pradal serey

[tenzen]

last nights class was bokator. it was a great surprise. this art ias no joke bokator is very combative and fierce. we mostly worked kick defense bokator style and let me tell ya. my legs are very sore today. focused on breaking bones alot. i have two instructors there. lok kru srab and lok kru boa.
kru srab sroeuy, trained with his uncle in pradal serey when he was young. he has a real passion for this art and wants to see it become big here in america.
kru jayaboa "boa" thongkeo started learning it from his family when he moved here to america. he is a very capable fighter with lightning speed and power. he is also a 4th dan member of the khmer hapkido federation as well as a bokator instructor under sam kimsean.
there is another instructor there and that is lo heit. i don't know much about him except for what it says on the website he is not there often. i think he is only a part time instructor because i think he teaches some where else. but his background is muay thai and pradal serey.
my main instructor is kru boa. he is the one i have worked with the most and he has really taught me alot that i wasn't expecting to learn until later but he says it is because of my previous martial arts experience. kru srab has offered me the opportunity to accompany him on his trip to cambodia to train with his kru. he has not set a date for this yet though.
hopefully i will be able to tour all of sea when i go over that way, and maybe train with some of you form this forum. you are all very helpful in answering my questions and for that i thank you. have fun training.

[tenzen]

oh and here is the link to my school it has not been updated in a couple of months but thats what happens when you train hard. southsoundmartialarts.com

[george stando]

thanks for the link and the update, bokator seems to be questionable about being authentic or whatever. There is some debate on that. Whats your take on it?

[tenzen]

well i have discussed this with v privately but the thing is there is still some old bokator masters out there its just that they are pushing this phys ed stuff way too hard and it will cause the real bokator to die out. i inquired about my kru bokator training and it was not under samkimsean. kimsean was on the board when he tested for his 4th dan in hapkido that whyhis name was on that certificate. i was mistaken sorry. he was trained bokator from his grandfather and uncle. he does not speak to well about kimsean. the thing is kimsean is a hapkido guy and tried to reconstruct bokator and remarket it or whatever. the guy is a quack. he did learn from some old masters but i don't think he learned as much as he says. plus they do alot of hapkido type kicks this is not bokator. what we did in class was very applicable and we did no types of korean kicks at all.
so as for my take on bokator, it was a great art that is now comparable to muay boran and it has pretty much all but died out. the ones who actually know it seldom teach it unless you are family and alot of them are really old. even my kru does not really teach it. i guess it was taught the other day at request. but we focus on kun khmer(pradal serey) and it is great i love it. sometimes kru srab likes to show kun boran and those techniques hurt but they are taught as if you would use them in the real world not the ring.
lastnights class was alot of block kick combos. very basic but great cardio. i injured my hand last night playing with my dog. i think i cracked my knuckle. so i wil probably be shadow boxing tonight but it will be all right. i will heal shortly im still fairly young.

[george stando]

i discussed this many times with v, including this morning. It seems the very term bokator is being blanketed everywhere and everytime i ask they say their father taught them or whatever BUT only after sean brought it out into the open with that very term. Now I understand that might be the case or whatever but is it really bokator> i think that really needs to be researched. nobody but v including cambodians even brought this topic up for years and years and they were running with the whole bokator craze. I dont think its a big thing about the teacher in cambodia really because the cambodians theselves were ready to sell it and were very into it, seems nobody questioned it which makes me suspect about the whole thing. if you trained with your father or whatever, the second it came out you would be screaming thats not it but no one did only v. Very odd. I dont know what to make of it. I have this odd feeling we are back into the muay boran madness just in another country.

[tenzen]

exactly. it really is like a muay boran situation. and that is what my kru said. that it is not going to really work in full speed. but i think he has only learned a little of the stuff. in any event i dont care. i am there for the pradal serey and thats all that matters to me. kru boa is all about what works for real and thats what i like about him. he wont sugar coat it. if something wont work he tells you why then shows you.

