What to look for?

Discussion in 'Silat' started by Orang Jawa, Apr 12, 2006.

  1. Orang Jawa

    Orang Jawa The Padi Tribe-Guardian

    GS said: You two guys got off to a bad start
    *****************
    You got that right GS. :)
    You know what, I bet when someday Wali and I meet. We will ended go to the Indonesian restaurant in Linchester Square...:) And carry this conversation very politely over the food. We both very pasionate about our things. I too feel that we have a bad start, Its water over the bridge, right Wali? I don't remember a things!
    We used this saying often many moons ago: " I do not recall Senator! We never been there either?"
    Peace and Be Well,
    Tristan
     
  2. Wali

    Wali Valued Member

    I can hardly remember what I had for breakfast, let alone hold a grudge. All's good here...

    I'll hold you to that Indonesian meal someday... :)

    God Bless...
     
  3. Bobster

    Bobster Valued Member

    That's better. Thank you both.
     
  4. Steve Perry

    Steve Perry Valued Member

    Reel Stuff

    Selamat, Wali --

    I think we had a discussion about this style once on another group. Somebody posted the link and asked what we thought of it. As I recall, a lot of us thought what was being shown was kinda flashy -- designed to draw in new players -- rather than impress old pesilat guys. Plus there was a little hyperbole in the guru's credit list. Nothing major, but just enough to make a bell go off ...

    As I recall, there was a link to another video by your teacher that offered a better demonstration of basics -- I can't seem to find it at the moment, but I recall it offered more meat and less sizzle, and was more representative of the teacher's ability, including some nice groundwork.
     
  5. realitychecker

    realitychecker New Member

    The Eyes

    Thank you very much Bart and Todd. I discovered just how much time that I spend actually 'watching' what I do when I solo train. What I mean is, I seem to spend a lot of time (more than I thought) watching my feet and lower body in general to make sure, or check my lanka reference. That is a bad habit. I DO, however, track with my eyes and head instead of "hunkering down" between my shoulders. I have picked up that where the head goes, the body will follow is not just a rule of thumb for knocking out an opponent. My current understanding leads me to believe that the head turn and eye tracking aid your structure and skeletal alignment, improves and aides in 'torque' generation, and increases your field of vision. I also learned a while back to tuck your chin down so your head is angled foward. I believe that it increases your peripheral vision a few degrees(?).

    Guru Bart, can you expand upon the shoulderline with a moving or circling opponent a bit further? My understanding is; when your shoulders are parallel to the opponent, you are "equal"(=). Making the proper angle (/-) puts you in controll of "your line". Is that close? What are ways of expounding on that in training? I understand that BN teaches it's sambuts as 'positional "laboratories" '. Is that correct?
    I appreciate everyone's help, and questions. I hope that we can all get along long enough for me to learn a little more. ;)
    Thanks,
    JR
     
  6. Fireshadow

    Fireshadow New Member

    RealityChecker,
    At first you do have to "watch" the jurus, this lets you check yourself and get them right. And every once in awhile you have to go back to watching them. Once you have the jurus right then you can begin training them.
    Good calls on structure, skeletal alignment, and torque. I wouldn't tuck the chin at all as I believe this decreases your peripheral vision (you'll have to make your own call) and it definitely decreases neck flexibility and movement. Hopefully, your jurus are teaching you head movement? The head must be free to pivot, if not, you will pivot with your shoulders and mess up your shoulder lines. Does this make sense?
    You ask me how to expound upon shoulder position in training. My best answer as a teacher is to be literal and be strict. It's easy to compensate with strength or "changing a technique" when it's easier, but what are you learning?
    I'll try to go a little more in depth later, gotto go.
    Bart
     
