Silat in London with lineage?

Discussion in 'Silat' started by Sunshinedust, Nov 11, 2017.

  1. Sunshinedust

    Sunshinedust New Member

    Apologies if this question has already been asked.
    I am trying to find a good school/ place in London to go to/ person in London and is good.

    Any one know and recommend people in London with a direct lineage? ( Indo / Malay)?
    Less about the money and more on the art, fighting, spiritual, and energy & knowledge aspects?
     
  2. Mushroom

    Mushroom De-powered to come back better than before.

    I would recommend Urban Warriors Academy in Vauxhall, South London.
    Great venue and people know what they're doing.
     
  3. Sunshinedust

    Sunshinedust New Member

    Thanks mushroom, i had a look do not see silat training, or teachers. I have done a Japanese form of kickboxing and trained with a professional fighter, am looking into silat as it ties into other things that i have been doing and studying outside martial arts. This just looks good for body conditioning boxing, mma, jujitsu etc.
     
  4. Dead_pool

    Dead_pool Spes mea in nihil Deus MAP 2017 Moi Award

    I think mushroom might of meant the Filipino arts taught there, are a good equivalent to silat.

    Kali is very similar to silat.


    edit

    silat was taught there, at one point - drop them a line and see where the silat is now!

     
  5. Sunshinedust

    Sunshinedust New Member

    Kali looks very interesting thanks
     
  6. taoizt

    taoizt Valued Member

    Actually (Traditional) Silat does usually have a different approach than Kali. I often hear they are quite similar but one big difference is that mainly Silat focuses on unarmed combat first and then progresses to armed combat when you have the proper skills to work with weapons. Kali, often works from armed combat and later on translates this to unarmed combat, so the other way around.

    There is some Silat also north of London, in Rugby, by Byron Banton, a boxing coach who focuses on Bukti Negara Silat for years already.
     
  7. Pretty In Pink

    Pretty In Pink Moved on MAP 2017 Gold Award

    In my (uninformed) opinion they are like cousins. TKD and karate close. Kali angles tend to be straighter, silat has a general roundness to it coming from the core and oftenflicking through the wrists as well.
     
  8. taoizt

    taoizt Valued Member

    yep as always it very much depends on what style of kali or silat we are referring to. I know silat style being more direct than kali but also being more round. Depends on the style.
     
  9. Dylan9d

    Dylan9d Valued Member

    I'm not sure how the distances are in the UK, but in Luton you have Glenn Lobo who is a teacher with the traditional Malay style Silat Lincah and he is an official instructor in Lightning Scientific Arnis.

    Maybe worth contacting him too?

    He is also a member here on this site, maybe worth sending him a PM.
     
  10. DSilat

    DSilat New Member

    this is my first post so please bear with me if i don't know any conventions or expectations in my response. I'll soon get the hang of it i'm sure.

    I teach two 'styles' of Silat, Cimande (from two different lineages and they look fairly different) from Java and Silek Tuo from Sumatra. Neither looks similar to the other, they have different approaches to combat, different conditioning, different tactics and so on. I have also spent an appreciable amount of time studying Kali in one of the Inosanto lineages. in my humble opinion, beyond that fact that we are human so we have limits to how much our movement can vary, none of the three are similar to each other. there are styles of Silat out there that resemble an indonesian Aikido, others that are all about ground grappling and yet others that focus almost purely on striking (i'm ignoring weapons for the purpose of my point) and there are cultural and stylistic differences between Silat found in Malaysia, southern Thailand and Indonesia, something like Cinco Teros (filipino and just a simple example) is different again, so i humbly disagree that the similarity between Silat and Kali is that close given the immense variety of different Silat systems there are. in addition, aren't Silat and Kali both collective terms, in the same way that kung fu typically is. wing chun is very different from shuai chiao from northern white crane etc. in Silat, Silek Tuo is similarly different from the Cimande and from the Cikalong i've studied and again perisai diri and (insert any number of other styles) and none of them resemble the Kali I've seen. (and i don't mean just surface movement, i'm also talking about principles), in short i guess i'm agreeing with what Taoizt said. you can find similarities, but to say Silat is similar to Kali is not the case in my mind

    For the original poster. i have contacts in London. if you Pm me i can facilitate some connecting?

    hopefully i didn't do too badly for a first post. just offering a hopefully informative opinion :)
     
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  11. Dead_pool

    Dead_pool Spes mea in nihil Deus MAP 2017 Moi Award

    And yet you yourself have studied Kali and two forms of silat.... What was the reason you choose these three distinct arts?

    Because they are broadly related.....

    As you said yourself, you've had to alter the question to suit your point.
     
  12. DSilat

    DSilat New Member

    i have been in the martial arts for more than thirty years and that includes time (significant time, not just a few days) spent in Japan, china, Indonesia, Thailand and the US studying at various times. . my preferred after my own personal Journey is Silat. although the Thai would be my second favorite. its a little presumptuous of you to tell me i chose those three 'because they are related'. I have studied a number of systems in a lot of places and my reasons have never been because i was seeking related systems. I am a teacher of Silat and i offered my opinion based on my experiences. is your opinon based on experience in Silat in which case i would be very interested to hear about it, or is it an assumption? in any case i'm not hear to get into an argument so i wont offer anything else
     
  13. Dead_pool

    Dead_pool Spes mea in nihil Deus MAP 2017 Moi Award

    So silat, Kali, and Thai boxing.....

