Do you want to supercharge your approach to self-defense? If so, I suggest you look into adding silat takedowns to your arsenal. Why silat-specific techniques? Because they’re designed to do maximum damage in extreme self-defense situations.
Silat comes from Southeast Asia, a part of the world that was — and, in many places, still is — a blade culture. In some of these regions, even to this day, everyone has an edged weapon. Several years ago, when I was driving through the countryside of the Philippine island of Mindanao, every person I saw walking along the road carried a long farming knife, essentially a sword. I even saw a little girl, maybe 6 years old, toting a smaller version of the blade.
In many Indonesian villages, the wavy kris knife…
