I also think that Silat practitioners should pressure test, absolutely. But, many things that are part & parcel to my particular style of Silat are totally illegal in anything that would be considered a friendly or organized competition match

If they are totally illegal in anything which could be considered a friendly match, how do you pressure test them? This seems like a bit of an oxymoron to me.

Because, as far as I'm concerned, evidence of this pressure testing would be more than enough evidence for me. Just sayin' :)

Yes. An inevitable and undeniable conclusion to a long and rather fruitless post.

I like how you ended your post with this little riposte. Do you consider this to be a fruitful addition to your own post? Because if so, then right back at you.


And sorry man, but those videos DEFINITELY give me Bujinkan flashbacks. Especially with the spouting of "these techniques are not for sport or competition."

Unless....Is I being teh trolledz?

If so, damn. You gots me.

[TheMightyMcClaw]

Would it be even remotely possible for you to elucidate? Thanks :love4:

Absolutely:
YouTube - Harimau pencak silat
For those who don't want to hunt back through the thread.
Firstly, there is the whole "stand still while I hit you" format, which I would put forth establishes virtually no merit from a school or system of martial arts. This is the highest problem.
Beyond that, there are lower problems in some of the incredibly goofy mandancing techniques demonstrated therein. Am I mistaken, or were you the one who articulated that good Silat looks good anything else?
As we pour through this video, I'd like to highlight some of the moments which struck me as being more concerned with looking exotic and stylish than pragmatic.
-At 0:40, and later again throughout the video, the demonstrator throws a crooked little spin hook kick to his opponents midsection.
0:53, we have an example of the "happy slapping" which did then and still contributes to my dislike of Silat.
0:55 is a classic moment. Crouch and over-the-head backhand to the midsection.
1:06 gives us some "groundfighting", which consists of more happy slapping.
1:36, we start getting into the jurus that your other video post so ridiculed.
At 1:53, we enter a section entitled "the explosive kicks of Lumpat Harimau Minangkabou." He then demonstrates a series of kicks which involve falling at your opponents feet. Does this strike anyone else as a high risk strategy for self defense?
2:08 gives a spinning crecent kick to the back.
2:14 presents a Silat version of the low spinning "hollywood sweep."
Which, like the above kicks, involves sitting at your opponents feet.
3:43 There is what appears to be a sort-of armlock transitioning into an ass-slap.
4:00, he does some sort of head-scratch which I suspect he may be mistaking for a neck crank.
At 4:25, we enter the "ultimate conditioning" section. While there is nothing being done wrong here that I can see, it seems a bit penultimate.
At 5:35, we see bagwork. Bagwork is good. Leaving both of his hands clutched against his chest while kicking is not.
Also, throughout the video, he does a lot of the "parry and pass to the other hand" style blocks usually seen in Wing Chun. While these look cool, I've never seen them work and I've seen a lot of them not-working.
All in all, it has that has same flavor as bad CMA, in which exotic-looking techniques are played in order to make it look special different from vanilla old karate/kickboxing/whathaveyou.
Of course, if someone could post some video of the above techniques being worked successfully in a live environment by Silat practicioners, I will reexamine my criticism in light of said evidence.

[Jim_Jude]

Absolutely:
YouTube - Harimau pencak silat
For those who don't want to hunt back through the thread.
Firstly, there is the whole "stand still while I hit you" format, which I would put forth establishes virtually no merit from a school or system of martial arts. This is the highest problem.
Beyond that, there are lower problems in some of the incredibly goofy mandancing techniques demonstrated therein. Am I mistaken, or were you the one who articulated that good Silat looks good anything else?
As we pour through this video, I'd like to highlight some of the moments which struck me as being more concerned with looking exotic and stylish than pragmatic....

Oh, perhaps the statement "Here's a lil' somethin' for the masses:" wasn't clear enough. I though it was already stated repeatedly over and over and over in this thread that good Silat fighters aren't too keen on video, esp of their real fighting methods? Wasn't this stated very clearly, and repeatedly? I thought it was.

To be perfectly honest, I'm probably not the biggest fan of this particular form of Sumatran Harimau, blind adherance to juru, forms & such. Another of the videos may have expanded upon that view...
I would assume that whatever style of Silat that you supposedly did resembled that de Bordes Harimau vid, all flash w/ no effective application? No wonder you have complaints.

[grammatoncleric]

Oh, perhaps the statement "Here's a lil' somethin' for the masses:" wasn't clear enough. I though it was already stated repeatedly over and over and over in this thread that good Silat fighters aren't too keen on video, esp of their real fighting methods? Wasn't this stated very clearly, and repeatedly? I thought it was.

Hmmm... I agree with you on that..t I agree the Silat community is obsessed with hiding behind unrealistic Demos... even the widely reported badass practitioners like Steven Benetiz seem to display the same thing.

YouTube - Reel Combat - Fastest Hands in the World?

Personally though I think the 'practice and see, have faith in your teacher stuff' combinedwith mysticism is one of the reasons for the weird cults and cult like behaviour found in Silat and TMAs. Arts based on aliveness are publicly verifiable, seem to be a lot healthier psychologically and less prone to the insane things I experienced in Silat and the CMA (Shaolin Wahnam) community.

[1point2]

Oh, perhaps the statement "Here's a lil' somethin' for the masses:" wasn't clear enough. I though it was already stated repeatedly over and over and over in this thread that good Silat fighters aren't too keen on video, esp of their real fighting methods? Wasn't this stated very clearly, and repeatedly? I thought it was.

