I had trained for years in a lot of the more standard fare ....wrestling, judo , American kenpo ,Shou Shu, Chinese Kempo, tae kwon do , hapkido, shotokan karate, ,Kyokushinkai, Jun Fan gung fu , etc, etc. I was training in Larry Hartsell's JKD Grappling association in the mid /late 80's as I recall .While in USAF Spec Ops , I spent some time in some interesting places overseas. At one of those locations, I also spent some time hanging out with a particular US Army Green Beret/ US Special Forces member who had also been a Tunnel Rat in Viet Nam. He was a Chinese style fighter who was pretty rough and tumble and had great footwork and body movement. He liked the Thai Boxers ,when he was in Thailand, because of the full contact work they did and he liked the Kali /escrima folks because of their weapon base, williness to train with live blade during their development and their attention to footwork. But he seemed most excited about the Pencak Silat people he had some contact with. He told me of a few times he ran across silat stylist in South East Asia . He said the first time he saw one in action , it really unnerved him. At that time ,he had done a lot of serious training but he did not feel it had prepared him for what he had seen take place in an altercation he witnessed. He did eventually make some friends within the silat community and learned a bit about their methods. He said he trained pretty hard to learn to deal with some of what they did. He told me that this focused training was probably what saved his hide one day when one of his team members was about to get in a scrap with a local who, he figured out,was a pesilat. He encouraged me to seek out any Pencak Silat teacher I might ever run across and try my hardest to get some training . Well, that pretty much put the bug in my ear. When I was in Texas, I heard Pendekar Herman Suwanda was conducting seminars within the region. I went to see him and had an absolutely wonderful training experience. His art seemed to have everything I wanted and seemed to exhibit the motions and skills my teacher/ friend had mentioned. Later, Bill Stutesman introduced me to Maha Guru Richard Crabbe De-Bordes and the experience was similarly exciting . The more I trained with my silat teachers, the more I saw the concepts and skills being developed that I had been working on when studying JKD, Jun Fan Gung Fu , Wu Wei, grappling, Muay Thai and Kali.There seemed to be a bit of redundancy in many respects. I decided to place my focus on the study of Pencak Silat and have been with the art ever since, with no regrets. One day my old friend came to to the DFW area and searched me out....he dropped by one day and saw me working with Dave Goodenow , one of my training buddies at the time. I just grinned and said he had nothing more to treach me, it was obvious I was getting what I needed from my silat teachers.
Of course , why I am with Silat is because it fits my needs and is the art most suitable for my particular way of moving ,as well as my psychological "worldview". I am certain many other folks have found similar satisfaction within their own non-silat arts. You just have to find one that you can make work for you in an effective manner and one that seems to meet all of your training needs. For me , it was Pencak Silat.
With Respect,
Doc D
