Outdoor Systema Training

I have recently taken to doing Systema training outdoors, in the forest, fields, on grass or stone.
There are a number of benefits to training outside:

- Every drill you do is much harder, as you have to attend to the different surroundings, light/wind conditions, sloping or hilly land and obstacles in the landscape.

- A drill from Moscow involved feeling how the surroundings made you feel.
eg - Being in the forest feels more enclosed, peaceful and this calms you down
However being in a office environment effects your psychological condition differently as there may be tense people around you (which usually increases your tension) , you might feel pressure or stress just being in that enviroment, due to negative associations.
There are many factors to take into account, the more you feel them, the better you overall awareness and adaptive ability will be.
Going outside can also be used for a change of pace, to give you freedom, relaxation and a higher/different outlook on your thoughts

- This enviroment adds variety to your training, in which you can use the landscape - the ground, trees and sticks in order to strengthen and relax yourself, in a multitude of ways, and as the enviroment is different and strange to you, every exercise you do will be twice as hard due to the higher stress/tension we feel when in a new enviroment.

IDEAS FOR TRAINING

- Walk with closed eyes through the forest, use burst breathing to keep your movement smooth and continuous. You will then notice that your awareness is then in every step you take, as you begin to feel the ground with your feet.

- Running - Run along trails and up hills. In this exercise try to find your own breathing pattern, the one which makes you feel most compfortable. When you find it your endurance will increase.

- Slow pushups, Legraises, Situps and Squats - Doing these exercises on unstable or sloping ground will give you a new appreciation for burst breathing.

- Climbing trees - Try to climb up a tree while exhaling, then climb down on an inhale then vice versa.
Try to also use only the muscles you need to accomplish the work.

Climb the tree while tensing your whole body and using burst breathing to move through the tension, do this slowly.
Then do the same thing but completely relaxed.

These are just some ideas, be creative and make up your own.

Please post a comment if you have any other ideas.

Thomas

Systema training log August 08

Sorry i haven't posted in a while, i've recently been to Moscow for Mikhail Ryabkos summer camp (i 'll be posting all of my training notes on this blog), anyway heres a log from a training session i did last night:

Walking and breathing - starting off with my arms held in the air, with 2 steps inhaling and then 2 steps exhaling, i then skipped along to 5 , 7, 9, 12, 15, 17, 19 , up to 20 steps then i held my arms in front of me and then went back down to 18, 16, 14 etc.

Core exercises - I then did 25 pushups, 20, situps, 20 leg raises and 25 squats while roating the breathing patterns mainly keeping it simple either exhaling on the way down and inhaling on the way up or vice versa, i find these 2 breathing patterns to be both simple and powerful.

Rolling progression for softness - here is a rolling progression with sticks and other variations:

- rolling over and on a stick on the floor from kneeling
- same with eyes closed
- from standing
- added more stick 8 + and rolled from kneeling
- with eyes closed
- faster
-slower
- from standing
- from standing eyes closed

When my eyes were closed i noticed in this drill that my body was softer, possibly because i could not see what i was going to roll on, so my body did not tense up, to try to stop the impact of the sticks.

Note: There are few videos of me on youtube that a few people have put on, a lot are titled Letchworth training or tueday systema training, anyway have a look and tell me what you think.

Thanks

Tom

Training Log

Just a quick post about my own personal training yesterday-

So i started with swinging sticks of different lengths and thicknesses around in figure 8 patterns and then i went on to drawing out my name in the air with the stick. I used different grips and positions on the stick to increase my own adaptability and familiarity with the stick.

I then took one of the sticks and used it to stretch and take my joints through their range of motion, to warm up my muscles and to limber up my body.

Then i moved on to holding the stick, firstly, draped over my shoulders and then in any position i could think of, while moving and rolling on the ground.

Finally, while laying on my back i practiced feeling the pulse in different parts of my body, to enhance my own awareness of my inner state.

Have Fun
Tom

Systema core exercise holds

In Systema we do a number of drills where we hold certain uncomfortable positions for extended periods of time, these can be in any position or range in any exercise or drill.
This method has a number of goals.

