A Dark Side Adventure

Monday – 300 – ten lots of thirty to keep it manageable after such a long break from any real physical work. Must have been a good session for the glutes…Also mini clubs basic drills to see how the shoulders cope and yoga hip openers.

Tuesday – Systema – all ground work and knives tonight, very good session. Finished with a long spell of disarms in a group.

Wednesday – Systema – Moving, disrupting, but always firstly moving. Lots of strength work and games, I’m trying pushup/ front pressure stuff again carefully.

Sunday – Incredibly beautiful day in the park. Did stuff that links to the push hands from last week. I struggled with the yielding then using the energy to disrupt stuff until Marcus explained it using lines of force from the feet positions, made a big difference. Also worked on a double in-off kind of strike opportunity, need to always remember to get offline. And general pushing, looking for options and entries.

Tuesday – Systema – Stretching on the ground, breathing drills, leg warmups over a chair back and then partner stretching of legs and arms. Mummy drill with a partner just avoiding, with a breathing progression on each step. Breathing mounts from 2 inhales and 2 exhales as you move up to 10 as the work progresses through avoiding, stalking and  leaving a gift. A stomp and avoid game, not looking at partners feet. Harder disruptive pushing, this done utterly without the “normal”  power generation of hte whole body, just with the weight of the arm. Worked for me best when I was able to get offline – go figure lol.

Push hands. Variations, applications, relaxing,  just feeling the partners movements, balance, position, alignment. I really enjoy this, know I have barely scratched the surface. Its very contemplative somehow. Then some arm banging and drills and sanchin. Awesome.

Push hands. Just feeling balance, grounding. Finding openings and familiar places. And there it all is, in Sanchin. Then some work on quas, moving. I’ve decided that if my hips hurt, thats ok, just pushing the mobility envelope. But if knees hurt I’m doing it wrong, the body knows. Harmonies.

Sunday – Push hands revisited, very timely, which segued into heaps of related things. Some other arm drills, applications. Mainly about feeling where you are, where the other person is, how to use this. Structure. Related back to Sanchin. Lots of layers.

We badly need to be doing more stuff in our own time. Gotta figure out a way.

Tuesday – Systema. Warup of situps, with breathing variations. Rolling on partner, kneading kind of massage against the wall. Them you lie on your back, partner has to push  hard into some particular part of you to inflict pain, idea being to breathe and relax  through it. Loren pushed his finger into the side of my nose, now a police technique for getting compliance, very memorable experience. Ten a couple of clock pushup exercises, one with legs on partner, and wheelbarrow type drills. Tagging game. Then partner puts you into a grab of some sort, have to move to make yourself more comfortable and steal structure. Then moving to avoid grabs/ strikes.

Uechi – applications. Entries, splitting, options. A whole range of stuff that simply needs to be practised. I think it works like this: – Oh shit, incoming – ok got that sorted, this feels familiar, ah I can use this, you dead. Then cut out the steps. Some history to help the understanding. Sanchin to help the feeling.

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.

I got to training late, working as always, this is Loren’s Facebook blog of training Wednesday -a very comprehensive description:

Wednesday 15/02/12 – Breathing pyramid while walking in on your partner/he moves ouof the way. 2 4 6 8 and back down. Natural stepping. As above, breathing however you wish, but now stepping is changed – person escaping must keep your knees together. This position forces you to using alot of turning movements. Added pr…essure by slipping piece of paper between the knees and held there – if it drops, so does the person for 10 push-ups. As above, now feet together – must hop to get out of the way. And finally, as above but now using a very large step – like as if you were stepping over a creek that was just abit to wide. A few excercises thrown in here and there – push-up work/squats. Tag game using the legs – join hands with partner/try to tag one another with the feet/kicking – emphasis on movement. Kicking drilling – starting from pushing game with the feet/pushing to legs (hips down). Allow the pressure to come on – they move you to begin with. This progresses to you feeling when you want to move – still from their touch but now you feel the touch and go. Continue on – now move when you want to/in response to their movement – don’t let them touch you. This then builds into – evading then working against the attacker’s leg to disrupt them and bring them down. Timing/catching/doing more with less. Very hot /humid day today/ quite vigorous work – added in cool down phase for the last 10 – 15 minutes: partner comes in for the grab/you evade then look to see where your weapons have ended up – strike/touch 5 targets using your various weapons. Look for the odd angles, let the weapons feed each other, feel how their body is moving – make your work short and precise…..subtle/efficient. Nice flow to the session – people working very well with one another/switched partners alot today and people gauging work to new partner in good ways. Talked within the group about: feeling ok with reseting, going back along the progression of things start getting tense/uncomfortable/just not working – go back a step, or two – slowly build up when you’ve recovered and calmed. We also discussed how the four main pillars can be used very positively to help you – but the flip side to that is they can affect each other in negative ways if we ignore them and a vicious loop can kick off – stop breathing and you can’t relax, can’t relax and you stop moving, stop moving and you try to compenstate by deforming your structure, when your structure is gone – you can’t breathe! And so in a downward spiral……..take time during training if things are working right – if it’s one of the principles not being applied, fix it and watch/feel the positve roll-on!! Thanks very much for the effort Crew – enjoyed the session a lot!! Cheers!!

My own comment is that I LOVE the way a quick foot slip or sweep f**ks  up your brain. We walk thousands of steps every day and always our foot meets the ground as we expect. So when it just doesn’t – WOW – brain is momentarily stunned.  We can train to perform it and also to be less affected by it.

Systema . Started with mummy drill on the ground -  moving to avoid a person walking at you, just getting out of the way but with the minimum of effort and staying in contact distance if possible. Then a nice set of ground leg exercises – kneeling drills,  from box to box, hunter to  hunter, and then the whole series from box to squat to hunter and back. Then back to the first drill this time adding some kind of  to disrupt with the hands. Super slow pushups. Situps, then partner checked situps. Same with squats, importance of keeping structure. Then a kind of reverse quad press – partner lies on your arms and legs, you have to lift them up and down, then around as much as you can. This moved us back to the early drill adding in leg disrupts, particularly lifting against the inside of the opponents thighs and also using the body. Segued very nicely into the work we did on Sunday, trapping the foot and sing the body to take down. Lots of knee work tonight, I have to be very very careful.

Completely forgot to blog Tuesday’s Systema, which was largely groundwork, lots of quite full-on wrestling, as well as the usual squats/pushups/situps in different formats and some work  using your own body movement and connection to move the attacker.

 Today we got a list (ask my family, I love lists), very helpful. Warmup of spinal rocks/presses/starjumps/jumpsprawls/squats/leg threads – 40 of each, any order you like. Then ground stuff – facing the attacker, getting up by threading the front leg back. Also a very nice leg lever takedown. Functional. Kanshiwa revised. Conditioning, nicely buzzed.