A Dark Side Adventure

Tuesday Systema – big group today – seven –  including another woman called Sue. Excellent. Gnarly warmup with pushups then pushing variations. Flow to absorb. Partner work, groups of three, four, mixing the combinations. Progressed into a freeflowing push/absorb thing – exhausting/hilarious/excellent fun.

Finished with an amazing exercise where one person lies face down on the ground and all the rest lie on top. Object is to wriggle and manoevre toimprove position and if possible get up.

Wednesday – worked late so just a long lagoon walk. Nice.

Thursday Systema – seven again, including another new woman, another Russian. Warmup started with a gripping/pain drill – your job is to take big handfuls and pinches of your partners body, all over the place, finding nice bits to latch onto. Their job is to bear the pain, breathe through. Totally Uechi.

Then ground drills – wriggling, no hands, then pushups on a partners body and head (their job to bear the pain /discomfort etc ), rolling over your partner, lying on top of them (they have to make a bridge to ease the discomfort). Then one person on all fours, the other crawling underneath,  through the legs and arms etc. Then same position with a kind of heavy sticking. Designed to create stress.

Situps where your partner has to push you back down, working different angles and parts of the body. You absorb and twist and improve postion. Progressed to a kind of prone sticking.

Then mummy drills with one person on the ground moving out of trouble, leaving a gift. Finally working with a partner who is taking you down – theory is  “if I’m going down I’m taking you with me and its going to hurt you”  -  its oh crap to okay revisited.

At the end of the session we now sit in a small circle and each person has to say a small something about the training. Then we all roll over backwards and finish.

I am seriously delighted with Systema. I love training in the park. The quality of the instruction is remarkable for guys who dont charge me anything. And they are good people. Like some folks we sometimes meet.

Family and work commitments on the weekend meant very little training.

Monday -Ashihara. Man it was hot. Basics – strikes/blocks/kicks – strength and stretching warmup. Then partner work – sabaki, kicking, takedowns. Several long necessary drink breaks. There are a couple of new white belts now and I can see looking at them that I have actually learned something over the course of last year. One is ex-Shotokan, very square, rigid. Bloody interesting actually.

Thursday Systema

Started with a little strength work to warm up.

Then a whole session of slow pushing. Began with fingers only.  The pusher is learning how the other persons body moves when poked. The pushee is completely relaxed, has to absorb and give way to the pressure but onl y the minimum amount, pusher does the work, then return to proper structure. There are some rreeaally good places to put fingers into lol. Then the same using hands, arms, shoulders progressively - pusher experimenting with good nooks and crannies, handles, targets, pressure points, different types of strike, angles, shape of hands, forward and back movements. I can use Uechi elbows, and Laird’s thumb hands to the back of the neck etc. Shoulders was hard for me, good to learn and completely hilarious. Lots of sticking, moving, positioning, shoving - nice when combined with a downward grab to the hand. Pushee just absorbs it all and rights the body back to structure, steps if necessary. Good session.

am – Lifting – 45kg x 3, 50kg x 3, 54.5 kg x 3. Is that enough? Felt like it lol. Got to keep the technique true as I build up the weight or there’ll be damage.

pm – Ashihara. Warmup with chinups .  Forward footwork/striking drills. Sabaki partner work, different from Monday.  Finished with stick attacks imitating baseball bats – the Spear!!

Monday Ashihara – warmup with partner pushups, situps etc. Headstands, squats. The pace is starting to ramp up a little.

Then a whole range of mixed up partner work. Set sabaki drills then more freestyle stuff. They always block  and move to the outside. I’m just trying to get my footwork happening properly, plus this tricky grab they do to the gi underneath the arm.  Finished with a kickboxing drill with thai pads – strikes, ducking, strikes, ducking, strikes, kicks to finish. Hard work, incredibly humid weather, but felt good.

Systema at Albert Park. Loren said it would only be a light session as he had only had two hours sleep (hes a cop), small  joke…

Started with a pushing game for three. Two people standing each side of the third person, all  in a line with feet touching. Outsiders have to slowly push or strike and try to disrupt, guy in the middle has to flow and bend and escape without losing structure, gaining advantage if they can. Then the same drill with two people but sitting on the ground legs in opposite directions, idea being to isolate the top half of the body. The drills got ramped up a few times, dont know what passers-by thought.

Then a few slooowww pushups, situps and squats varying the breathing. A nasty little yoga squat from Alex  – up on your toes, working on balance. Nice.

More slow partner work avoiding a grab – moving and flowing out of the way, progressing to improving position from the movement and leaving a gift. Especially a heavy fist kind of a gift. Very sticking and flowing and experimental. If he does this, how do I use it and get out of it, gain advantage/disable?  They laugh at how I use my elbows so much and encourage me to try other things as well, and I like learning to use new solutions.

Good session.

Systema.

Group of 4 – Alex, Viktor, me and Ash a young guy from Britain, out in the park on a sunny evening.  Started out with joint movement, Intuflow really, very very similar. Then  wrist-bends and stretches and slow pushups with the wrists in different  and uncomfortable positions.

Moved into drill which was just pushing with a fist, sensing the partners body, straight wrist, (seiken lol) working on exactly what happens when you hit someone somewhere. Slow, heavy. Progressed to using shoulders only to isolate the flow and push. Then to recruiting the hips and whole body with a step forward. Timing the flow was important, hard. Did this for a quite a while.

Then some works on wristlocks and fingerlocks building from Alex’s Aikido experience. Useful, educational. Ash has done Kali and has an awesome lock flow, got to try to find a clip of this.

Another good session.

Ashihara – light warmup, basics, stretching. Partner work  – striking and sabaki combos, kicking, nice practise on thigh kicks. Some revision of Monday night’s locks, much needed. I understood this stuff hugelybetter second time round  - after just one week I can already see how much difference the two sessions a week will make. I’m a slow learner, need immediate revision and consolidation.

The Sensei taught a new kata – no real name, one developed for competition containing most of the basic classical strikes blocks and kicks. Kind of a blast from my recent past, easy.  Finished with pushups, situps, squats .

Useful revision, better understanding. Intensity about right given the way my fitness has declined lol.

Ashihara, first class of the new year. An all round kind of warmup,  quite light, and stretching. Then partner work with focus pads and the big kick pads. Variety of drills from intense kicking and hitting combos with sabaki to lighter stuff with locks. Then some kata and bunkai, a light session overall. Just as well lol.  

Huge contrast to the Systema stuff I’ve been doing across the break.

Systema. We do so much each session I always forget some of it.

Today started with ground wriggling using shoulders, moved into circular situps (using shoulder rotations), then partner situps andwheelbarrow pushups. Then one person rolling on top of the other, various versions of this, idea is to get used to unusual pressures on the body. Progresses to one partner  applying pressure to the body in two directions – aim is to resist and maintain structure with just the needed muscles but to stay relaxed everywhere else. Then a series of  tension/relaxation/breathing exercises.

Then  pushing  – working with the partners body to see how it moves and bends. The concept is exactly like Ricks. Progressed to breaking structure, shearing, locking.  Lots of time on this.  Some exquisitely simple principle-based movements. Then the walking “mummy” drill – first just evading with flow and a stick if it works, progressing to disruption. This amps up until the drill has people moving aggressively at the central target from all directions  – who has to continously  flow and evade/destroy. Disrupt/avoid/circle/take down/push people together/ use them as weapons against each other.

I had this working really well at times, when i forget the karate stuff. And pre-emption is not frowned upon lol. But still have to work to eliminate the habit of defending/blocking/elbows up. Got to relax Sue.

These guys are supremely loose.