Opinions of "Secrets of Sinawali" DVD?

[David43515]

Being stuck overseas there`s not alot of places to practice FMA. So I`m thinking of picking up Paladin Presses "Secrets of Sinawali" DVD by Joseph Simonet just to get some drills I can run to keep from getting too rusty. I searched on line for reviews, and all I could find were people quoting exactly what the Paladin catalog says about the DVD.

Has anyone actually seen it? What was your opinion? The advertising copy basically says that it contains 27 different sinawali drills and then shows ways to blend them together.

 

[MJS]

Being stuck overseas there`s not alot of places to practice FMA. So I`m thinking of picking up Paladin Presses "Secrets of Sinawali" DVD by Joseph Simonet just to get some drills I can run to keep from getting too rusty. I searched on line for reviews, and all I could find were people quoting exactly what the Paladin catalog says about the DVD.

Has anyone actually seen it? What was your opinion? The advertising copy basically says that it contains 27 different sinawali drills and then shows ways to blend them together.

I've never seen the DVDs you mention, but I have seen some of Joes other stuff, ie: Kenpo and Silat. I liked what I saw. I'm not a huge fan of dvd learning, but that aside, if its your only option at this time, yes, I'm sure you could pick up some stuff from his dvd.

 

[Mark Lynn]

Has anyone actually seen it? What was your opinion? The advertising copy basically says that it contains 27 different sinawali drills and then shows ways to blend them together.

I think it really depends upon what you are looking for to help you in your training. I have seen the DVD/VT before and for one who teaches some students the FMAs I thought the DVD was good for some different drills to do in class and all. Nothing ground breaking but still good food for thought. I've just checked my notes to see if there was anything I wrote on it, but there isn't ...... normally if there was something that really caught my eye as in "Wow that was new" I'd have taken notes on it.

So what would be different drills off of the top of my head I remember them covering of course different variations of double sinawali flow drills, like hitting a medicine ball on the floor doing earth sinawali, doing the sinawali drills using the punyos (butts of the stick), having the sticks chambered under their arm pits and flipping them outward (spring loaded), doing the pyramid variation (going from high middle and low, from standing to kneeling to one lying on the ground and one standing). The trouble is I can't remember if they go over the applications of the drills or just show the drills themselves.

One last consideration; if you already have a good grounding in the FMAs and in the Sinawali drills in particular than this could give you some different variations of the same old things, however if you are from say the JKDC lineage then you might have seen a lot of this before. Whereas if you were from the Modern Arnis lineage this could be new and ground breaking (since MA doesn't do much of this type of material). However if your looking for more than flow drills, like taking double stick drills and applying the drills in an organized format and translating it to empty hand (per say), so there is a combination of flow and combative application then this might not be the material you are looking for.