The Motion of Many Motions

Our version of silat utilizes forms — drills — to practice what we consider the most effective motions for fighting. 

These are, for the purposes of learning, broken down into two major areas: upper and lower body. We call the upper body stuff — head, hands, elbows, shoulders, torso, djurus.

The lower body motions, stepping, kicking, sweeps, knees, hips, are collectively called langkas.

That’s most of the Indonesian terminology I’ll inflict on you.

One can practice djurus seated in a chair; for practical purposes, we combine these with the stepping, so when somebody says, let’s practice our djurus, that means do both together.

Martial arts are all the same, in that they utilize the same basic human components. There are only so many ways to push or pull, which what muscles driving bones do, and, actually, voluntary muscles only contract or relax, and thus only pull, so the push aspect is just a different kind of lever.

At the high levels, martial arts tend to look alike, you are boxing, wrestling, or a combination thereof, an adding weapons that smash or cut just extends your range and makes you more dangerous. 

Push and pull are also hit, block, parry, grapple, etc., depending on circumstances.

To learn ways of dancing around incoming danger, we further break the stepping stuff down into geometric patterns: straight line, triangle, square, cross, and, another Indonesian term, pantjar, which is a combination of the others. Also, especially with weapons other than biological, we also work the circle.

You don’t fight this way, of course, thinking and chosing patterns on the ground, but each of these will teach you ways to reposition yourself in what we consider an effective manner, depending on the nature of an attack.

One attacker coming in, how big, how fast, is he armed? might dictate which direction you move. Two attackers? Four? 

One size does not fit all.

The theory is, once you learn various ways to react to differing circumstances, you can do so without having to think about it, and this is faster and more effective than contemplative consideration. Thought is generally too slow, when push comes to shove. Or, in the words of our late Pendekar Paul, “If you think, you stink …”

Pusaka

The Indonesians have a word, “pusaka,” which loosely means “treasure,” or “heirloom.” In the case of pentjak silat, this has come to mean that an art is transmitted as learned.

With regard to respecting the source material, this is a good thing. 

However, if all you ever did was practice and teach every piece you learned, exactly as you learned it? 

You are failing in your potential as a student and teacher.

You can’t do it, anyhow, the nature of or bodies is such that we adjust whatever we learn to fit ourselves. If you are six-four and two-forty, you won’t move the same way as somebody who is five-three and one-twenty — you literally can’t. 

It’s an old joke in martial arts that when you show a newbie a move or a form, you offer a caveat — this is how I do it. When the senior teacher comes back, chances are what s/he shows you won’t look exactly like this.

Because it never does.

Bruce Lee spent only about four years in formal training, and from then on, he picked bits here and there and melded them into his own system.

This is how new systems are created, always have been, and always will be, if they are to thrive.

My teacher’s teacher learned some basics, then started to change them to suit his body and mind. My teacher learned his teacher’s basics, and then changed them. What he taught me is only distantly related to what he learned, and even that has shifted a bunch over the years. What you offer at sixty is not what you offer at forty. Yeah, the bottom-line basics are still there, but they have taken other roads to other places.

This is as it should be.

The danger is that you don’t learn enough to understand an art before you begin to add or drop things, and you can get lost. Guy trains for a year or two, thinks he knows it all, then goes off and creates his own art, losing the pieces that he thinks are useless. Sometimes he might be right, but often, he is wrong. 

If you have more depth in an art and you see somebody who doesn’t understand it trying to fix it, you can tell. Here is a bedrock part of what we do, and this guy has tossed it into the trash can because he doesn’t get it. What he is doing is not an improvement.

This is an ongoing problem with seminars. You go, and the guy teaching the session shows you something that is so foreign to what you know, you can’t buy it. That, you realize, will get you killed, and so you smile and nod and do it to be a good attendee, but you know it won’t go home with you.

Things evolve. Martial arts have to adapt to new influences. Yes, a punch is still a punch, but there are more ways to deal with it available, and that close-quarters knife defense might not work so well against a shotgun at fifteen feet. 

There is no magic secret knowledge in our art. Anybody who is holding something back to keep students is running a shuck, and if you see this, you might want to look around. Sure, the teacher can say he isn’t showing you everything because you aren’t ready to see it yet, because you don’t have the knowledge or skill to understand it, but if that isn’t on the table down the road? Best you move along.  

Elixir Vitae

So, been several articles lately on the current, and promising research into the elixir vitae, the live-forever potion. Works in the test tube, seems to work with mice, and human trials are right around the corner.

Isn't that great?

Scientists have been working on this since before the days there were scientists, the alchemists and natural philosophers gave it a go, and so far, nobody has quite perfected it.