  7. Fireshadow

    Fireshadow New Member

    RealityChecker,
    Speaking further on neck movement, neck flexibility (having your head upright and in the center), and the puter motion; picture a top spinning.... I was going to explain, but instead, I think I will ask, "what can you draw from this?"
    As far as being "equal to" an opponent, hmmm.... Setting a shoulder angle maximizes your capabilities. It's all about you. You always have lines. They travel with you. You can bring your opponent to your lines or you can move your lines to match your opponent. Inexperienced players tend to try to manipulate their opponent to their lines and move their lines at the same time (trying to mimic everyone else but don't know exactly what they are doing). Intermediate players tend to adapt their own body so that they can put their lines in position for a convenient sweep. The more advanced players bring their opponents to their environment or move their environment if it is convenient or switch environments. When you force (draw, whatever) your opponent into your environment it has many advantages. Can you visualize the different groups of players? This should help if you don't already know it: your shoulder lines are established as soon as you make contact with your opponent.
    As far as the sambuts being "positional laboratories", keep in mind that you are not looking at scientific theory, but rather functional science. Certainly, you can work the sambuts, work a lot of drills off the sambuts, and experiment with different techniques, but remain strict and specific with your training (use the science, principals, training, angles, langkahs,etc.) BN is based on formulas and equations that should have definable and repeatable results. Your personal roadmap is not so good if you just have one way to get somewhere. Hopefully, this makes some sense to you. Feel free to ask more specific questions on the sambuts and I will answer if I can.
    As far as soft-focusing the eyes, I know it is very useful, but the main thing is to not get sidetracked. You need to soft-focus and to hard-focus at different times. Hard-focus is important for precision and is trained in the jurus. I would say that most people have a tendency to soft-focus during jurus. The mind tends to
    soft-focus, too (thoughts tend to drift). That is not training the jurus.
    This is the progression 1. Train the jurus so that they are precise (motions are correct.) 2. Train the jurus and mind so that you are focused and disciplined on the task at hand (whatever you are doing with the current motion), hard-focusing the eyes is an important component here. 3. Train the jurus, focus, and recognize outside stimuli (start with something stationary then perhaps a person moving around the room); do this maintaining precise jurus, not losing your place, and not getting sidetracked by the outside stimuli. Intense focus and
    multi-tasking rolled into one (if that's what you call hours of training). 4. Rinse (because you will probably be very sweaty) and repeat! Most people dabble in step 1 and move on to technique. I see constant instruction and being overseen as being important for this progression, but maybe because that is what works best for me (done both, long distance learning is okay [i.e. sucks]). You do what you gotta do. I'm sure you know what I mean.
    "Old school" training isn't about how hard you hit the ground or how fast you can go. It is also about mindful repetition, understanding, and making the mind right. Here is where I would like to go off on my tirade about seminar learning, the student-teacher relationship, what is "real" training, blah-blah-blah, but I won't. Please all, refrain from any sarcastic remarks. Thanks.
    Bart
     
  8. Steve Perry

    Steve Perry Valued Member

    Focus

    Interesting. I think maybe the terminolgy regarding soft-focus and hard-focus is less ambigious when referring to sight than when speaking about the mind. Mindless repetition of djurus is not as effective as doing them with intent and precision, but once you learn the motions, thinking (in the cognitive sense) is not a good habit to develop. Learning a move so that it becomes second nature needs to bypass the conscious mind for it to become effective. Thinking is too slow. (Or as Stevan quotes Pendekar Paul, If you think, you stink.)

    This is not to say that "mindfulness" is wrong, only that it doesn't mean the same thing as "thinking" about your moves.

    If you had to think about each move necessary to walk normally, you would be a very slow walker.

    Difference, maybe, between a brain state that is characterized by beta waves (cognitive thinking) and alpha waves (relaxed.) Being in the zone is likened to zen, or no-mind, wherein the doer is the deed. This is a better place to be than trying to decide what you are going to do for a high punch on the right side. The speed of thought coupled with reaction time will put you behind the power curve.

    For us, this is the purpose of the djurus -- to develop tools that pop up automatically to take care of the necessary business without having to think about it. A reflex is faster than thought and while you never get as quick with a learned motion as an innate reflex, the closer you get, the faster you will be. Speed isn't everything, of course, position is more important, but while you don't necessarily have to be fast, being really slow isn't helpful, either.

    Peripheral vision is not affected by the position of your head per se; looking up or down gives you a different swath of vision. Sometimes looking down will be more useful because of the angle of peripheral vision. You might want to be aware of exactly where somebody's feet are in relation to you -- whatever shoulders or torsos do to give away motion, if an an opponent is outside kicking range and you stand still, the only way for him to get closer requires that he moves his feet.

    My experience is that if you hard-focus on a technique that is incoming, and the attacker knows anything and realizes this, you are screwed, because the hand might not be quicker than the eye, but the eye is easily fooled. See nothing but the knife, you will get cut by somebody who knows how to use it. Nail your vision to my right hand, it will be my left that gets through.

