SEMPOK For Beginners: Pencak Silat Martial Arts

hey what's happening Paul Ingram here with Marshall Flex in my previous video I showed three of my favorite hip mobility drills that are inspired from c-lot martial arts or pen Jack sea lot Southeast Asian martial arts and in the last drill we did a drill called sempak and simpak is an advanced position from c-lot I knew it would be kind of challenging for some people to understand that position get into that position so what I'm doing in this video is going to go ahead and do a breakdown or really a build up of the sempak position so let's go ahead and do exactly that hit the thumbs up button and make sure you subscribe to the Marshall Flex Channel hit that Bell to turn on post notifications so you do not miss any upcoming videos and training and practices here at Marshall Flex also if you'd like to stay in the loop and on the inside of some extra training tips and some promotions and some update that's coming on up feel free to sign up for my free Insider newsletter over at marshallflex.com got the link down in the description below sempak is this cross-leg seated position from sea lot and martial arts I consider this more of an advanced type of position it takes quite a bit of flexibility especially in the external rotation in the hips let's start off with a little bit of prep work to get the hips warmed up and then we'll go ahead and build this position from the bottom up so the first thing I like to start with is this 90 90 or the Sawa position and we're going to just work this back and forth just to get the hips warmed up you want to be able to do the 90 90 or the sawass switches just like this with no hands before you are attempting the sempak and when we do this you want to open it up and you want this external rotation to be as wide as possible and then close it off so we're not keeping our knees narrow like this and we're going to open it up and really open that external rotation into hips very important here so just work this for about 30 seconds to a minute just to get the hips nice and warm for the same pocket position so let's go ahead and build sempak the way I like to teach it is we're going to start with our legs straight out in front of us and you want to make sure you can touch your toes from here if you can't touch your toes you want to make sure you're working on that because that's going to make sure you have enough flexibility in the hip flexor to achieve the position at least to get in it okay so as long as you can touch your toes the next step is we're going to bring one leg so I'm going to start with my right leg we're going to bring it over and post the foot you want to make sure that your ankle is above the knee so not below the knee but above the knee and now from here we're going to push our put our hand down to our left post out onto this butt cheek and we're going to bend in the left leg and then we're going to shift our weight back and you can make an adjustment here to try to sit as flat on the ground as possible that's the easiest way to get into this position now if this is a stretch right here then you want to practice holding and just sitting in this position and try to get as comfortable as you can and that might take a week or a couple weeks to really build the flexibility just to be able to sit in this position all right once you are pretty comfortable here then we want to bring our chest forward to our knee okay now you can rep this out this is going to give you a little bit more of a stretch especially in the hip flexor of the top leg and rocking forward like this is the first component to being able to stand up from this position but this is the first exercise to start building this position so you can get into this position and develop the flexibility to sit comfortably here and of course then you can also hold this stretch if you're going to hold the stretch just hold it for at least 20 to 30 seconds then you can release it and go for reps on that then hold it again about 20 to 30 seconds and I like doing that for about five reps then of course we can go ahead kick this over sit into Sawa just to kind of work it out and then we're gonna work the other side okay so to show this from the other side we're gonna take the left leg this time and post it over making sure that the ankle is above the knee okay we're going to come over post on the right hip bend the right leg and straighten it back out in the seated position okay the foot here you can have the flat of the foot if this is uh kind of tight that's fine you can work it from here and then you can slowly work on kind of flattening this leg out a little bit too okay the more flexible your hips are then the more diagonal or closer to horizontal this top leg will be and again same exact thing we want to hold this position if this is a stretch and we want to make sure that we are achieving some comfort in sitting in this position and it might take time it might take a couple weeks it could even take a month or so all right it just depends on how tight the hips are add more stretch again the chest comes to the knee and we can go ahead and rock that nice and easy or we can hold for 20 to 30 seconds and do that for reps again a minimum of five reps of 20 to 30 seconds per rep okay now once we've achieved that we want to be able to work on our way to stand up from this position okay now this could take some time here you want to make sure that you're building some good comfort in this position before we attempt to stand up and make sure that you are building this position exactly the way that I'm showing you in this video you have to build it from the ground up okay you can't start from the top position and then work your way down into the sempak if you don't have the flexibility in the conditioning to achieve the basic position yet but let's go ahead and Advance it and start working on how do we gradually