Silat

In the early 1990’s, various members of our Victoria, BC, Wing Chun club went to a seminar on Indonesian Silat. The seminar was given by Grandmaster Herman Siwanda. He was a very good teacher. Unfortunately, he died in a car accident in Germany.

I thought by this time I had seen everything but Silat was very unusual in the way they fight. There are hundreds of styles of Silat just like there are hundreds of Kung Fu styles and hundreds of Filipino stick fighting styles.

The unusual part of Silat was their hundreds of ways of fighting from the ground. Herman Siwanda said that in Indonesia it rains a lot and so often the conditions are slippery for fighting and for that reason many ground fighting techniques were developed. The Silat art covers all ranges of fighting and they are very proficient in all kinds of weapons as well.

I didn’t take my usual amount of copious notes but do have a few stories to tell a little later. At the seminar there was a very fast boxer who asked what Herman can do against a very fast jab. Herman told him, go ahead. In a split second the boxer was face done on the ground in some kind of complicated lock. This was very impressive.

If you are fighting a Silat person then you will encounter many surprises. For example some Silat people put coconut oil on their palms and then a layer of acid with which to burn off your skin should they grab you and grab you they will. when do you train to cope with those kinds of things? I would say never. If you are used to MMA and Jujitsu well Silat is a comprehensive are in stand-up and grappling with very unusual techniques. Herman Siwanda has a whole series of YouTube videos to get just an inkling of what Silat is all about. when I ask our students if they have ever heard of Silat, the answer is usually no. I would like our seniot students at least to understand about other arts so sometimes I post information about what I have encountered and seen.

Here is a seminar given by Grandmaster Herman Siwanda at about the same time as we learned some of this art from him.

To show a different kind of Silat which is also very impressive, I suggest to few a half doze You Tube videos by a young lady who has been doing Silat since she was a child. She can fight empty hand and with weapons, do one finger push ups like Bruce Lee, and kick cement walls and trees with apparent ease and no injury to herself. She is actually quite incredible and has a super nice personality and good teaching style as well.

These days many people from standard arts like Karate, and Wing Chun are incorporating may things from Indonesian Silat, from Filipino Escrima/Arnis/Kali and from the internal arts such as Tai Chi or Ba Gua. Of course nobody closes their eyes these days about the MMA world where there are also lessons to be learned from the Jujitsu arts.

In 1986 I met a super expert in Kempo Karate and various other arts. His name was Joseph Simonet. He is a prime example of someone who has been able to combine many arts at the highest levels. Read his credentials at: https://kifightingconcepts.mykajabi.com/pages/about-us His wife Ady is also very good.

In 1986, I attended a week long seminar learning the 108 Classical Mook Jong sets taught by Master Wang Kiu. Following this, I was invited to learn Classical Wing Chun from Dr. Khoe at the University of British Columbia, Canada. There, I continued training the 108 Mook Jong sets as well as footwork, Chi Sao and Sil Lim Tao. This education became the platform upon which I built the "Slam Set". I later learned the second empty hand form of Wing Chun, called Chum Kiu from Herb Maier.

A lot of European Wing Tsun people are starting to incorporate what Grandmaster Sam Chin teaches. It is his family art which seems to have ideas from Tai Chi and Ba Gua. The German WT people have been figuring out their own ways to do this but have finally found a Master in these things so that they don’t have to re-invent the wheel. We have had some great seminars from Wing Tsun (pronounced Wing Chun) Master Ralph Haenel in Vancouver where he introduced us also to some of these ideas. I would like our students to be open minded to other arts. Some clubs teach that only their art is good. We are not one of those kinds of clubs.

https://educalingo.com/en/dic-ms/silat

Art Silat or Pencak Silat is one of the martial arts of Malay or Nusantara that has been practiced for centuries. The age of a martial arts or genealogy can not be elaborated in detail and precisely because there is no attempt to study from the authorities in depth. Some estimate that this art has been hundreds of years old and is passed down from generation to generation. These include martial arts practitioners in Brunei, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. Those who learn silat are called the pesilat. The practice now, the teacher or the silat teacher is called the coach and one who inherited the flow of a teacher called the Primary Master of the stream. Most silat teachers now reject the Mahaguru title because for them the title 'maha' is only suitable for God and it meets the statue of martial arts who normally love to hide their skills and very humble. Senior seniors who have long been involved in martial arts as the instructors, are highly skilled and some of them inherited some of the lost streams being held as Old Parents and are highly respected.

Wing Chun and Silat - in Cantonese!