In my opinion, Silat Olahraga does not represent Silat in its form of competition. I am not against competition, just that the way it is done in Silat Olahraga does not do Silat justice. What do you think?
I agree. I think pencak silat is more appropriate for self-defense. Self-defense and sport require different responses. In sport you cannot attack the eyes, groin, throat and these strikes are the essentials for self-defense.
While I agree nasigoreng, I feel there should be a sport version of Silat. I feel it should be closer to Kendo or Western Fencing. So that it resembles Silat Pulut or Silat Pengantin. Just my opinion though...
In my opinion, some styles more suited than others for sport. But it largely depends on why a person practices and plays what they play. True silat is the most personal when considering ranges of survival, because it is the heart through which the pesilat responds to the world around her or him. This mental aspect is what makes it a 'spiritual' practice (although I dislike how the word is most often interpreted). Just as (informally) everyone's personalised experience influences their spectrum of response, whatever 'art' they practise. Personally I think that sport training is the next best thing available for most people to safely get some idea how to deal with force and aggression. Consider though Jet Li's "Unleashed" because in my view it graphically shows how ineffective inflexible training might be in the face of focused violent intent, when someone is trying to rip your face off lol. But! There should be no sport 'version' of silat ... there should be instead a defined set of rules and then it's up to the different aliran's to determine if they want to adjust their style and method to participate. It would be a good test. Also, definitely not based on Kendo or Fencing for weapons sport silat . The reality is (IMO) more like Kali/Eskrima ... Dog Brothers style ... so the competition is already there if people want to participate and emulate! But to me this always begs the question ... why not set the rules and have it completely open to any martial art?
Self-Defense is more about attributes than anything else - sporting competition is far better for developing those than most other things
I consider these kinds of strikes essential b/c strikes to vital areas like this allow weaker people to prevail against stronger opponents. I also think these strikes are necessary to stun the opponent and set up the throws and sweeps. that's a good point. I don't see a dilemma though: people don't have to limit their training to either self-defense application or competition.
Yes, it depends fully on why a person practices and plays what they play. Have to agree to disagree there with the form of the sport. Kendo and Fencing makes it available for everyone, with no weight categories. While the Dogbrothers do it well their way, I feel that that method will turn most people away, whereas I see the aim for a Silat Sport is to pull in the masses. Feel free to disagree. In that vein, the Sport is the gateway into Silat. The "real world combat" (eye gouging, biting etc.) should be left in the actual self defense classes, not in the sport training. I agree, I say let everyone take part, Silat or not.
Training martial arts comes down to instinctively applying the techniques and filosophy. One could debate what happens when someone has been training the proper self defense/bela diri aspect of his silat for years and would enter a tournament without proper tournament preparation. I'm by no means implying that proper bela diri training would automatically win. I'm just not so sure if a bela diri trained pesilat is able to prevent the use of improper techniques not in accordance with present international Persilat rules for competition. It's hard to refrain from instincts in a split second or less. It has led to my assumption that competition and self defense training are not quite the same and hard to train at the same time.
We're not talking about Olahraga here. I agree, competition and self defense training are not quite the same.
If you are not talking olah raga what are you talking about then? Open competition with full contact Karate or Tae Kwon Do? i.m.o. it makes no difference. In any sport application one will be limited in the targets and techniques one is allowed to use. This will always be a disadvantage for anyone trained in bela diri or it's equivalent trainingmethode in any other martial arts.
Yoda at his best. Any training is an abstraction. In sport, they limit the targets and use equipment. In other forms of training, they might pull their punches or decrease the speed. Neither is reality. It's not like anyone's training actually consists of crushing groins and punching adam's apples.
True to a certain extend. Finding out if your training realy works is almost only possible if you had to find out the hard way. This doesn't change the fact that you can only do so much to come as close to reality (in sports as well as self defense) as is humanly possible. The neccesity of pulling punches or decreasing the speed is also heavily reliant on the set up and build up of the training and training experience. I know for a fact that there a number of schools that I know of where the training filosophy doesn't include pulling back punches or decreasing speed when students are proficient enough. It takes years of training and it builds progresively. It still doesn't equal life or dead situations but it just doesn't come any closer. I believe it wasn't much different in 'the old days' of the old masters....
I will admit I have seen very little of what goes for "sport Silat" and am open to having a look if anyone wants to post links. What I have seen was for the most part not terribly impressive. I think the above saying is accurate. You may not be able to crush a throat or break a knee in a sparring or sport situation but obviously there are attributes that will apply. You still have to be able to penetrate your opponent's defenses to deliver a clean strike. You can use sparring/sport as a measure of your delivery system.
My focus however is weapons training to become the "Sport Silat" model, instead of Silat Olahraga. Just as in Kendo and Fencing (even Paintball) the realities are toned down, the attributes are trained better to represent Silat... Imho of course...
Okay, but describe for me how a training session would actually LOOK then. IF a style contains things like finger jabs to the eyes or hits to the throat or groin, etc., then a training session clearly isn't actually going to involve performing those things full bore on another person. So somewhere in that equation, there's a concession of some sort. The addition of gear, the preclusion of certain targets, the mitigation of contact level, perhaps even doing away with sparring entirely. Something. You simply can't have a combat art (nevermind a bladed weapon-based art) that doesn't make ANY concessions in training. So I'm having a really difficult time picturing the actual classroom content of the classes you're describing. Stuart
Bela diri is selfdefense. You need to know how to punch and kick but the ultimate is that you know how to defend and counterattack agianst any kind of attack, it's all about training your instinctive reaction that can only be built up by many years of intensive training. Over time students will learn to execute their offensive actions faster and faster including those aimed at 'painful' targets and they can do this because their opponents have increased their skills over about the same time to a certainty that they can defensive accordingly. What it looks like? Not the same for every student in the same class. If someone decides to train with a limited commitment he may never train this way, it's is up to the individual. As far as your finger jabs are concerned. In a traditional sense it is important that you train the explosiveness of your strike and besides that training your fingers on actually having the strength to perform according to the intended tecnique. So in your example training your fingers by hitting rice bags, inner strength (tanaga dalam) training and finger push ups. There are many other ways to train your speed and precision on hitting a target, even without a living opponent. You can train as many 'deadly' techniques as you want if you only train the technique but not the context it is no martial art in my humble opinion. I mean to say: I can train my strikes thousands times over but if I don't really learn how to react when a offensive action is defended and taken over I only trained speed but not the effectiveness of the martial art in question. Let me counter your question, how do you think the old master trained their skills a hundred years ago in whatever martial art? In a period when they could actually be called upon to use their trained skills? It's not like they had completely other options during the evolvement of their training than we have today, exept maybe even more intensive training. It's not that they had living test persons to train their more dangerous techniques. Not much different from today, you train and train, excel and excel your skills and can only hope when '**** hits the fan' your training was good enough. I never said, in any of my postst, that I didn't do any consession. I stated the following: "It still doesn't equal life or dead situations but it just doesn't come any closer"