Pencak Silat and The Future
Evolve or Die
Author : Steve Hanafi (Silat Sharaf Practitioner, Malaysia)
In the age of advancing technologies, weapons industries, artificial intelligence, autonomous robots, is Pencak Silat still as relevant and as lethal as it was? Can it still be counted on for self- protection? What are the odds of using silat and winning against killer robots or enhanced human beings? While everything is evolving rapidly, Pencak Silat MUST EVOLVE. Either the art evolves, or it dies, or you die.
Why the need to evolve?
Refuse, and you will perish
Because anything that refuses to do so, perishes. Look at how Nokia crumbled when Apple released iPhone. Nokia refused to change their marketing strategy, to improvise and evolve their technology. In just a year, they lost billions. Blockbuster lost to Netflix when they refused to change their approach where Netflix delivers the shows to the end customer instead of having them to come to their store. In no time, Blockbuster went bankrupt. Weapon and arms manufacturers worldwide are competing to develop autonomous weapon system (AWS), making killer robots that can think on their own, using artificial intelligence (AI) to hack into networks, just to stay ahead in the game. Starting to see the pattern here?
Companies that don’t make changes either lose the game or die
Against other traditional martial arts, Silat has failed to stand out. People look for MMA if they want to learn fighting skills. People who want to wrestle look for western wrestling, sambo or jiujitsu. Those who want to learn the bladed art look for Filipino Martial Arts – Kali, Eskrima, Arnis you name it. That leaves only people who don’t necessarily train for fighting or combat sport- and there are many other martial arts competing for the same demographic.
Pencak silat is a martial art that is almost a thousand years old. It has seen numerous changes since the birth of it, the revolution era and the modern era. But let’s admit it, Pencak Silat, has to evolve. It must evolve. In this age of constant improvement and innovation, the one thing that you would not want to be is stagnant.
Innovation is the key to success
How can Silat evolve?
Silat practitioners should always seek for ways to evolve the art, not remain stagnant
i. Teaching methodology.
Learn and teach other arts that complement your style
The first improvement that needs to be made is in the teaching methodology. The teaching needs to focus more on conceptual and real-life applications, not just fully relying on techniques. Techniques are good to know, they are original form and symbol of the art, but memorizing techniques will just get one killed. Teach the techniques first, then extract the concepts, explore the concepts and the endless applications, then pressure test it.
Silat is a complete system but it is not perfect, no martial art style is. To survive in real-world altercation, one needs supporting skills. Regardless against a trained fighter or not, supporting skills from other schools or styles are essential. Any teacher or instructor who’s reading this; drop your ego. Cooperate and collaborate with other silat school or styles, or other martial art styles to teach more to the students, to give them a wider view and knowledge on the fighting art. Allow the students to go to other schools or learn other styles of martial arts so their fighting potential can grow. Don’t worry about them leaving silat once they found other arts, they don’t. Birds fly high, but at the end of the day, they’ll go back to their branch, to their home.
ii. Training methodology
No better way to feel “live energy” and resistance
Most Silat practitioners nowadays aren’t training the way the olden people do. There used to be a lot, A LOT of full contact sparring and pressure testing. They’d spar on bridges, on a log, in the river and at the beach. The only people who do spar now are those who are training for the competition, and that’s with protective gear and also dangerous moves are banned. That’s not enough. I recall my Guru once told me that one who goes for silat, does not come home without bruises – if they do, either they are the teacher or they didn’t go for training at all.
John Machado said, “No sparring, No miracles”. If one really wants to learn to fight, then they must be fighting against someone who is fighting back. If the training is solely based on where one person punches and waits for the other to execute their Buah or Jurus, then I’ll say that it won’t work when the user is pinched against a resisting opponent, an opponent who fights back. No one in their right mind would wait for you to do your ultimate-death-technique on them. Live energy, resisting opponent, is the key. Of course, during the learning process, the resistance is low, it gets higher as the training and learner progresses.
Another thing lacking in silat training is strength training and conditioning. Weights, endurance, cardio. Old people did heavy work, they build muscle through their work. And not to mention that their silat training is intense. Nowadays, we can adapt using modern training method to build muscle strength, power.
Bodyweight workouts are great for building strength and endurance
iii. Mindset implementation
Once your mindset changes, everything else will follow
No weapon is greater to mankind than the mind. Regardless of how lethal the techniques taught, without the right mindset, it’s pretty much useless. It is rare to see any silat classes implementing the lethal mindset, on how to weaponize the mind before the body, mostly because they are scared that “people don’t like to be violent”.
A good mindset implementation is not necessarily just about beating people up or killing people (although a part of it is true), it is about using tactics to avoid conflicts, to navigate through daily life, strategies to become a better fighter and a better protector. How can a Guru expect the student to be proficient in protecting themselves if the right mindset is not taught during training?
iv. Marketing // Promotion
Good marketing strategy attracts new students
“but in the olden days people didn’t need to publicize or advertise their style and still get students coming to learn”
Look. Until a few decades ago, there were no such thing called the Internet. The exposure to other fighting arts were not as it is now. There were no competitions fighting for the same demographic. Lack of promotion leads to people not knowing about silat, misunderstanding about silat and people being uninterested in learning the art. Even in the age of autonomous robots, high speed internet, there are still very few promotions regarding to silat.
v. Adaptation of contemporary weapons
Knives are the new swords and guns are the new cannons
The saying of “Don’t get into a gunfight with a knife” is particularly true in this one. You don’t know what your enemy is carrying or have with them, and it is much better to have a better weapon than to need one. Just having a gun or a blade without proper training will not suffice. There’s no wrong in teaching how to use traditional weapon for the sake of the art, but if we’re really focusing on self-protection, the adaptation of contemporary weapons in training is essential.
Weapons that can be carry concealed (according to your state laws) should be trained during silat classes. Majority of silat techniques are timeless – where contemporary weapons can be integrated into the techniques making them more lethal. Drones, robots are just new technologies integrated into older technologies.
Looking at the current situation
Look at martial arts that have grown worldwide, Wing Chun, Brazilian Jiujitsu, if the people who made the bold move and improvised, didn’t do what they did, (Ip Man, Helio Gracie, etc) would those arts be as popular as they are today? Looking back, people weren’t afraid to make changes to suit their times, to suit the war that they were fighting. Why are we so afraid of change then?
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