Guru Stevan Plinck's Annual Serak Seminar

[tellner]

Guru Plinck will be holding his annual Silat Sera camp in Portland, Oregon next month. It's kind of short notice, but all Silat players or people with what he calls a "Silat attitude" are invited to attend. This year we are honored to have Guro Bud Thompson - oldest student of Guro Dan Inosanto - as a guest instructor.

 

[SilatFan]

This sounds really interesting. Tellner, can you tell us what will be covered in the seminar?

 

[tellner]

That's a difficult thing to say. Guru Plinck never really knows what's going to happen in a class until it starts. He looks at who is there, what sort of background they have, what he thinks they need to know at their level of development, what would be fun and whatever the sheep entrails say he should teach

Just to give you an idea of what has been covered let me try and remember what he did the last two times...

Two years ago there was a lot of defense against knives. There was a little bit of hard forearm conditioning. He went over the uses of two platforms: the triangle and the square including entering, unbalancing, body indexing, throwing, evasion and changing the other guy's perception of time and distance. There was a fair bit on balance, keeping your center, replacing the other guy's center with yours and a bunch of things I can't recall.

Last year there was a lot of work on applying root movements from the juru-juru in many different ways so that students got beyond "This move is for this. That move is for that," and started to see it as just movement to be applied as needed. He covered a lot of the Minangkabau Harimau he learned from his late uncle. There was more platform work, some very sophisticated material on distance and timing, fairly sophisticated body mechanics, work on trapping and combinations...

I wasn't the best witness either year. In 2005 I had an infected spider bite that had gone streaky and sent me to the ER for the better part of one day. Last year I didn't realize that my calcium levels were dangerously low, so I spent a lot of time being dizzy and confused. But you get the idea.

 

[Trent]

I wish I didn't have to be at a work-related conference during that time. Otherwise, I would surely be there. Please let us know how the seminar pans out.

 

[Brian R. VanCise]

I will be in New Jersey and New York during that time but I wish you and Guru Plinck the best with the seminar!

 

[tellner]

Drat! Well, I hope you can get out to the upper left corner of the map sometime!

 

[Brian R. VanCise]

I would like to come over your way sometime as I have only heard good things about Guru Plinck!

 

[tellner]

When you do we'll be offended if you don't take advantage of our poor hospitality.

 

[Mr. E]

Mr. Plinck is a very skilled teacher and a true class act. You can do far worse than to be introduced to Silat through him.

The only thing I would caution if you are going to his event is that some of the people that go to see him tend to be somewhat cultish. Maybe it was just a few people I ran into, but I am not the only one that has commented on it. I do think they are a minority, but one that stands out by their behavior. As long as you want to talk about Mr Plinck or what he does they are full of enthuthiasm and are very willing to answer questions. But if you stray from that topic they lose interest fast and some have even been known to be a little rude. I do not know how some of these guys will react around Mr Thompson. If you run into them, just try to keep the discussion on Mr Plinck's techniques and you will have no trouble.

Mr. Plinck himself is a class act and I have seen nothing that indicates he encourages this behavior. He is highly religious, but you would never notice it as he does not try to force it on anyone or wear it on his sleeve. Aside from a quick thanks to the Lord in his address at the beggining or end of a session, he does not mention religion at all.

And he is skilled. Very, very skilled and is both able to teach what he knows effectively as well as being patient with those that have trouble picking things up the first time.

 

[tellner]

The only thing I would caution if you are going to his event is that some of the people that go to see him tend to be somewhat cultish. Maybe it was just a few people I ran into, but I am not the only one that has commented on it. I do think they are a minority, but one that stands out by their behavior. As long as you want to talk about Mr Plinck or what he does they are full of enthuthiasm and are very willing to answer questions. But if you stray from that topic they lose interest fast and some have even been known to be a little rude. I do not know how some of these guys will react around Mr Thompson. If you run into them, just try to keep the discussion on Mr Plinck's techniques and you will have no trouble.

I'm not sure what you're talking about here. I've been one of Steve's students for about fifteen years and know all of his Oregon/Washington group pretty well plus a few of the Colorado crowd and some of the Finns and Swedes. I've never seen what you're talking about among any of them. And it's certain that Steve wouldn't stand for it if he heard about it. That's precisely the sort of thing he went his own way to avoid and would go out of his way to stop if he saw it happening. The Dutch-Indo cult of personality is most assuredly not alive and well in this cabang. If you take a look at the things his students mention online - Steve Perry and I are the most active in the electronic world, particularly here, on martial arts planet, our own blogs and the pukulan.net forum - you would be hard pressed to find that sort of thing.

As for the "stray from that topic and they lose interest fast" or "just talk about him and you'll be fine", well, the kindest thing I can say is that you're wrong. Most of his students are dojo bums of long standing and are interested in all sorts of things vaguely connected to the martial arts. They've also seen enough good practitioners to be immunized against the sort of myopic hero-worship you're alluding to. The ones who've never done anything else tend to see the world through Silat tinted glasses. That's natural for anyone who's only practiced one thing.

I'm kind of curious about where you've met or trained with the man or his students. He doesn't do that many seminars, and you don't sound like a member of any of the training groups that bring him in. Are you a Silat or Kuntao player? For that matter, who are you?