    Which are commonly studied together..... Because they are all related arts.

    Back to the Op, if he wants silat, and there isn't any silat, would you say Kali is a good substitute?
     
  14. DSilat

    DSilat New Member

    krabi krabong, not thai boxing.... again assumption. the silat i practice is not like Muay Thai. you seem to suggest that if i want wing chun and cant find it then Karate is a good substitute, both from the same part of the world, both fist arts... sorry i don't buy it. and i would not recommend someone looking for Silek Tuo to practice Kali in its place as a substitute. If they liked it then they should do it. a substitute it is manifestly not! do you practice Silat?
     
  15. Dead_pool

    Dead_pool Spes mea in nihil Deus MAP 2017 Moi Award

    Nope, but I have trained a little sayoc back in the day, but mostly classical jujutsu. And then BJJ and MMA with ex Jkd guys.

    I'm Not saying it's the same, I'm saying it's broadly similar, just like most karate styles (and TKD) are similar, but not the same.

    (it's all just stylised bad kickboxing afterall)

    But as your a heavily invested silat guy, You obviously will think otherwise.

    It's like comparing partners no one wants to think there partner is interchangeable with another one, but they do have similarities.
     
    Last edited: Nov 16, 2017
  16. Dead_pool

    Dead_pool Spes mea in nihil Deus MAP 2017 Moi Award


    That's a pity, but you did call it, "the thai" so it's an understandable reading of what you said.
     
  17. Ben Gash CLF

    Ben Gash CLF Valued Member

    Not if you're doing it right ;)
     
    Dead_pool likes this.
  18. taoizt

    taoizt Valued Member

    I agree with DSilat, there tends to be a widespread thought that Kali is very similar to Silat. Although that might be the case for some very specific Kali styles which have mingled with indonesian silat in the past over there, if we take a look at a well known style like Cimande and some of the well known Kali/Escrima styles there still is a big difference in how to train it, the buildup of the curriculum, the strategy, the way to generate power etc.etc.etc

    Sure for a beginner or outsider who dabbled just a little bit in it, it might be vaguely similar, but that is like saying English is similar to Italian, because they are both used in Europe and in the past there was some Latin connection. If a person makes an informed choice to learn 'English' we should try to steer him into the direction of an English teacher, not an Italian teacher... ;)

    Dead_pool, it's all nice and easy to generalize and that works for you since you are an MMA guy as i understand it. However we are on a Silat forum here so you could expect some genuine Silat guys to be here as well, and i don't mean the 'JKD mixed with KALI and some SILAT' type of guys, since a lot of times their knowledge of Silat often is often limited to some front and back sweeps or basic ground work. In essense one good system should take you a lifetime. So dabbling in all sorts and thinking you will become a master in all of them is a fantasy for 99% of the practitioners.

    I'm not saying you should not mix, you just have to say it like it is. You train some Mixed Martial Arts then :).

    The original poster was asking for Silat i believe, someone replied with Kali being very similar, and i tend to disagree with that, like DSilat. I've met countless Kali/Escrima practitioners, heck in my style we have loads of (ex) Kali /Escrima guys (Kombatan, Kali Sikaran, Warriors Escrima, Kali Silat, Doce Pares etc.) and they realized quickly that our Silat is a different beast as compared to their Filipino arts. Can you combine them? Probably, personally i find it confusing as soon as you dive deep into the arts, so choose not to, but there are plenty of people who do.

    To make a long story short, NO i don't believe Kali and Silat are interchangable. They take a different path. Make an informed choice which one to do.

    But I agree it's not easy to find a good silat teacher, if silat is your thing, you should check out some of the advises over here on Silat schools.
     
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  19. Dylan9d

    Dylan9d Valued Member

    Very good post Taoizt and I agree with most of it.

    There are as much similarities as there are differences!!!

    That being said, I started Pentjak Silat in a traditional style myself, and that's were things get shady, the word "style". Pentjak Silat is like Kungfu only Pentjak Silat has even MORE styles than Kungfu has. So some Silat styles might look like Kali on the surface but if you dive deeper into them they are actually not the same.

    Like Taoizt and DSilat already said, the approach of Silat is very different from the start, first empty hands after that you learn weapons, Kali approaches it differently with weapons first after that empty hands.

    I see Silat as an empty hands system complimented by weapons and Kali is a blade system with an empty hands system derived from that blade system.

    You will always see similar techniques in different styles, but it's the way they utilize those techniques in practice that's what usually makes the difference.

    Which one is the most fun? After practising both I think both are alot of fun but then again I also train MMA these days and that's also alot of fun.
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2017
    DSilat likes this.
  20. El Medico

    El Medico Valued Member

    Youse guys should listen to the above Silat practitioners,they're correct

    While my own Silat experience is limited I've seen enough over the years that it's obvious
    Silat systems run such a gamut of variation that one can't pigeonhole Silat into being "like" any particular other system(s). Including many other Silat systems.

    It's very much like the case of CMAs where it's all Wu Shu but Pa Kua and Southern Mantis are quite different animals.

    The area where Silat lives covers a lot of physical territory,and so it's to be expected that varying methods/systems arise due to physical and cultural environment plus whatever influences from outside may be prevalent in a given area. I recall being a dummy for a Malaysian practitioner at a seminar and his stuff was rather shocking to me as it seemed to have a strong Karateish influence. (!)
     
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