So, in last night's class, we played with the pukulan (hitting) aspect of Silat Sera, working on several things, but coming back to the bedrock of what we think makes this stuff work:
Position and sensitivity.
Without those two, yeah, you have technique, and if you are fast and strong enough, you might be able to make those work for you most of the time, but against somebody faster and stronger, that's apt to be iffy.
Or, to once again paraphrase the Fabulous Furry Freak Brother, Freewheelin' Frank, "Position will get you through times of no speed and power better than speed and power will get you through times of no position ..."
Or as Guru likes to say, it's like the three most important aspects of business and real estate:
1) Location. 2) Location. and 3) Location ...
Sensitivity, in this instance, means being relaxed enough to feel the flow of the encounter and to move accordingly. Once you are close -- short punch, elbow, knee range -- then feeling is better than seeing. If you can tell what an attacker is about to do by his shift in position or his set, you can control him.
I'm guessing that experienced martial artists probably won't be too surprised by this claim. Probably not too surprised by the notion that it's a lot harder to develop than simple blocks and counters, too ...
As for the forms -- we call them "djurus" -- with which we start each class, there is one contingent of the martial arts world that considers these a waste of time. "Dead" training, they say. How we look at it is, of course, somewhat different. Our analogy is that the djurus are ingredients -- flour, water, eggs, butter, salt, sugar -- which, once you have in hand, you can make a variety of things, depending on how you combine them. Cakes, pies, bread, cookies, scones, muffins, even paste ...
(Technically, the djurus are the upper body moves; the lower body ones are called langkahs. We combine them and just called them "djurus." We have eighteen of them that we feel pretty much cover what you need to know, and that you are fair way down that road if you can do the first two well, since the rest are based upon those.)
We feel that the djurus cover the ranges of hand motion one can effectively use, and that once you have these motions down, then you have the tools you need.
It's not as if I haven't heard all this a thousand times; every now and then, though, I blink and it makes more sense. One more step on the thousand mile journey.
One of my fellow students asked me last night, "So, how long did it take for you to get comfortable in your position?" To which I said, "I'm not there yet ..."
(The picture is of Guru Plinck, from the cover of the old Bukti Negara tape.)
Sounds like tango.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about that dance form to say for sure, but from watching it, I'd guess so. Pretty much any kind of close moment in concert with another would seem to require as much kinesthetic sense as visual.
ReplyDeleteMost of what we know about the world comes in through our eyes, but sometimes that camera/brain processor is too slow. In a clinch, by the time you see the attack coming, it might be too late.
The hand isn't really quicker than the eye, but it is quicker than the eye/brain/response combo if you are at grappling range.
Proprioceptive/kinesthetic senses -- some folks split 'em up -- are simply faster. If you had to look and think about it every step, walking would be a very slow process ...