Pencak Silat Training Exercise 3

This leg and arm tactic of the Patai pencak-silat style from west-central Sumatra is an interesting one. It is an exercise designed to develop balance in the trainee and sensitivity to changes in the enemy's posture.

METHOD. YOU and your training partner are facing each other as you stand on your right legs; your left arms are engaged, with the hands open with the knife edges or wrists pressing against each other (# 1). Your raised left legs may be correspondingly engaged (not shown), with the outer ankle surfaces against each other. Either training partner may, without warning, change his stance, and the other must immediately respond by following suit, so that arms and perhaps legs are engaged as before (# 2). By pressure, pushing and pulling arm against arm and leg against leg, each partner tries to throw the other off-balance or make him lower his raised leg to the ground in order to retain balance. At any time a partner may disengage his arm, using it to push or pull the other off-balance (although without grasping the other's garments), or he may choose to disengage his raised leg, either simultaneously with an arm movement or not, and set it on the ground-provided that by so doing he tumbles his partner or at least brings him down to one knee (# 3-# 4). The free arm may be used to pull or push only after the leg been lowered.

Note that in # 3, the training partner on the right side has disengaged and, after lowering his right foot to the ground, has shoved his right arm against the left side of his partner's chest. In # 4, he has used his right leg as a pivot over which he topples his partner. The hand and arm actions of the "victor" are noteworthy: as his left wrist is held by his partner's left hand, he is tugging to extend that arm, and he has put his right arm under the left arm of his downed partner. He completes his toppling action by flinging his right arm upward and to the right front (# 5).