The most important Bagua skill…

by Ben Sterling

The difficult thing about Bagua is it’s variability.

There is a lot of variety out there and it can be difficult for a student to sort out what’s good, what’s bad and what’s just different.

The spreading of poor quality Bagua and misinformation is certainly a contributing factor but with Bagua the problem come right from it’s founder.

Dong Haichuan was known to teach mostly experienced martial artists. He taught them at their level and he built on top of their existing skillset. And so each of his students had very different and distinct flavors of Bagua.

Different branches of Bagua can be very different from one another while still being correct.

..and so how do you tell the difference between a watered down version and one that’s just different?

Good Bagua movement can look flowery and stylized or it can look stupidly simple.

It can look incredibly powerful or downright flimsy.

Forms and drills and postures can all be different.

So what’s the one thing that they all ABSOLUTELY must have to be functional as Bagua?

Time.

…actually a lack of time.

Bagua specializes in dealing with 6-8 attackers.

..and this means you don’t have time.

There are many wonderful skills and techniques that are incredibly effective against one, two or even 3 attackers.

…but as soon as you start using them against more than 3 attackers they fall apart completely.

You simply don’t have time to execute them.

And so that’s the first most basic test for your techniques.

What happens when you try you Bagua while 4 – 6 training partners are trying to get you?

Can you pull it off? (WITHOUT going faster than your training partners.)

..or do you get caught by the other attackers?

Now if it fails that’s OK.

It DOESN’T mean your technique is entirely bad. It just means you are missing a VERY important piece.

Ideally you would learn this piece FIRST but unfortunately it’s left out of the vast majority of Bagua curriculums. Even many experienced players find their techniques begin to fall apart as soon as they add a 3rd or 4th opponent. Much less a 6th or 7th.

This piece is the core of our Bagua workshop in January.

You will learn the essential drills and principles for using Bagua effectively against a group of attackers.

We’ll also get into some important body states and internal power methods but all those are useless if you can only make them effective against 1 or 2 opponents.

This workshop is limited to 16 people.

Reserve your spot now before it’s too late.

http://www.clearsilat.com/workshops

Filed Under: Bagua Tagged With: ,

The Silat secret to beat a faster opponent.

by Ben Sterling

There’s always somebody faster.

…and no matter how hard we train we can’t afford to make the assumption that the attackers will be slower than us. Especially in Pencak Silat where blades are a given.

…and every day we get older and more and more people become faster than we are.

…and even if we are fast, 3 attackers half our speed still have a speed advantage.

…but that’s OK

Because in the words of Uncle Bill,

“Speed is Bullshit”

There are two things that beat speed.

Either one is good, both together is almost unbeatable.

And, unlike speed, these do NOT decline with age.

So you can keep getting better and better no matter how slow you get.

First is Timing.

Timing is showing up for the race a day early and getting a 24 hour head start on all the other runners.

The second is Position.

Position is when you start the marathon 5 feet from the finish line.

(These may sound like cheating but, in a life or death attack, if you’re not cheating you’re not doing Silat right.)

Understanding position is absolutely critical.

In the Internal Combat Arts course:

  • Kuntao Silat lessons 2, 4 8 & 10 all teach essential positioning skills.
  • Bagua lessons 15, 16 & 17 teach multiple attacker positioning principles
  • Bagua lessons 13 and Tai Chi lessons 15, 16 & 17 teach internal positioning skills.

…and most of the other lessons are using these positioning principles even when the focus is on teaching other skills.

 

Filed Under: Pencak Silat Tagged With:

3 Silat strategies to beat a surprise attack

by Ben Sterling

In Pencak Silat we always assume the attack is unexpected.

This seems like common sense but most martial artists train as if they will know when they will be attacked.

There are 3 important things to take into account.

But first,

Train your awareness.

Talking about awareness isn’t enough.

You need to practice on a regular basis. Drills exercises and techniques to build this skill. oral ivermectin demodex humans The same way you build the physical skills of your art.

Training awareness isn’t enough.

