Welcome to THE BALISONG JOURNAL An online journal of Southeast Asian Martial Arts, Culture and Spirituality from Guro Jeff Davidson and Detroit Kali-Silat. We will focus on Filipino Kali, Batangas Knife, and Silat Melayu (especially Silat Kuntau Tekpi) - along with Yoruba (West African) fighting and healing arts- and other interesting diversions along the way.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Further on a previous post
I’ve been getting a lot of email questions regarding my post about dumog. The majority of these inquiries come from people who are familiar with Tuhon Gaje’s dumog or jujutsu (Japanese and Brazilian) and are wondering how and what we’re applying from Silat Kuntau Tekpi. I’ll share some thoughts here.
DUMOG and JUJUTSU
Unless you’re just rolling around for fun with a game partner, I don’t think there is much from Tuhon’s dumog that can be applied in a jujutsu-style grappling match. My student Panday knows a lot more about these things than I do, so if I am mistaken I hope he’ll correct me. It seems to me that the BJJ or JJJ is more concerned with jockeying for and establishing some kind of “position” and then going for the submission hold or choke. Whereas, dumog should begin with Pangamut (striking techniques) and then the opponent’s weight is loaded onto a joint -such as the shoulder, elbow, knee, or often the neck – before his weight and yours comes crashing down on that joint, against the hard ground.
The closest thing we do to anything that would remotely resemble Japanese Jujutsu is Cambod, which involves grappling against the opponent’s limbs. However, unlike jujutsu, instead of locking-stepping-throwing in a circle (like koto gaeshi) Cambod more involves wrapping the limb and using it to “collapse” the opponent’s body into your follow-up strike. That’s the best explanation I can give without a video, and we won’t be posting any videos. The bottom line is that I think you can play pretty hard with Jujutsu and both guys can still be friends at the end of the day. The more you resist against dumog or cambod, someone is going to be injured.
JUJUTSU and SILAT KUNTAU TEKPI
My SKT teacher Omar Hakim as well as my friends in
DUMOG and SILAT KUNTAU TEKPI
If you are lucky enough to study Silat Kuntau Tekpi and have people of different sizes and body types to train with, you may eventually discover what I’m talking about in the above paragraph. Then, you’ll know how it feels to lock an opponent from his center so that he can’t move or step out. Then, if you know enough buahs, you’ll be able to do this regardless of whether you are in front of him, side to side, behind him, etc. There’s a relatively simple “trick” to learning this principle (which upon second thought I’ve just deleted from this article…sorry!). Once you understand this, you should be able to accomplish this same thing in your dumog applications. The result will be that your dumog locks and throws will be more efficient and explosive, and you will reduce your “counter-ability” to a huge extent.
Well, there you have bit from my perspective. For those of you that wanted to know if/how you can apply dumog and Silat Kuntau Tekpi in your next cage fight or grappling contest – sorry. I don’t even want to know how to train that.
Friday, May 21, 2010
...Sums it up...
From Moonbattery:
"Far from altruism, what actually motivates most of the progressive left is malignant narcissism. The lefty troll doesn't want to debate, he wants you to pay attention to him. And when lefty activists say, "We need to change the world," what they are actually saying is, "I want the world to notice me." Progressivism activism is a route to fame and public approval for star-wannabes who lack physical attractiveness, talent, or whatever it is that keeps getting Janeane Garofalo work."
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Dumog
This evening's training focused on the Silat Kuntau Tekpi principles of kuncian as applied to dumog in close-quarter grappling standing and on the ground. Hopefully proving once again (to those present) that if you understand the principles - the techniques create themselves.
I can't say at this point that my expression of dumog is 100% percent Pekiti-Tirsia, but...you do what you know!