Silat Buka Lingkaran - Birmingham Seminar

This past Saturday I travelled down to Birmingham to attend a Silat Buka Lingkaran seminar. Until this point my experience with Silat has mostly been what I have learned from Guro Bob Breen and Guro David Onuma. I have also had the good fortune to meet and train a little with instructors of Kuntao Silat, Silat Cimande Asli Tarikolot, Silat Harimau and take part in a seminar a few years back at the Bob Breen Academy with Guru Zainal Abidin. 

Amongst other systems and styles, I have had a special interest in Silat based on my limited experience training in various Silat systems. The style being taught by Alvin Guinanao however, was a style I had long wanted to learn about and train in but the opportunity never came until now.

After the 2 and a half hour drive on a Saturday morning we arrived at the gym. After some introductions and chatting about martial arts with other attendees the seminar started off with some excellent warm and conditioning exercises which were one the highlights for me. 

The warm ups took us through postures found in the system and excellent body weight exercises to aid mobility and build strength for the postures and positions we were to find ourselves in later when drilling techniques against various attacks.

Once we had completed the warm-ups we then began with drills to counter straight punches using the twisting Gelek movement and built on them to include a knee strike from the Buaya crocodile posture. As we moved to upright drills we started with the same drill from a standing position and included finishes on the ground.

As we worked on ground vs upright and vice versa, I really enjoyed the takedowns, especially the Harimau shoot and follow ups, which could easily be incorporated into MMA.  I found the stand up techniques and ground finishes very crisp and fluid and the Harimau and ground aspects very effective and dynamic.

I spoke with Alvin before and after the seminar as well as his assistant instructors who done a great job assisting and offering insight throughout the seminar.

I came away very impressed with what little I had seen of the system (so far!). Alvin is a very skilled Silat practitioner, a knowledgeable instructor and a real gentleman. I would recommend anyone interested in Buka Lingkaran and Silat in general to go train with Alvin or his representative instructors throughout the UK. Check out their website for more details.

Here's a clip summarising what was covered on the day, enjoy!