We must assume that at some point our awareness will fail and we need to be ready.

1) Minimize the damage.

We have to assume we’ll be hit or stabbed before we realize we are under attack. ivermectin withdrawal time for dairy goats

This means we’ll need to train our body to respond automatically.

So that as soon as an opponent makes contact our body relaxes and slides out of the way.

Turning punches into grazes and stabs into ‘light’ slices.

The Internal Combat Arts Course has several beginning drills for developing this skill.

2) Work from where you are.

In a surprise attack we won’t have time to change position or take a “fighting stance.”

We must effectively respond to the attack first.

This means training to move well from awkward and uncomfortable positions.

Learning to strike with power at awkward angles.

Learn to use the entire body. Every tool is useless in some situations and positions. dr kory ivermectin You must have enough tools at your disposal that you are never out of options.

And this brings us to weapons…

3) Improvised Weapons.

The only weapons you can rely in are those already in your hands at the instant you are attacked.

A person with a knife who is 20 feet away from you can stab you before you can draw a gun.

This has been tested and proven over and over.

…and that’s assuming you know the attacker is about to charge you.

If you don’t know they are an attacker your reaction time will be even slower.

The thing is attackers don’t tell you they’re an attacker.

…and they certainly don’t announce it when they’re 30 feet away from you.

So, we must assume we’ll be empty handed when we are attacked.

And if we are training to draw a weapon we must train to draw in the middle of an altercation while we are already fighting.

In Silat drawing a weapon is built into the empty handed movements of the art and the empty hand fighting movements are the same ones you use with a weapon.

Last, train to use anything that might be in your hand already.

Pen, Cell Phone, Purse or whatever.

Our favorite improvised weapons in Clear’s Silat are the other attackers.

Filed Under: Pencak Silat Tagged With:

In Bagua there are ALWAYS multiple attackers.

by Ben Sterling

It’s what Bagua was designed for. That’s it’s specialty.

…and assuming anything less is a dangerous mistake.

This means you must be mobile.

This is why you see Bagua practitioners always walking in circles.

(one of many reasons anyway.)

Moving well in place is not enough.

The art must be able to fight while it’s covering ground.

Walking or running, either will do, but you never square off with an opponent like you see folks do in the ring or on TV.

If you stay in one place for a moment they will surround you. They key to managing a group of attackers, so you don’t have to fight them all at the exact same time, is constant continuous movement.

Another factor is time.

There is a whole lot you can do against a single opponent that you simply do not have time for against a group.

Anything that can’t be done in an instant, anything that takes more than 1 step, is a liability.

You must be efficient.

If you have 4 attackers, every action you take has to account for all 4 of the attackers actions.

…and that’s just to stay even.

To dominate the situation each of your actions must be 8 times more effective than the action of any single attacker. (of course if you have 8 attackers you’re still only staying even.)

Also, your physical activity must require an eighth of the effort that each attacker is putting out if you’re just going to stay even with 8 attackers.

You cannot commit.

If you commit too much time, effort, energy or thought to any one person, action or technique the other attackers will get you.

All your techniques must happen almost incidentally. As if you didn’t mean to do it or even fully realize it happened as you were moving.

There’s more.

…but that’s a good place to start.

Of course all this takes time and training and lots of hard work.

That’s why it’s important to start with these ideas from day one.

…and that’s why our beginning Bagua training starts with lots of multiple attacker drills.

Filed Under: Bagua Tagged With: ,

How to prepare for self defense reality: The 7 assumptions you must make.

by Ben Sterling

Assumption is often treated as a four letter word.

It’s not.

In fact, it is an absolute necessity.

We almost never have all the facts.

…But we must act anyway.

And so we make the best assumptions we can with what little we know.

There are a couple tricks to making this work for us instead of against us.

1) Know when you’re making assumptions.

2) Make the right assumptions.

So let’s talk about the second one.

How many attackers will attack you?

There’s no reliable way to know the answer.

