Pencak Silat Pisau and Penjabakan

Saturday 11/11 - At our pencak silat class we primarily worked on trapping and counter trapping. Doug and Rocco are working on it. Mario was also there so he and I did a bit together but he primarily worked on his hand entries. Rocco and Doug got through Traps 1-5 primarily and then I showed them 6-8. We discussed how the trapping that I teach combines exchanging, re-parrying, grabbing, etc.

The primary purpose is to get people flowing from one hit to another and that should happen regardless of the success or failure of your initial attack. The basic premise is to try and use one hand to immobilize the two hands of your attacker, freeing your other hand for a counter attack. The point of trapping isn't to trap your opponents limbs as much as to free you to strike them.

Additionally, we discussed the need to press into your opponent and ultimately to try and immobilize them somehow because trapping typically requires a way to pin the attackers arms to themselves. Another component or another way that can sometimes be accomplished is by continually moving forward into your opponent, crowding them.

We'll probably spend a month on trapping. There is a lot of material and value in trapping and while the primary issue is using one hand to immobilize two of the attackers, it does mix with exchanging, checking, and catching to a degree. So understanding all of those methods from level 3 is valuable and necessary. Of course, evading and entering is also vital because without those aspects you won't be able to employ the rest of it.

Another aspect to trapping that needs more exploration by Doug and Rocco is the sensitivity to the opponents energy. There is always a spring-like energy in the defense against any attack where contact happens. We need to be able to be sensitive to it and use it appropriately to make our trapping effective, smooth, and explotative.

We also filmed a bit of pisau today and did some photography for Vol. 2. We videod Jurus Pisau Satu and a very brief buah. Grip changing, and grip use, as well as hand exchanging. I think the last thing we filmed was the Tangkapan of pisau or using the knife to perform catching. There's so much that translates into knife directly that the Level 10 of the system could be quite large. Levels 11 and 12 will not be quite so large I think.