Two day Systema seminar with Martin Wheeler. Profoundly awesome, inspirational even. We did so much, can’t remember it all. Nice big group of 36 or so from all over the country, even a couple of guys flew in from Tahiti.
Saturday Morning – Warmup of squats, leg raises, pushps, situps - 3 five minute stints. Walking – placing the feet, structure. Variations with breath exercises, jogging, arms held high etc. Group rolling. Then a range of drills moving/avoiding grabs then adding a gift. Great fun.
Afternoon – Knife work. Avoiding, then working to disarm.
Sunday morning – Deep, long massage of partners arms, legs and body by walking on them, using feet and arms. Aim is relaxation. Organ massage. Moved to hitting – light striking then progressed to hard. some bruises , lots of laughs. Extraordinary demonstrations by Martin.
Afternoon – Body mechanics – first working slowly in two stages to disrupt and take down partner who is frozen in strike position. Very useful. Then became faster, more fluid.
Tuesday – Our little group lucked in – as Martin was still in the country he generously gave us a bonus session of training tonight. Warmup of usual exercises plus various quite incredible mobility exercises. Then locks – firstly moving to escape or change the effect of continuously applied locks. Then using relaxation and breathing to minimise pain and subtly change the applied lock. Then moving to disrupt the person applying the lock, turning tables.
I’ve learnt a huge lot over the last few days, seen some amazing displays. Martin moves superbly – relaxed, calm, efficient, very subtle, almost detached and utterly devastating. One constant theme was the idea of of letting the attacker believe things were still working for them, until it was way too late. And relaxation – this should be an obsession for me for a while I think.