…but whether we realize it or not any training we do is preparing us for a specific number of attackers. So first we must make that assumption for ourselves instead of letting it happen for us.

Next we have to make the right one.

There are a few options:

  • A single attacker
  • A small group (2 – 4)
  • A large group / Zombie Horde (5 – 8+)

We could train for a single attacker, but then we’re screwed if we’re attacked by a group (or a horde.)

We could train for all of them, but there are two problems:
1) That requires our training time is split among more things and so it’s less effective.

2) It means we make another assumption. The assumption that we will be able to determine how many people are attacking us and do it quickly enough to choose the right skillset before it’s too late.

Fortunately there’s a third option.

Techniques and strategies that work against a group will also work against a single person.

So if we assume there’s a large group, and train for it, then if we’re wrong we’re still good and if we’re right it’s what we trained for.

That may sound like common sense. …but we all know how often people use common sense.

So, here are the seven assumptions you must make to ensure that your expectations of self defense meet or exceed the reality.

THE SEVEN MARTIAL ASSUMPTIONS:

  • There are Multiple Attackers.
  • The Attack is Unexpected.
  • The Attackers are Armed.
  • The Attackers are Faster.
  • The Attackers are Stronger.
  • You are Old & Out of Shape.
  • You have unforeseen limitations.

EVERY single martial artist is making assumptions on each of these points.

You have NO choice.

Either you train for a single attacker or you train for a group of attackers.
You can assume the attackers are unarmed or you can assume they have weapons.
You can assume the attackers are stronger or you can assume they are weaker.

There is no middle ground.

You CAN be aware of these assumptions.

And if you’re aware of them you can make a conscious, ‘educated assumption.’

The Clear Defense Method will teach you how to train for all these issues with clear and direct skillsets you can implement right away.

Learn this method directly from Sigung Clear at the Clear Defense Instructor Certification Workshop in July.

Early Bird registration ends on April 21st.

If you can’t make the workshop, you can get the Clear Defense DVD package on sale April 19 – 21.

Filed Under: Pencak Silat Tagged With:

The first rule of Pencak Silat

by Ben Sterling

The first and most important rule of Pencak Silat is…

Rule 1) Survive.

Everything else is secondary.

…because if that first thing doesn’t happen, nothing else will either.

There are many great reasons to study Silat.

  • Safety
  • Health
  • Peace of mind
  • Confidence
  • Longevity
  • Strength
  • Power
  • Friends
  • Fun
  • Stress Relief
  • Fitness

…and many more.

But in Silat short term survival is first.

When a crazed maniac is swinging a machete at your head you only have a second…

…maybe less..

..to use your head and stay alive.

This is where we begin training in Pencak Silat. استراتيجية روليت

www.clearsilat.com/internal-combat-arts

Filed Under: Pencak Silat

Not your Traditional Kung Fu Tradition.

by Ben Sterling

When people hear the words traditional or lineage they think of a single unbroken line from master to student.

One continuous unbroken thread passed down throughout the ages.

That’s nice.

But there are other traditions.

Ours is an eclectic tradition.

A tradition of research and study. Using what works. Constant testing and research.
It’s what Sigung Clear does, it’s what his teachers did and what their teachers did before them, and so on…

Not a single thread but many,

…woven together becoming ever stronger.

Understanding how these arts are different and how they fit together certainly gives you a broader perspective…

..but what surprises many people is that this also gives you a deeper understanding of each individual art.

www.clearsilat.com/internal-combat-arts

Filed Under: Kung Fu

How to make sure your teachers will teach: Avoiding the cult of secrecy in Martial Arts.

by Sigung Clear

In the traditional Chinese martial arts including Tai Chi Chuan, Xing Yi Chuan and Ba Gua Zhang there is a culture of hiding information.

It is not done by all, but, it is done by many.

Most often this is seen as private or behind “closed doors” (disciples only) information and public open door information.

Historically (prior to the proliferation of guns) this made sense for safety and security. In the modern world it is much easier to pick up a gun than it is to spend 6 months to several years learning how to perform high level skills for fighting.

