Ok, so I started a silat cimande class and i'm addicted, but it's only once a week and my teacher doesn't really involve a lot of fitness training, we work alot on technique and drilling it's a new class as well and I love it, but I want to add some more fitness to my training regime so I was considering taking up muay thai for fitness purposes, but I don't want to mess up the cimande mechanics i'm learning. I'm not a gym kind of person. Would the muay thai harm the cimande i'm doing? Or would it benefit me to do both alongside eachother? I know for my fitness goals it would be great.
If it's Cimande you really like, then that's what you should do. You should practice a lot for the fitness part. Not knowing your lineage it's difficult to give you any advice on training tips other than to say practice a lot. You'll get more fit and your skill set will improve. If you want to do Muay Thai and it fits better with your fitness goals, do that. It's also good stuff. Cimande Pencak Silat takes a long time to learn. You need to give it some time to develop understanding before you think about cross training.
In general, for most martial arts, these three basic activities help. Jogging, helps with stamina. Push ups, well done, give some more strength. Sit ups help you strengthen the abdominal zone, basis of many movements, and also for strengthening up vs hits.
Add bodyweight squats in to the mix and you cover legs and lower back too! Just like everything though, start out easy if you're not used to them. I like to mix up half, full and hindu squats (and their jumping variations) to keep it interesting and vary the muscle groups being worked. As others have said, keep up the Cimande on its own for now, but of course once you have a good grounding in that, cross training can bring loads of benefits!
I think I've found the workout aspect I was looking for british millitary fitness. I was just looking for a high intensity workout. thanks for the advice. Also would yoga be of any benefit to my silat?
It can't do any harm, it helped with my flexibility for Harimau. Out of interest where in London are you doing Cimande?
My teacher doesn't advertise so I can't take the innitiative and mention anything before him, but it is a fairly new class only been running since September.
If it helps, my Silat GM has me train with bizarre house hold goods. What I mean is, I use a tool box for tractor pulls, curls, etc. Just an example. The reason is, Silat, which is Indonesian, Malay, Phillipino, was meant to use WHATEVER you had around you at the time to do damage. Doing strange, uncomfortable exercises train your body to handle anything.
In the past, the practitioners of Silat walk between mountain and hills, split the bamboo and tree using machete, do any other heavy stuff so they didn't see any necessity to add physical training to their system. But, we in the modern times don't do that stuff anymore, do we? So, yes, do any physical things you want. Just for a sneak peak, depend on how your teacher accept you and how authentic your teacher is or what method your teacher will use, in some (and it actually makes Cimande famous) Cimande lineage, there will be a 'torture' waiting for you. Tee hee hee hee..