    When I say soft-focus, I mean see the big picture rather than narrowing my attention to a fist or an elbow. The Japanese concept of zanshin is probably not too far off. Todd pointed this out as being useful with multiple opponents -- focus on one to the exclusion of the others, you could get surprised ...


     
  9. Fireshadow

    Fireshadow New Member

    RealityChecker,
    How do you drive a car? If you exclusively soft-focus, it doesn't work right. If you try to hard-focus, it doesn't work right. You have to do both in the right amounts for the moment, and neither exclusively. Think of a beginning driver or when you were a beginning driver. Your eye use can get out of proportion easily. Of course, if you get tense, the tunnel vision creeps in. If you are driving down a residential street, and you notice what could be a child playing off to the side (or an awesome house, hot chick, cool car, etc.), you will immediately hard-focus (and hopefully cover the brake). If you remain hard-focused you can easily rear-end the car in front of you or hit the other kid that you didn't see. The eyes must go and do, what the eyes must go and do. That is what I am talking about when I am saying "sidetracked." The arts I study believe this. So, this is my best answer to the original thread of "what to look for".
    One other point that the arts I study stress is to not look directly into your opponents eyes. My instructor says something to the effect of seeing the reflection of the opponents eyes on the opponents nose, of which I have but a limited understanding and will not attempt to explain.
     
  10. bradlee

    bradlee New Member

    It's not Tapal, but Tapel. It's mean "Touch", und Rasa means "Feeling".

    I assume that Wali is a Cikalong practioners, is that true?.

    The words Tapel and Rasa are used especially in Maenpo Cikalong.
    To practice Tapel, student have to mastered all Jurus.
    Tapel consist of 3 Stage:
    1. Rasa Napel, Napel is adverb from Tapel, means "condition when we touch the opponent". Rasa Napel = Feeling the condition when we touch the opponent.
    2. Rasa Anggang, Anggang means "has a distance". Rasa Anggang = Feeling the condition when we don't touch opponent.
    3. Rasa Sinar, Sinar means "light". Rasa Sinar = Feeling from appearence.

    It's sound like it's all theory. But that's true. Cikalong practioners will try to touch a forehand of opponents to "read" its movement. When it's not possible, then with 2. Stage or 3. Stage.
     
  11. Narrue

    Narrue Valued Member

    I thought about this and divided it into 6 types of feeling. The first 3 everyone has but the next 3 few people have.

    Feeling through touch (mechanical)
    Feeling through listening (audio)
    Feeling through sight (body language)

    Feeling through use of fingers
    Feeling through air
    Feeling through light
     
  12. bradlee

    bradlee New Member

    Abang Narrue, If we speak about "Rasa" in Maenpo Cikalong, then I have to mentioned one more: "Feeling through feeling" (Sundanese: Rasa sajeroning rasa. Indonesians: Rasa di dalam Rasa).
     
  13. Narrue

    Narrue Valued Member

    Haha..Now things are getting confusing, Feeling through feeling…..should we just call it knowing.
     
  14. realitychecker

    realitychecker New Member

    Thank's

    Steve Perry and Fireshadow,

    Thank you both very much. I'm working very hard at obtaining understanding from your posts. Steve, I worked on some of what you mentioned with Guru over the weekend. I thank you for your insight, and totally appreciate your help!
    I hope to soon be able to contribute as you both have.
    Take care,
    JR
     
  15. tellner

    tellner Valued Member

    Thank you, O Moderators, for canning the spammer.

    If he's trying to get more customers for his school it's probably not working. I've been inspired never to buy anything from East West as long as this is the state of their marketing.
     
  16. Bobster

    Bobster Valued Member

    That's so odd someone would still try to do crap like that...I mean, everybody knows how we feel about spammers, and if you want to bring your school and teacher's name down in a blaze of glory, there's almost no better way to do it. It certianly doesn't make the East-West name look good.
     
  17. Gajah Silat

    Gajah Silat Ayo berantam!

    Maybe just a youngster or newbie trying to show off what he's being taught :confused: ?

    Didn't really seem to be an obvious marketing plug as the link was to Youtube rather than the actual EastWest site.

    Talking of moderators, it seems that the Sarge has defected to the dark side and joined the forces of MMA :p
     
    Last edited: May 17, 2006
  18. Wali

    Wali Valued Member

    The person responsible doesn't have much experience of Internet forums, and I've had a quick word....
     

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