When it came to the health aspect of these arts it also made sense to hide information due to the need for personal security. If my family and tribe are really extra healthy and my enemies are not very healthy then we are in a much better position to defend ourselves.

But in the modern world this is just plain messed up.

If a teacher wishes to keep the secrets by only teaching a small handful of folks and not teaching publicly then I feel they are completely within their rights to do so.

If they are going to teach publicly and charge money for what they are teaching then it is a different matter entirely.

I find it slightly hard to grasp the following scenario and yet in the Chinese internal arts this is often the case:

A teacher has a method and the means to make folks healthy and publicly offers classes.

The students know or feel that the teacher has the info and they want to be healthy and want to have the health benefits the teacher has.

They pay the teacher good money (and often a lot of it) to learn how. But, the teacher is not teaching them the real way to be healthy?!?!????

The same goes for self protection skills!

In the modern day, I am completely against this policy of secrecy for a number of reasons including what I consider the unethical circumstance I detailed in the last paragraph.

One of the biggest complaints that I have against this policy is that it has caused the quality of these arts to be greatly diminished almost to the point of causing them to flat out disappear.

Really high quality practitioners of these arts are hard to find.

The first and foremost thing I dislike about this deception & abuse of power (from teachers who really do have the goods) regarding secrecy is the situation where a teacher has a few folks who get the real thing and everyone else gets crap.

The thing that I really don’t like about it is when high level teachers (who have the goods) do this and then charge for the crap as if the student is getting the goods. This IMHO amounts to fraud!

Also, today, there are a lot of folks who are masquerading as the real thing when they are not. This includes but is not limited to folks who have a “few” higher level things right but who are missing many of the other skills relative to the art they claim to teach. This culture of high level teachers hiding information while charging for it and teaching crap instead creates the environment where folks who do not really have the skills can “also” rip off the public.

In any other buyer / seller situation fraud can be criminally actionable and is certainly subject to civil action. (By the way, I am not an attorney and nothing I write here should be construed as legal advice).

There are a number of simple solutions to the problem.

First and foremost, teach the real thing that works.

Most of the skills in these arts take a lot of time and effort to train and develop. They are not quickly or easily attained.

Even when teaching folks correctly only a handful will get to the real intermediate or advanced material because most folks simply won’t put in the time and work required.

Another way to do this is for potential students to take some responsibility. Vet the teacher thoroughly.

1. Do they have something of value to teach you?

2. Will make you noticeably healthier, stronger, better able to defend yourself and will work for you in old age as well or better than you can now?

3. Can the teacher do something that you would like to be able to do?

– Ask them how long and how much time it will take for you to be able to perform the skill. The best answer will tell you how long on average it takes for a student of theirs to learn it and specifically how much it will cost you to learn it. If it is a skill that is gained over a long time of training then ask for benchmarks that you can use to really gauge progress.

If the teacher is vague or evasive with their answers or simply seems completely unable or unwilling to answer the questions then BEWARE!

Pay close attention so that you can reasonably pick up the difference between con-man tactics and someone who simply has not considered teaching their art with these benchmarks in mind. Remember that it is them who are selling and you who “MAY or MAY NOT” be buying.

4. Does the average student that has been with them for 6 months to a couple of years have some ability with these skills that makes it obvious that the skills are actually being taught?

– Ask to visit a class and speak with students who have been attending for 6 months to 2 years. Talking to folks who are indoor disciples doesn’t cut it because they may be getting the goods but it is not guarantee that you ever will.

5. If and when appropriate and if it is a skill that pertains to body quality or self defense ask to try out a class and feel / experience the teacher or one or more of his senior students. IMHO, you should really feel & experience the teacher or senior students of theirs if they are making some fairly lofty claims and you cannot figure out from looking if they are skilled enough to really increase your current abilities.

Of course it’s hard to go check someone out first hand and feel what they have when you live halfway across the country or on the other side of the world.

That’s what’s so great about todays world of Youtube and DVDs.