work our way up to work our way up I'll know what I call the sempak squat and uh basically what we do is we're going to rock ourselves forward and then we're going to come up just like this and open up the chest and then we're going to come back down and we can do this for reps so it's a little sempak squat right here and use that little bit of momentum to rock yourself forward you want your chest to be over your knee and that's what's going to help you get up and if you could achieve this then obviously you can stand up from that position but it's good to drill this out to build the strength in the quads and in the hips from the sempak position that's going to make it a lot easier when you're working the full exercise from the ground to your feet and then back down to the ground again okay and then we can go ahead and switch positions and we'll just kind of go through the sequence here okay and then we work the other side in the little simpock squat here and if this is a motion that you're not very used to kind of like if you've uh you know when you first started doing squats your quads would get sore you might have some sore quads working this out if you're not used to uh this movement here so that's just something to look out for and that is totally normal I like to start off with three sets of five reps on these simpok squats working your way all the way up to three sets of ten reps on each but work on building that strength first with some lower repetitions okay let's go ahead and work on sempak standing all the way up so from here we get into our position this should be getting quite comfortable by the time we're getting to this point we should be pretty good at doing the simpox squat and then from there we go ahead stand up and then uncross our legs okay now this is called sempak because we are cross stepping behind Okay when we cross step in front this is called Deepak we cross that behind this is called sempak okay so when we go and work our way back down on sempak I'm going to cross that behind I'm going to turn my left foot so that the top of the foot is on the ground and then I'm going to slowly work my way back down into the sempak position squat up stand up and then you're back into your you know if you're fighting stance or however you want to work this for now again we can send Pock cross stepping back top of the foot touches the mat or the grass the carpet whatever you're working on and then you work yourself down nice and easy into this position Rock yourself forward stand on up and then you can come back into a fighting stance or you know how whatever you're working on now as you're getting better and better with this then obviously you can start working this more smoothly more fluidly and faster and all that but in the beginning start slow and controlled um but then you want to work this for reps and go for again in the beginning if you're just kind of working out the strength five reps three sets and then gradually building yourself up to 10 Reps for three sets and that's per side right so once you have that start on the ground okay and then go ahead and work that other side okay so again once we're here they come up and we can work it again as we crossed up behind top of the foot should be facing the mat and then we're here and if you want to end it properly you can end in the open position and see lot this is like the spider's web we're inviting the opponent in to the center line and you want to make sure your posture your back is as straight as possible that's the real way to make sure you're finishing it okay right there and if you'd like to you can also work the the Deepak version which is just stepping forward now flipping the foot that's in back and lowering yourself come back up and step it back so you can also work the Deepak as well which is just cross stepping forward or again we could work it on the other side now once you are very conditioned for sempak then obviously you can start it off from a standing position and just go right back you know into your sempak so this is a wonderful easy way to build sempak or at least the sempoc seated position and gradually progressively work your way into the conditioning into the flexibility into the strength the mobility to stand all the way up from the sempak position without using any hands and then from the standing coming all the way back down into the seated position without the assistance of your hands of course as you're learning the uh coordination you can always use the assistance of your hands but it's very important that you are working the strength and the flexibility the mobility the conditioning to do it without your hands okay very very important that is the the real way of doing it let me know in the comments if you find that this video has been uh helpful for you in achieving this position and achieving this level of Mobility give this video a thumbs up and I've got a lot more really cool Mobility drills that incorporate this position and some of the different c-lot footworks groundworks all that stuff so we have a lot more coming here on the channel so make sure that you subscribe to the channel and hit the Bell to turn on post notifications so you do not miss any upcoming videos because we're training martial arts we're training our mobility and we're also training meditation for the internal side of things as well here at Marshall Flex because on this channel it is all about the longevity and the capability and capacity of our body and mind it's not really about the fighting side of martial arts even though you know we do a little bit of that and have some fun with that but it's really about that self Perfection and that self growth that we want to achieve through our martial arts inspired Fitness all right I'll catch you guys back here next time go work sempak come come back here and let me know once you've mastered it [Music] foreign [Music]