For Prospective Students:

What Might a Systema Class Feel Like?

To get a feel for the content of Systema training, please click on 'training' at the main Toronto school link:

http://www.russianmartialart.com/

There you'll find a description of each combative training sub-discipline and you'll see photos of the master teacher, Vladimir Vasiliev, at work.

A possible class as taught by Vladimir and most affiliate instructors is 1 or 2 hours long. There is no standard uniform. Usually there are some warmups such as pushups and squats, performed under varied breathing regimens. Some instructors will have the group run or walk around the training area, and maybe do some rolls to loosen up. If you don't know how to roll, a senior student will usually be designated to work with you on that, off to the side.

The bulk of the class will be devoted to partnered movement training. This is done as a slow but powerful and directed attack from one or more partners with fist, kicks, knives or anything else. You need to respond as follows:

(1) get out of the path of the attack
(2) counter-attack and/or take down your assailant.

(1) and (2) are best performed simultaneously - that's the ultimate goal of Systema combative training.

Don't worry - you CAN do this, from your very first class. Just as you can, today, move from the path of a car rushing toward you in the crosswalk. You'll learn to begin from that kind of natural and simple survival reaction.

As there are no formal distinctions of level and rank in Systema, you may find yourself partnered with any imaginable degree of martial arts expertise, or lack thereof. Your partner may be a Thai kickboxing champion, a jiujitsu black belt, a yoga instructor, a housewife, a police officer, a school teacher, or even a newspaper reporter there to do a story on the art. Anything is possible, and most won't tell you their backgrounds unless you make a point of asking. But you don't need to ask, as they are in front of you (or behind, beside, underneath, or above you) for only two reasons - to teach you movement and to learn movement from you.

Each new "movement family" to be explored is generally introduced in three phases by the instructor.

The phases are Tell, Show, and Do.

The instructor will TELL - explain verbally - the purpose of the work (which might be defense against kicks, escaping a head lock, countering a throw, or anything). The explanation will cover the principles of movement and response that the upcoming work is intended to elicit.

He will then SHOW , using a senior student, a sample of inspirational moves and reactions at realtime speed. This demonstration will be spontaneous and is not meant to be copied by you -it is done to inspire you with the incredible range of movement and reactive potential that our robotic minds and cramped bodies might never otherwise see.

The DO phase follows - this is when you try to cook up the flavor of what you saw using your own ingredients. You'll explore the given movement family with your partner(s).

There is an huge, endless variety of these 'movement families' (we don't like the word "drills" very much, it sounds rigid and static to our ears) involving one, two, three, four or more partners, up to and including the entire class freely attacking one another. These may be conducted from any starting position including standing, squatting, kneeling, sitting, and lying down  (prone or supine).

Often more specialized work will be sprinkled in, such as 3-person scenarios consisting of a 'bodyguard' an 'assailant' and a 'client'. Your job as bodyguard would be to protect your client in the least obtrusive and most effective manner possible.

Sometimes weapons and other special equipment will be taught such as knives, sticks (for conditioning and combatives) as well as chains, etc. Even cavalry swords or whips are sometimes brought to bear.

Sometimes you will be taught how to maintain calm and controlled breath cycles, and balanced upright posture, while being struck full-contact with fist, stick, or whip. This is usually done as a complement to the regular strikes training, which teaches you to hit effectively with fist, chest, elbow, shoulder, or palm, beginning with gentle pushes and working up to the nuclear mega-tonnage of Vladimir's "wave principle" strikes, using any part of his body. Additional work in the "strikes" family of Systema movement may include being touched with a knife blade, which requires you to find the best path of evasion, as well as a vast family of pushing patterns, working over your entire body or body segments. All "push" training can double as strike issuance and absorption training.

Joint locks and holds emerge naturally from the large group of partnered stretching and twisting methods. In these you may freely twist or rotate your partner's joints, or perhaps pin his foot or hand to the floor while he attempts to roll around you (and many other variations). With the joint and lock work, it can be challenging to discern where the "conditioning" work leaves off and the "combative/defensive" work begins. You'll slowly discover that all Systema conditioning work is combative, and vice versa.

Additional massage, relaxation, self-healing and other deep work is emphasized by some instructors, including the Systema master teacher Mikhail Ryabko in Moscow.

The atmosphere is uniformly supportive, tolerant, hardworking but light. You will work on each new aspect for a few minutes with a given partner, then switch roles with the same partner. Every few such segments, you will probably switch to a new partner, so that by the end of the session you may well have worked with everybody in the room. Your partners are your teachers.

The session instructor will circulate and step in to correct you from time to time. That is actually more like guidance or exemplification, as there is no standard of prettified perfect movement in Systema. Most high level Systema teachers appear very low-key during the session. They do not bellow or assert any authority. At the same time, I have noticed that they have an amazing sixth sense for any issues of safety or partner compatibility, such that you'll find any potential problems in those areas subtly and smoothly neutralized without your even realizing what has happened. So in general Systema is extremely safe combative training.

The class may be re-punctuated at any time by quick drops for pushups, squats, leg lifts, rolls or other breath work that clears your mind, grooms your energy and helps to develop your most relaxed power for the next movement family or training situation. But even the lowly pushups will be done with a huge degree of unpredictable variation. The instructor may have you do pushups while mirroring one or more training partners, pushups while being struck or kicked or even more bizarrely creative combinations too numerous to review here.

Each class will conclude with a discussion circle where you'll be expected to share what you experienced or learned about yourself or Systema in the given session.