But, hey, they might. And wouldn't that be something? Take a pill, and if not live forever, maybe another couple hundred years? I'm not ready to go yet, I could get behind this.

Two quick observations: Side-effects, and unintended consequences. This is not to go down the road about how much this pill will cost. If you think it will be covered under any form of healthcare extant? Good luck with that. This will be a drug for the rich and famous, and your chance of getting it, should it come to be, will be that snowball-in-a-supernova.

Want to make a few million dollars? Hijack a warehouse full of this stuff.

Side-effects? Once you start to monkey with hormones and stuff at a cellular level, you are dicking around with an already-iffy balance. All the things that could go wrong will make the Viagra warnings on TV look like a walk in the park of a lovely Sunday afternoon. 

Not the least of these could be fulminant, raging, metastatic cancers. Go read about telomeres and enhanced cell production. 

Could also be the cure for such things, up to and including cosmic radiation, but I will opine that the side-effects will, in more than a few cases, be worse than the disease being cured. People will put up with it, they do that now. Listen to the warning under the smiling couple with the fluffy, happy dog about what might happen if you take that medication.

Unintended consequences? Well, lot of doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, and undertakers will be put out of work. And your next car will offer some serious changes at major cost. Why is that? Because if you are gonna live to be three or four hundred, you don't want to risk dying in a fender-bender at the 7-Eleven. And cars won't be the only thing upgraded if accident replaces heart disease, stroke, kidney disease and pneumonia as the top killers. 

Guy breaks into your house with a knife? Looking for enough money to buy the forever pill? You will want to have a gun, because, better him than you, right?

Marriage that lasts fifty or sixty years might not make it three hundred death-do-us-part years. What do you do with all the people who had to retired at seventy? Gotta change that. And how will young people get a job if nobody retires?

I could go on and on with this list all day. You get the idea.

Now, there exists already a magic bullet, at least of a sorts: It's called "diet-and-exercise." 

Latest research here shows that certain kinds of high-intensity-interval-training (HIIT) can benefit people in all kinds of ways, and that it might actually benefit older people more than younger ones.

As soon as I utter the word "diet," I invariably get a chorus of fat-shaming accusations. You can be fat and fit -- there are guys who run marathons who are morbidly obese -- and that is a clinical term, not fat-shaming, go look it up. Generally, this is harder to do, because morbid obesity carries risks of more than a few illnesses, including arthritis bad enough to make it hard to exercise.

Yes, to head off at the pass the next comment I usually get, there are some folks whose metabolic systems are so screwed-up that it is really difficult for them to lose weight. And there are folks who are so physically-challenged that any serious exercise is difficult, sometimes impossible.

Those with serious metabolic problems in this area number about 3-5%, and have been diagnosed thus. That means the rest of us have to use a different excuse for not losing weight, and there are several of those which are valid, I'll get back to them in a minute.

People who can't move know who they are, but a lot of people who can simply choose to not do it. My wife teaches chair-yoga to seniors. Some of them aren't real spry, but there they sit, giving it a go.

Mostly, if you look in the mirror and are okay with what you see? Then you have an advantage over most of us. If you look and don't like it, and aren't doing anything about it? The prime reason I can see is depression. That kills at lot of intent, and chronic depression isn't something you just man up and shrug off. Depression is a bastard, but it can be treated, and in many cases, with enough success to allow you do live a better life.

That extra thirty pounds you picked up over fifteen years? You aren't going to lose it in a few weeks, and you won't keep it off if you do lose it over the next year unless you change your life style from what it was; otherwise, it comes back for the same reason it get there the first time. Yo-yo dieting is a dead end. 

Eating right and keeping fit don't come in a pill, they require work, but the dividends are there. Sure, you can become a body-Nazi who chews on roots and twigs and jocks out three hours a day, and serious exercise also carries the risk of injury -- ask any aging jock. But there is a balance. 

The cure for death might be around the corner, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it. Meanwhile, diet-and-exercise? Already here. 

Something about which to think.

Battle Ground Seminar 2017

A few pictures from the silat camp last weekend:

Spring Seminar

http://www.stevanplinck.com/events/

New Knife Design

Challenge Coin

Wallpaper

So, I guess this is the appropriate place for me to show this. At the recent seminar in Las Vegas, Cotten Blackwell and I were honored. And it is an honor, indeed.

Thank you, Maha Guru Plinck. I will try to be worthy of it. 

Beauty in Black Steel

Serious knife folks, collectors and makers, know the differences between Wootz, Damascus, patterned-welded and folded steels. They look similar, and sometimes overlap in how they are made, but there are differences.

Originally, the pattern-welded and folded steels came about because the metals were sometimes poor, and one can increase the strength and edge-holding abilities of a blade by blending and making a steel that is more than the sum of its parts. 