[tenzen]

so over the weekend i rested my hand and practiced alot of elbow and knee techniques. it was great the sun was out and i had a pretty stress free weekend. saturday i spent around 4 1/2 hours outsidde training my legs, stretching, working different muscle groups and throwing various kicks and knees. yesterday (sunday) i only practiced for about 2 1/2 hours. but it was intense. i waorked strictly elbows for the first hour then after that i did combo work most of which focused on working in close with the elbows and knees.
any way for my hand i used ice alot, but the main thing to help with the healing that i used was a topical boxing cream from thailand. the company is based out of bangkok and it is some really good stuff. it goes on easily and isn't overly greasy which is a definate plus. it is called nam man muay, and is sold on muaythaiart.com for aroun 12 bucks a tube. this is well worth the buy and the tube is significantly larger than i thought which was a nice surprise.

[george stando]

Someone was looking for pradal dvds of the fights but I lost the email and I dont remember who sent it..So please resend and I will hook you up with the person to get them from.


Thanks for the updates as well tenzen!

[tenzen]

no problem george. i have gotten a bit of chaiya materials from v and did a little pressure testing on a few of the techniques i picked out. see since last week we had no friday class we spent the whole week sparing, friday is our sparing day. i have successfully used some of the chaiya stuff in combat at full speed. some of it seemed a little slow for mycomfort, perhaps because i do not practice chaiya. but at any rate i made it work, not saying how i used it is what it was meant for but i did use it, only not sure how much i will ever use it again, but i did it.]
so i arranged for one of my kru to give a private lesson with me on friday afternoon since we did not have any class. we spared the whole time, he is quick andvery powrful despite his size, maybe 140 lbs. but he says i am considered a heavyweight and wants me to represent our school and fight in cambodia and the trip is paid for. he says im not ready now but in about two months he wants me to fight. i am really excited about that.
i have a couple of the ps fight dvds they are excellent. very intense and will keep you on the edge of your seat. those guys are very quick and very explosive.

[george stando]

Close to impossible to really understand and pick up those type of techs from dvds and make them work. The dvds themselves dont present the sort of practical way to use them and thats what my threads against most of those people who come on here invading the space with their my teacher this and that is about. But if you got some things to work its cool.

I wouldnt jump too fast into going to cambodia until he have some experience under your belt. Alot of teachers here too try to get the foreingers into the ring way too soon, its a gradual process, and one thats like a ladder, something i learned from v, who did the actual decoding of the process for me. You should check with him also about cambodia since he loves it there and is always at the fights and training there.

[tenzen]

this message has been removed by me

[george stando]

Hi tenzen,
I think you are bit of off base on the muay chaiya thing. I think you need to train in it or come to thailand and experience it firsthand before getting into the whole thing. You just dont want to open it up without firsthand experience just my two cents. There are muay chaiya teachers including a monk give the same type of speech of unity only to get called someone who doesnt know anything. You have to understand something first before making grand statements. My point of my comment to you was how can you learn something to appy to muay chaiya from a dvd? and the comments in addition from not knowing anyone or training in it? The problems are beyond your understanding. I would hope you will erase the diatribe because it doesnt help anything or add anything intelligent tot he our conversations and certainly isnt about pradal which is what the thread is about,

On the fighting thing you are on the right track. Just be prepared before coming over to fight in cambodia.

[tenzen]

thanks george. i was not trying to attack anyone with what i was saying i was just meaning that the politics are ridiculous and i feel that the teachers of chaiya, to better understand and preserve thier art should go train with the old masters such as the monk you were speaking of. i do appologize to all of the chaiya community this is not my art or my business, i have just seen this thing happen in another martial art that i love dearly and hate to see it happening the same all over again. it is too late for that art but not for chaiya that was my reasoning for that post. but yes i will remove the post.
and as far as the techs i did in class i just watched the movement from the dvd and repeated it to the best of my ability in situations i thought it would work in. the way i used them im sure is not the way they are supposed to be used. but i did have success with them. i have no knowledge of chaiya except what i get from the net, so i don't want anyone thinking i know what i was doing, i didn't . just playing around with some things.

[george stando]

When you actually train in muay chaiya and understand the politics and environment here then your are comments will have something close to validity. Right now there is no understanding and it doesnt make sense, the monk is young, the old teachers teach and the new teachers teach, everyone is teaching--again why say something you dont understand?.Also this is a pradal serei thread, so I am not going to comment further on it, the muay chaiya thing has grown old and stale on this forum, trust me on that.

[tenzen]

oh i know it has gone stale here and i appologize for getting off subject. you are right i do not know their culture or what is going on over there i should have kept my thoughts to myself. also please send my appology to v. thank you.