Art Kidwell

Steve,
My condolences. Reminds me of the old admonition to respect everybody because you do not know what struggles they face.

There is material in the works on the Chang style training as well as some deep dives on different material.

The Golden Free Form is a take on the Tai Keah material – good eye.

Best,
Joe

Awesome! I cannot wait until I am at the level that I can begin studying Poquazen! Thanks Pak Steve 🙂

Down here in Texas, we just made open carry legal. Come January, there will be a LOT of openly armed citizens about. And probably even more who are carrying concealed.

I’m definitely planning to attend the November seminar in San Antonio 🙂

Sounds good to me! I definitely like the no-nonsense approach.
I always find it fascinating how the different cultures and their martial arts approach similar ideas. For example: Shaolin Kung Fu likes to use locks to control or immobilize, whereas old style Japanese arts throw the person into the lock so that they break as they fall and are…[Read more]

Wow, it must be nice to already know it all lol

Thanks for the answers! I didn’t realize that a Tibetan teacher was in the lineage. Most excellent!

I have really been enjoying the Kendang forms…they seem short and simple but there is a LOT going on inside each one.

Pak Steve, I noticed that most of the videos that show you using wrist or…[Read more]

Wow! I can’t believe that there aren’t any questions!

Here’s a few:

What made you decide to make Kendang Silat the primary Silat base for Kuntao Silat?

Do we know which systems of Bagua, Taiji, and HsingI that our Indonesian lineage was derived from? (Yang, Chen, Gao, etc?)

In Kuntao Silat, where is the gaze directed?

Blessings!
Jonathan

Hi Paul, I have not seen the latest vids that are provided, so I’m not sure what content is available in which ones – but – the absolute best place to start is with the basic legwork and handwork. Get that down rock solid before moving on to other stuff and you will develop real skill.

A lot of folks rush through this because they are eager to…[Read more]

It’s funny, I don’t think either gives one an advantage over the other once the training starts, just different blind spots.

But awareness of the popular ideas of what martial arts ‘is’ in todays society – wether one has trained or not certainly holds people back.

Pak Gartin,

Thank you for your thorough and insightful reply! And much gratitude for the promotion. I am humbled by your compliments! I really wasn’t planning to try testing until August!

Please nit pick away! I want to get better, and it is double important to have the details drilled in when the master isn’t immediately present!

The…[Read more]

Pak Gartin,

Thank you for your thorough and insightful reply!

The martial arts as a whole have truly become watered down here in the west…and from what I have seen and heard in much of the East as well. This is a point I always try to share, albeit gently, with my friends who do not study more “rigorous” systems like Kuntao Silat or Koryu…[Read more]

Pak Steve,

Sorry it took me so long to hop onto the forum to check what was going on: it’s the busy life a grad student who works part time I am afraid! And trains constantly 😉

I am honored that my simple letter has become a part of the conversation stream!

And blessings to you and your house as well!

To elaborate a little more on my view of…[Read more]

Gian,
Yu’ve been looking at the Bill Chang stuff for a decade. You just did not pause to listen. 😉

@ Joshua.

Base, angle, leverage.

This is simply the realization that all 3 of these must be in place for a clean Serak ‘technique.’ And at least two must in place to make something happen.Your base is having your legs under you, you angle is your dominant position that separates their upper art from the lower art, leverage is the thing that…[Read more]

Just to clarify: My point is that Serak and KTS are fundamentally different, despite sharing common ancestors. What makes Serak good, is not a few Djurus – this is a deeply overrated idea in the USA.

While elements of Sera djurus-djurus, positioning and Langkah are present in KTS (For those that do not know me, I am very familiar with both arts,…[Read more]

Howdy, Jonathan here. We talked on Vimeo earlier Sigung.
Definitely keep me posted! So long as nothing crazy comes up in Grad School around then, I’ll be there 🙂
jon@kuntaosilat.com