You get a hard section for the edge, more flexible for the body, like that. Heat it, hammer it, and forge a better tool. 

A lot of cultures played with these, the Japanese, the Vikings, the Indonesians, and they all added this or that, hammering and folding and coming up with blades that worked better and looked better. The Indonesians have books that deal with the patterns of pamor, there are hundreds of them, with different meanings.

These days, with the excellent steels available, pattern-welding and Wootz and such aren’t necessary, and this kind of thing is done more for the look than the function. 

I have several knives and a small collection of older kerises and kerambits with the traditional patterns, and some of them are quite striking.

Here is the latest addition to my collection, a small pocket folder with what is called “Raindrop Damascus.” Gorgeous … 

Silat Las Vegas 2015

So, a quick review of the Silat Sera Plinck seminar in Las Vegas this past weekend …

It was a small, but advanced group, serious players, and the event was ably put together by Don Lee. He was aided and abetted by Victoria Blackwell, and we couldn’t have asked for a better crew to run the show. For those of you who wanted to go but couldn’t, Don has a great selection of T-shirts and shorts, and if want to offer your support, drop by Maha Guru’s website and order some stuff. All high-quality materials, and cool-looking. www.stevanplinck.com/

There was a whole bunch of quality-teaching going on, and I’ll get to that in a minute, but again, if you wanted to go but couldn’t, Guy Bowring videoed the seminar and once they are edited, the vids will be availed from Resonant Video. If you are a Sera Plinck student, you will get a whole lot out of these; if you are a serious student not in the Sera lineage, you might be able to get Maha Guru’s approval and buy a set, and that would be a great introduction to the art. Plus Guy has some other excellent videos of various silat teachers. Check it out:
http://www.resonant-video.com

We had students from the Portland group, the Italian mob, and the Colorado players were well-represented. A bunch of nice guys and gals all around, and dedicated to their training. 

It goes without saying that Maha Guru Plinck’s teaching was outstanding. He has forgotten more than most of us will learn, and his intuitive grasp of what to teach and how is always impressive.

Guru Louis Compos, a gentleman and a scholar, was also on hand to show material from a variety of arts at which he is expert, and clearly is a man who knows and loves what he does. 

There were some instructors who couldn’t make it, due to injury or other commitments, and we send all best wishes to Guru Vanatta, who is on the mend from surgery.

Cotten Blackwell was honored by Maha Guru, and deservedly so; (I was also honored, though less deserving.) 

Cotten demonstrated the eighteen djurus on the pantjar platform, up and and down, *both* sides, that’s 72 djurus total, and we were all mightily impressed. I was going to be called on to demonstrate my djurus, but fortunately, I managed to pull a hamstring Sunday morning, and had to practice old man silat for the rest of the sessions. Good, because I wouldn’t have wanted to follow Cotten …

We ate well, drank a bit, socialized, and I, for one, came away feeling like I’d had a visit with family, because that’s what we were in this art. Next time one of these comes up, you want to think seriously about attending. It was a hoot.

Old Video - Maha Guru Plinck

Seminar in Las Vegas

Silat Sera Camp 2015

Las Vegas, Nevada

Mark Your Calendars and sign up soon!

Featuring:  

Maha Guru Steven Plinck

October 2015:  23, 24 & 25
Double Tree by Hilton Las Vegas Airport
7250 Pollock Dr; Las Vegas, NV  89119

Don’t wait, availability will go fast! Guru Plinck has blocked rooms for your convenience to ensure everyone will be able to reserve accommodations at a discount.
Bring a buddy; share a room.  Double or single occupancy.

Room Rate (per night):  

$129  ($145 with tax or $72.50 with roommate)
King bed or (2) queen beds available 

Complimentary Services to Include: 

• Shuttle Service: 
  • 24-Hour McCarran Airport courtesy shuttle
  • Scheduled courtesy shuttle to & from the Tropicana Casino Hotel on the Strip 9:00am –11pm
• 24-Hour Precor Fitness Center & Heated outdoor pool
• DoubleTree Full American Breakfast Buffet in the Café

More Knifery

   

ZT flipper, top; DPX Heat, bottom

So I have a few folding knives, most of them with relatively short blades, not illegal to carry locally. One of these is a ZT Titanium Flipper, a nice knife, but a bit heavy in the pocket.

3.5" (8.9 cm) blade, 4.7 inches (11.9 cm) closed, 8.2"(20.8 cm) total opened, about 6 ounces, 164 grams in weight. Elmax steel blade.

So I went looking for a shorter and lighter folder. Some places won't let you carry a knife with a blade more than two-and-a-half inches, and I found a nice custom I liked, but couldn't get in contact with the maker, so I came across this instead. A lot cheaper, and in several ways, better.