You can check someone out on Youtube, you can try some of their DVDs. Sometimes you can even chat with them by email.

It makes it much easier to get a feel for what a teacher has and will teach before you put in all the time, effort and money to work with them live.

If you’re curious about what you can learn from me, go check out the Internal Combat Arts Course:

www.clearsilat.com/internal-combat-arts

You’ll learn a bunch of fun stuff and it will give you a really good idea of whether our programs our a good fit for you.

Best Wishes,
Richard Clear

Filed Under: Kung Fu

Kick down the pedestal and drag your martial art down into the mud!

by Ben Sterling

The Internal Martial Arts are human.

They were not handed down from on high.

They did not simply materialize, whole and complete, out of the ether.

They did not appear in some vision like a Matrix style download from god.

The Internal Martial Arts are human.

  • They were created by PEOPLE.
  • They were created to be USED by people.
  • They were created to be LEARNED by people.

Regular HUMAN people.

Just like you and me.

When you place your martial art on a pedestal…

…when you claim they are too profound to ever be truly mastered…

You are creating an excuse for inadequacy. You are accepting failure.

If the art cannot be mastered…

…the student cannot be blamed for failing to train hard enough.
…failing to study hard enough.
…failing to find the best teachers.

And the teacher cannot be at fault,
…for a terrible curriculum.
…for bad information.
…for failing to deliver.

That all sounds a little too convenient for my taste.

The martial arts are not meant to be pondered and theorized and placed on a pedestal.

They are meant to be taught, learned and USED.

Come kick down the pedestal and drag your martial art down into the mud where it belongs.

Come join us in the Internal Combat Arts Course.

www.clearsilat.com/internal-combat-arts

Filed Under: Kun Tao

Tai Chi VS Silat. What’s the Difference?

by Ben Sterling

We often talk about the differences between Tai Chi, Hsing-I and Bagua.

  • Hsing-I moves forward in waves like a sine wave or water rolling in to the beach.
  • Bagua moves more like a gyroscope or/& a spinning sphere within a spinning sphere.
  • Tai Chi moves more like a large ball that can expand or deflate instantly from the inside & outside.

But what about Silat?

Well that’s a little tougher.

Unlike Tai Chi, Silat isn’t a single art. It’s a whole category.

There are around 900 styles of Silat including arts like Tjimande, Tjikalong, Harimau, etc…

So it really depends on which type of Silat you compare it to.

Here are a few generalizations to get you started:

  • Tai Chi is usually much more concerned with health in the beginning.
  • Silat usually starts with survival first.
  • Tai Chi uses very refined structure.
  • Some Silat will throw structure completely out the window.
  • Tai Chi will tends to use a very calm quiet mental & body state.
  • Silat will often do the opposite. There’s a lot more…

Keep in mind that with a category as big and diverse as Silat there will always be exceptions to the rule.

For example, our Clear Defense method is straight up Kuntao Silat.

It’s aggressive, powerful, vicious.

However, if you train it, you’ll find yourself using all of these Tai Chi principles:

  • Peng, Lu, Ji, An
  • Zhong Ding (central equilibrium)
  • Whole body connection (& one piece moves everything moves)
  • The “They attack first I land first” principle
  • Condensing
  • Opening & Closing
  • Root and more…

The method also prevents someone from having the error of double weighted and every bit of movement is found throughout the Tai Chi form.

…and, though the method is somewhat rigorous, we’ve successfully taught it to 60 & 70 year olds who were not in very good shape.

In this case the only thing that really makes Clear Defense a Silat method is the attitude. Because this method is designed to be learned quickly, students use a very aggressive mind state.

We find the aggression of Silat much easier for beginners to use effectively in an attack, While the calm peaceful mind state of Tai Chi takes a bit longer to develop well enough for use in life and death situations.

Learn this method at our Clear Defense Certification Workshop in July.

You can also get the Clear Defense Instructor DVD Package.

Filed Under: Pencak Silat Tagged With: ,
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