- It strengthens you psychologically. During long periods of the push up hold i have found my own strengths and weaknesses become more apparent and i find myself thinking of so many reasons of why the exercise is pointless and why i should give up or do it later. The times when i overcome these weaknesses are when i feel the most alive physically and psychologically.

- It strengthens you physically - After the muscles get very tired the body has no choice but to align itself along the bones correctly and to hold itself up using a higher proportion of connective tissue than muscle. You develop a form in he body.

- It allows you to understand breathing. When you learn to adjust breathing to the effort felt, it is the only tool you will ever need to overcome fear, panic, tension and fatigue.

Things to try
- Try a 10 minute push up hold and see how far you get.
- Try holding any of the core exercise positions at the ending/ starting or halfway positions
- Try holding the squat position up against a wall
- Try holding a one armed push up or one legged squat

The secret is Breathing!

Tom

Keeping the spine healthy

One of the most common problems in our world today, is a bad back.
This can have many causes but usually the cause is musculoskeletal.

Whether the cause be a muscle imbalances, strained ligaments or physical injury.
All of these can arise from lack of mobility and incorrect training methods.
The main problem is that people do not move their spine enough and have no awareness and knowledge of the spines mechanical and bio mechanical workings.

To move something you must first be able to feel it.
Therefore a program of spinal health should have a number of goals:

- Increase spinal mobility and flexibility and reduce overall spinal tension

- Increase awareness of the whole spine

- To strengthen the deep spinal and outer spinal muscles in a balanced way

- To eliminate any other muscular imbalances in the body.

Here are a few drills which cover all or most of the goals.

- Spinal rock - You start sitting down on the floor with legs held to your chest, now just rock backwards and forwards, Straight across your spine.
There is a certain point in the range that usually is bypassed and leads to a bump on the floor. This is the lower part of the lower back, Try and do this as slowly as possible and try to roll down every vertebrae for maximum benefit.

- Spinal stretch - Hang on to a pull up bar in pull up grip (wrists facing away) and now just hang there, now move your legs around underneath you. The object of this exercise is to extend the spine and separate the small facet joints to release synovial fluid and lubricate the joints.

- Google: Cobra stretch and downward dog

I highly recommend PAIN free by peter egoscue, for any musculoskeletal pain.

Have fun Training

Tom

Russian Systema Training ideas

Here are some fun training ideas that i have found:

- Pyramids - You can use this protocol for the core exercises - starting from 1, you do 1 pushup then you change the breathing pattern and do 2 all the way up to 8, 10 or 12 and then you come back down. All the while you stay in pushup position do not drop to your kness.

example - 1, 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1

- Core exercise flow - This teaches you to have adaptability and relaxation throughout all ranges and levels (low, mid, high).
Firstly you do 5 pushups, then you have to get into the situp position somehow, with a roll or a turn, twist or movement. You then do 5 situps and now you have to do a movement that puts you in the leg raise position, now do 5 legs raises, and then finally make your way into a squat position and do 5 squats. Repeat as desired. In this exercise really try and use your imagination and creativity to find new and interesting movements.

- 4 hold - Hold each one of the core exercises for 5 mins.

- Slow progression - do a slow pushup lasting one minute then do a 1 minute situp, leg raise and squat, then do a 30 second pushup, situp, leg raise and squat and then finally go onto a 15 second P-U, S-U, L-R and SQUAT

Enjoy

Tom

Rolling - learning how to swim on dry land

Rolling is a fundamental skill to any Systema trainee. Its uses are infinite and it is a highly practical, usable skill. There are many dimensions to a good roll,
which include:

- Proper balance of tension and relaxation
- Awareness throughout the entire movement
- Correct breathing and form

The basic Systema roll is as follows -
- Starting on your knees, extend one arm straight out to the side
- Place the other hand on the floor next to your shoulder and look under and through the space between your arm and the floor.
- Now continue rolling over from shoulder to the other shoulder and down to the opposite hip.
(For more information about rolling and for a greater and more precise description of how to roll see "Let Every Breath" by Vladimir Vasiliev and Scott Merideth

Note - In the movement this may become a shoulder to hip roll, but emphasizing the shoulder, shoulder, hip instead, gives overall better form and teaches you to have a greater degree of control over your own body.


