Ashihara – usual hard warmup included 15 down to 1 pushups alternated with 1 up to 15 burpees, then repeat back to the start. A lot of shoulder work. Plus situps, 10 for each person in the class, oo-er. Stretching, quite pleased with flexibilty.
Then partner work – fairly progressive drills from a jab/cross start, working deflect and counter, on to a variety of takedowns. One variation had a nice kind of bearhug from under. I slowed down and had them working not too bad.
Second Day of the Sytema seminar.
Started with joint movement to warmup – not Intuflow but very similar (actually not as good). More discussion of Systema principles.Then partnered up for work on kicks, absorbing and redirecting a variety of slow kicks to the body and legs. Everything done slow but with intent. The hip and body movements are directly from the Intuflow catalogue. Some of the guys in the group just amazing with this stuff.
Slow pushups ,then a session on a couple of pre-emptive strike attacks, where you sort of bounce off the incoming arm – not a block but a small deflecting/disrupting action - I struggled with these to start with..
I missed an hour or two in the middle, picking my dad up from hospital, but got back for the afternoon session. This was really the same games we had already played but ramped up – different strikes and kicks, flowing and manipulating, looking for opportunities.
An extraordinary demonstration by the instructor of speed and some kind of energy throwing. Hard to tell what was going on, he hardly seemed to be touching the guy he picked to demonstrate on but the poor guy was quite a mess at the end. Battered and exhausted. I think that we will get some footage of this later, hope so.
Then to finish we had to play the same game as before holding full plastic cups of water in one hand – no spilling. Total fun.
Awesome weekend, great bunch of people participating with complete positivity and humility on the whole. I learnt a huge amount.
Systema NZ is really in its infancy, the 26 people at the seminar are basically it for the country. So very exciting to see such a strong base.