DPX-Heat. Blade is an inch shorter, than the ZT; the overall length two inches shorter, and it is a couple ounces lighter. Niolox steel, which is kind of like D2, holds a nice edge. Thumb stud instead of a flipper, but a solid, compact knife for EDC, opening packages, cutting up boxes and such. 

Plenty of room for a full grip, leastways if you have small hands like mine, no hot spots, feels good, even has a glass-breaker on the butt.  (Glass-breakers are for when you absolutely, positively have to open a window and it won't open. Like if you were trapped in your car and going to the bottom of the lake, or you were trying to help somebody else trapped in their car get out before it burned up, like that.) 

Knifery

So, I'm a knife guy. Carried a pocketknife since I was eight or so, have had camp knives, diver's knives, throwing knives, all kinda knives. Most of the martial arts I have studied nodded at knife stuff in passing, but once I got into Silat, an art that most of you know is based on the blade, that got ramped up. 

I don't have any expertise with the things, but I have had a chance to train with different kinds. These range from tactical folder-length, to krises, machetes, parangs, up to swords, all like that.

All of which is to say I appreciate a nice knife. Recently, I felt the need for a shorter folder than the (legal length) one I usually use for EDC. Great tool, but a little on the heavy side. (A technical term, that : EDC = every day carry.) I didn't really need a new knife, but, you can't have too many, so ...

I shopped around, and came across one that called to me. Short, stubby blade, liner-lock, one-handed operation, thumb-stud on the blade. Really liked the look, it was a high-quality steel, titanium handle got good reviews.

Thing was, the knife was a semi-custom, i.e., made in small batches from a single-man shop. I went to the guy's website, read his philosophy about the craft and customer service, and was impressed. Looked at the list of dealers, and went to go see what kind of deal I could get.

Turned out, no kind of deal.

Six retailers, none of them had it in stock, didn't know when they'd get one.

Oh, well, back to the source. Found the maker's contact info, sent an email: Hey, love this knife, but none of your dealers have any. How can I get one? You have a wait list?

Week passed, nothing.

Well, the guy is undoubtedly busy, and maybe my email got lost in the aether. So I called his number, got his machine, left my number and the same message.

Another week passed. Nada.

Okay, so maybe he's on vacation, or he had an accident or something, shit happens, right?

Found a Facebook presence, and from the tone of his posts, he wasn't stove up, nor on vacation. So, I'll ask him again, I figured. Hey there, I really like your work. Can I maybe get on your list for one of your next batch?

And once more we have crickets and tumbleweeds ...

So, it has been two more weeks, and while I know life gets the way as often as not, this does not bespeak good customer service. How many times do you knock before you realize nobody is coming to the door?

Rule of three. All done.

This experience as opposed to another first-class knife guy who go back to me the same day when I queried. Or a top-rated luthier with a long wait list who responded within a few hours.

What this kind of interaction does for me is kill my interest. Yeah, it's a nice knife and all, but after this? I don't want one any more. It wasn't meant to be. Could be a great guy, others might not have this experience, but back in my hippie days, I would have shaken my head and chalked it up to bad vibes. Sometimes, you just can't get there from here. 

You know what? That still works for me ...

New Steel

New small fighter knife (top)' by Jeff Crowner, one of a handful of expert knifesmiths it has been my pleasure to get to know. Shown next to my ZT flip folder, for a size comparison, Excuse the dog hair in the picture -- dog hair is a condiment at our house ...

Guru Narin

For those of you who haven't heard, Guru Narin, one of Maha Guru Plinck's senior gurus, passed away yesterday. Apparently, he developed some kind of infection/illness, was hospitalized, and the doctors were unable to save him.

Cold Silat

Dogs and I work the platform, 32º F., wind chill at 18º F. ... See that little puddle behind Jude, next to the pantjar? Frozen dog pee ...

Online Training

Guru Stevan Plinck

Heads-up, Sera Plinck's students: If you haven't joined Guru's online training site yet, and you are a student of his at any level, you should do this. The cost is nominal, and you will learn things from it, whatever your level, trust me. I've been doing it longer than most of you, and I'm seeing things in ways I didn't see before. 

Do it. 

 stevanplinck.com

Platform

Major Announcement

Folks, Maha Guru Plinck now has his own web page. This will be the official source for all things Silat Sera Plinck, and there is a membership section that will offer videos and training tips for students of various levels. The fees for this are small, and certainly any of Maha Guru's students will see the value.

The members area has a couple of placeholder vids, but there will be more to come soon.

You can get there by clicking on the link above, or the one in the sidebar.

There is also a presence on FaceBook, which you can access by plugging in his name.