Sparring

Sparring

Any combative martial art must by definition prepare the student for combat. This combat may be a highly constrained rule-bound sports competition. It could be personal self defense, police tactics or military action. An essential part of this is testing one's skills against resisting opponents, sparring in one form or another.

This section will not detail particular strategies in Serak. It will, rather outline the general principles under which sparring is introduced and developed in training. The reader may apply these as he sees fit in his own practice.

General Notes

There are two main pitfalls in sparring. One is introducing too much too soon. The other is introducing too little too late.

In the first case students may become gunshy. If their skills and attributes are not solid they will tend to go with what works first rather than what might work best. They may rely on strength, size or speed. This sort of sparring can hinder their development rather than enhance it.

The second extreme will leave students unable to fight.

Progression

In good Silat training as with any martial art there is a three-legged race between knowledge, skill and understanding. The teacher must ensure that they are not out of proportion. Too much knowledge without skill or understanding is nothing but organized despair. Understanding in the absence of skill and knowledge creates a bookworm martial artist who will not be able to apply what he knows. A person with great skill reaches a point of diminishing returns where her overall effectiveness can be most effectively increased by adding more of the other two.

Sparring is similar. Intensity and constraints must be balanced.

Typically newer students start out highly constrained in terms of the tools and tactics they can use. Intensity is low because they lack control and have trouble performing the skills at all, let alone in the confusion of sparring. As they become comfortable the intensity is increased. At some point they will be able to use what they have under more difficult and stressful conditions. At that point one can add new material or otherwise increase the range of what they can do. The intensity lowered until the students can make the new material work under pressure. And so on.

A typical beginning progression might start off with one partner attacking using only single straight-line upper body attacks. The defender can only cover center and try to enter when he's at the correct range. When the students can do this at speed a greater variety of attacks is allowed. Then the intensity is scaled back, and the defender can use entries from the first djuru. When there's a certain degree of comfort with that, he can strike first if the attacker gets in range without attacking. And so on.

The goal is to get the students to the point where they can trust their tools under stress and actually use their training. New material is not added until the participants can make what they have work.