It may be native paranoia on my part, but when people say nasty things it's always nice when they have the stones to stand behind their words. Everyone here knows who I am in real life. Same with the other student of Steve's who's most active online - writer Steve Perry. We've been very reluctantly in a game of whack-a-troll over the last few weeks. The M.O. has been consistent. Guys come in, talk smack about a number of Silat players and their students (usually Guro Inosanto, Steve Plinck and Cliff Stewart) and go away without the basic moral courage to put their real names to the deed. You haven't done that, but coming fast on the heels of several other incidents it's a natural thought.

 

[Mr. E]

Well, you have had your experiences and I have had mine. My experience may be the exception. But I know what I have seen and discussed it with others at the same event.

All of his students are nice people. A few that stood out just seemed to ignore any other instructor at the event and were not interested in talking about anything other than what Mr Plinkt was doing. They did not scream, shout or anything else like that. But their lack of interest in anything else going on was commented on by some as being rude.

If you are a student of his, you may not notice this. But as I said, I did and I was not the only one. Steve Perry might be able to fill you in on some of the details even though he was not there. Maybe you should ask him.

 

[UrBaN]

Can you expand a little bit on the "hard forearm conditioning" thing?

Thnx

 

[tellner]

"Hard forearm conditioning" was some old drills whacking forearms against each other. It's pretty standard stuff in some sorts of Okinawan and Indonesian martial arts. A few people got bruises. It wasn't the sort of thing where you have to have your purple arms wrapped in balur-soaked bandages afterwards

Mr. E, I talked to Steve Perry, and he isn't quite sure what you're referring to. If it happened it certainly wasn't polite. Nothing I'd do or any of his students whom I know. Unfortunately, it's not that uncommon in martial arts circles in general. But the warnings you were giving in your first post (and seem to have retreated from a tad) are, in my most honest, from the heart opinion not necessary.

 

[doc D]

I have known several people who have trained with Guru Plinck in the past and their comments regarding him as both teacher and person have always been remarkably positive.

I understand he teaches a method of Minangkabau Harimau , as well as Serak. Could you expand on this and comment on the nature of his harimau method? Does he blend it with his Serak or keep the training separate. I am just curious because I am a fan of harimau work. Is this a big part of his current curriculum?

with respect

Doc

 

[tellner]

His uncle Jon de Jong was a Minangkabau Harimau practitioner and taught him for a number of years.

When we do groundwork it's pretty much all Harimau. The amount has increased from around nothing when he was still teaching Bukti Negara to a fair amount these days. He's decided that our ground skills need work and that our legs - "No matter how good your hands are your feet have to be better. Your martial arts are only as good as your legs" - need to be stronger and more flexible.

It's a big part of the curriculum some of the time. We've never had a heated place to train in the winter, and doing Harimau on near-freezing concrete is an invitation to torn muscles and tendons. Besides, the welding shop and the garage just aren't big enough. When the weather gets warm and we move outside it becomes a bigger part of the program. Sometimes it's just part of the class. Sometimes we spend weeks doing nothing but.

 

[Trent]

Hey, no review for the poor souls that couldn't make it?

 

[tellner]

I'm a little biased and am not the best witness. But here's what happened...

I didn't get to participate as much as I wanted to. A combination of new medications, interlocking health issues and electrolyte imbalances that will require more trips to the doctor had me seeing little black spots and almost falling down most of the weekend

A dozen or so people showed up, mostly the guru's students. Brian of MT drove all the way down from Puget Sound. A couple people from Portland who aren't part of the practice group came up. Two old students who are currently with the 75th Rangers at Fort Lewis also made it to the thing.

Friday was just supposed to be a meet-and-greet. It didn't stay that way long. We did a few hours, mostly Sera but a fair amount of Minangkibau Harimau. I honestly can't remember everything that happened. Mostly I was trying not to black out.

Saturday morning we actually started on time(!) I remember footwork, sensitivity drills, ground fighting, leg and hip exercises, pukulan, throws from the ground, "walking the clock" but down at ground level rather than standing, a little bit with knives and a lot of work on position.

After it was all over there was dinner. Something like 30 pounds of Satay with three kinds of peanut sauce and other Indonesian this-and-that.

Sunday there was a review of some of the groundwork for people who hadn't made it the day before and a little more depth added to what had been done the day before. Students who don't get up to see their teacher very often got quality control on their juru juru. There was more knife and some basic work with the machete. I was left with a renewed appreciation of how terribly easy it is to use a knife to maim or kill someone and just what a disservice it is to teach a few techniques and say you have covered knife defense. There was a break for lunch(leftovers) somewhere in there.

Honestly, I was in pretty bad shape and don't remember too much more.

Steve Perry has some pictures and a little more of a coherent description.

 

[Brian R. VanCise]

Thanks for the review and the link to Steve Perry's blog and pictures.

 

[Brian King]

I enjoyed this seminar and posted a quick short review over on my New Years resolution thread here http://martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=45746
but also wanted to thank Todd for making me aware of this opportunity to experience Guru Plincks training and teaching, and taking time to share his work with me. The work shared and peaceful country feel of the place made the little over four hours of daily travel time well worth it. Great group of guys and gals to train with. Thanks again

Brian

 

[Trent]

I'm very sorry to read about your illness and continuing health issues, Todd. I hope you're prognosis is ultimately good. Thank you for the review and it sure does appear that it was well received and taught. It seems to have been excellent series of instructions that touched upon combative concepts all should be aware of from yours and Brian's descriptions.

Hopefully, I can make one soon.