Senaman Tua

In response to numerous requests from my students for more information on Senaman Tua, I offer the following brief explanation from our friend Saiful Azraq. As anyone who has been put into at least one full-body lock from Cekak or Silat Kuntau Tekpi can attest, it is murder on the joints. I liken Senaman Tua to 'yoga' for the joints. We have been doing it for 7 months, and I have seen remarkable results in my students strength and flexibility.

By way of a personal testimony, in the summer of 2004 I tore the ACL in my right knee during a dumog match. After 3 months of physical therapy I decided not to have surgery, but the knee was obviously not fully functional. I learned Senaman Tua from Omar Hakim in April of 2005, and after a rigorous program of x2 per week for an hour my knee was stronger than it was before the tear - by July!

I recommend either 15 minutes a day, or 1 hour twice per week. Maintain each exercise from 1 to 99 seconds, and remember Nafas Melayu...

Now from Brother Saiful:

SENAMAN TUA literally means Old Exercise but to do it justice, I
prefer to translate it as Sagely Exercise. The word TUA in Malay
commonly means old in English. However, the difference between our
cultures makes miscommunicates the term. TUA comes from the Archaic
Malay/ Sanskrit word TUHA which means Prime. From this word comes
TUHAN (God), TUA (Old), colours like BIRU TUA (Dark Blue), KETUA
(Leader), PENGETUA (Principal) and many others. In the Malay culture,
the old are revered for their wisdom and surpassive knowledge.
Therefore, SENAMAN TUA means the knowledge of human exercises that
have arisen out of hundreds of years of research and development,
experimentation and testing. Each of them bear a deep amount of wisdom
within them.

However, another interpretation of SENAMAN TUA as explained by its
founder guru Azlan Ghanie is that it is a shortening of PETUA which
comes from the Arabic word Fatwa. A fatwa is a conclusive decision or
result of detailed research and development by a master in a
particular field. For example, e=mc2 is a fatwa of Einstein who
reduced the relationship of energy and matter into five symbols.
Therefore, the SENAMAN TUA is bound by a minimum of four PETUA, Nafas
Melayu, Lam Alif, Mata Angin and Jantan Betina. There are more but are
merely extrapolations of the four.