I missed this entirely.

So there's a mentality or attitude of secrecy, or shall we say, nonproliferation? Interesting.

[TheMightyMcClaw]

Hmmm... I agree with you on that..t I agree the Silat community is obsessed with hiding behind unrealistic Demos... even the widely reported badass practitioners like Steven Benetiz seem to display the same thing.

YouTube - Reel Combat - Fastest Hands in the World?

Personally though I think the 'practice and see, have faith in your teacher stuff' combinedwith mysticism is one of the reasons for the weird cults and cult like behaviour found in Silat and TMAs. Arts based on aliveness are publicly verifiable, seem to be a lot healthier psychologically and less prone to the insane things I experienced in Silat and the CMA (Shaolin Wahnam) community.

Holy crap, I remember that video. When I was first looking into whether or not Silat had any redeeming qualities, I found this one making a case that it doesn't.

[Jim_Jude]

Uh-uh. You're confusing what I was saying. I was talking about the longer term effects of stress and adrenaline. The effects of stress become more pronounced if you are subjected to it for a longer period; that's why chronic stress has different and generally more severe symptoms than short term stress.

Yes, I'm intimately aware.

Are you arguing that your training and competition conditions your mind to abide by the set of rules and circumstances by which it is conducted? Because I'd argue strongly against that.

If the mind was so rigid in its ways, then competing in a grappling tournament would severely impede you when you had your next MMA match. Working from the above quote and this section:

It appears this actually is your train of thought. I don't believe that training with these techniques would require backward conditioning for you to actually participate in MMA. If this were the case, MMA fighters would constantly ground and pound their opponents in grappling matches because their minds were conditioned to abide by a different ruleset.

Funny. In REAL LIFE one can see repeatedly that YOU FIGHT HOW YOU TRAIN. You can Google it yourself. It's a proven fact, it's actually resulted in deaths due to bad training.

Ever hear of cops dying with empty brass in their hands because the department's range management doesn't like having to pick it up? Yeah, it's true, happened at least twice that I know of, word spread like wildfire and it stopped. Sorry kiddo, you can't out-think your training, especially when you're in the ****. You're reduced to the level of your training (or lack their of) every time.

After all, striking is part and parcel to MMA. So are you arguing that entering a grappling tournament will "ruin the learning curve" of someone who fights under an MMA ruleset?

I would think that the participating in grappling tournaments would probably do more to improve the sport grappling aspect of your MMA sport performance than it would impede the learning curve. You do know that sport grappling is part & parcel to MMA training, don't you? On the other hand, someone that spends all their time training for grappling competition isn't spending their time practicing stand-up & striking at all, right? Their standup game suffers as a result, correct? Conversly, it's your standup game that you need in real life.

What's more, the disparity in rules between, for example, a BJJ tournament and an MMA match is far greater than the disparity between an MMA match and t3h d34dly str33tz.

That's absolutely incorrect. Where did you hear that? I wouldn't take that person's advise anymore if I were you.

I also draw your attention back to this piece of text:

If they are totally illegal in anything which could be considered a friendly match, how do you pressure test them? This seems like a bit of an oxymoron to me.

Because, as far as I'm concerned, evidence of this pressure testing would be more than enough evidence for me. Just sayin' :)

A cup helps. Also items like this:





Isn't the existence of such equipment more than enough evidence, as their creation was due to necessity?

Did ya think before you posted any of this?

[Jim_Jude]

I missed this entirely.

So there's a mentality or attitude of secrecy, or shall we say, nonproliferation? Interesting.

Non-proliferation would be the word.
Dutch-Indo martial artist are notoriously kooky, they like to keep things close to the vest (at least the ones I rub elbows with), esp the blade ****.

[Hesperus]

A cup helps. Also items like this:





Isn't the existence of such equipment more than enough evidence, as their creation was due to necessity?

Actually, I'm pretty sure those things were invented for people who didn't want to get hit in the face EVAR, people who want to sleep on airplanes, and people with Michelin Man fetishes, respectively.

[Jim_Jude]

Hmmm... I agree with you on that..t I agree the Silat community is obsessed with hiding behind unrealistic Demos... even the widely reported badass practitioners like Steven Benetiz seem to display the same thing.

YouTube - Reel Combat - Fastest Hands in the World?

Personally though I think the 'practice and see, have faith in your teacher stuff' combinedwith mysticism is one of the reasons for the weird cults and cult like behaviour found in Silat and TMAs. Arts based on aliveness are publicly verifiable, seem to be a lot healthier psychologically and less prone to the insane things I experienced in Silat and the CMA (Shaolin Wahnam) community.

I've never had to deal with cult mysticism in Silat at all, no chi crap or anything. I just had to get in the door, that was the hardest part. Once in the door, things stayed hard, but that's different. No "man-dnacing" or blind adherence to forms. Everything is broken down and drilled individually. Every movement in the form is removed from the form and drilled under pressure, as the mentality is that if you don't have something to use NOW, what the hell are you paying for? The memorization of the juru comes later, as it's generally just a method to remember the individual techniques.

***You know, the more I talk to people, the more I'm beginning to think that perhaps it's MY STYLE of Silat that's the exception. That would be a fuckin' shame...***

I look at all of this Silat on YouTube, I see the mechanics, I see the movements, but I figure maybe they just don't have the breakdown that we do? Could be.