Once you have evolved your roll into a fairly soft roll. Here are some challenging and interesting variations, Which help you gain more precision and control of your movement and breathing.

- Start the roll in different stages of the breath cycle , inhale , exhale , breath held on inhale, breath held on exhale.

- Using a stick hold it in different and uncomfortable positions Eg - On the shoulders which the hands draped over it.

- Blindfolded or with eyes closed

- With the whole body or specific parts tense

- With a stick down one trouser leg or tied to a leg

- Roll with any object held in your hands - a knife, a whip, a chain, a cap etc

- Roll over and on a stick or sticks -- ouch

- Roll towards an obstacle and change direction mid- roll to avoid it

Practice these drills they will take your rolls to the next level.

Have fun
Tom

Training log post

Here is a quick training log of my own personal training yesterday.

- I started with some segmented tension and full body tension work only instead of laying on my back i laid on my front. I found this more challenging and harder to tense up the body as a whole unit.
- I then moved into doing 7 of each the core exercises with full body tension and then with moderate tension, then with minimal muscular activation then with no muscle.
I'm just starting to get the no muscle work now, but i still feel like i may be using too much tension.
- I then started doing a drill where you tense your fists slightly and roll, move around and fall while keeping your fists slightly tense. This is to add fullness and power to your hands while dynamically relaxing your shoulders, arms and the rest of your body.
- I finished with walking up the wall on my fists, facing forwards and backwards and then sideways.
I also did this with straight arms.
- i then moved onto the floor and did some wrist exercises, where you start in push up position and you collapse your wrist one side then go back up then repeat the other side + many more variations of this.

Total time - 40 mins

Have fun
Tom

Full body and segmented tension Futhur work

There is a Systema practice which involves consciously tensing different muscles or groups of muscles with different degrees of strength.
There is deeper work where you can tense the tendons, nerves and joints but this is beyond the scope of this post. I shall be primarily focusing on the muscular variations.

These can be as simple as tensing an arm of a leg or can be made much more challenging by incorporating motion and control into the practice.
These drills teach you to become more adaptable and free.

They help you recognize where in your body you have excess tension, due to past injury, incorrect posture or imbalances and help you to release that tension, through becoming aware of your own internal and external condition.

Here are a number of variations that i have found more challenging:

- Change the position: lay of your front/ side instead of your back, while sitting down, while against a wall, while halfway through a roll/ in the lowest or topmost position in any the core exercises

- Add motion: during walking, running, rolling or falling

- Add time: extend the length of time you hold the tension try 30 seconds or even a minute, extend the length of time after you have exhaled in the relaxed state (just hold your breath)

- Muscle group variations - just tense your arms and legs, the shoulders and buttocks, the top half/bottom half of body, hands and feet, the fingers, the jaw, shoulders and hands, thighs and feet.

Different degrees - See if you can tense the upper body 50% and the lower body 100% vice versa, hands and feet 100% and the rest of the body 50%, whole body 25%

There are many more variations and they really are only limited by your imagination. If you always give yourself a challenge, your body will respond with enhanced awareness, sensitivity and control.

Good luck
Tom

Keeping the feet healthy

Our feet carry us throughout our entire life. Throughout this time they undergo enormous pressure as they have to withstand cumulative loads of more than 100 tons per day and walk over 115,000 miles in our lifetime.

The foot is composed of 26 bones, 33 joints and 19 muscles, each part has to be co-ordinated perfectly in order to accomplish the tricky act of standing and moving in the multitude of ways, that they allow.

In this post i will explore a number of ways to keep the feet healthy:

1 - Go barefoot as often as possible, this strengthens all of the muscles and connective tissue in the foot.
This is especially important, as in the last 500 years we have become more and more accustomed to wearing shoes and this causes the muscles of the foot to atrophy leading to flat feet or fallen arches.

2 - Get a stick and walk over it barefoot in as many different ways as possible, if it hurts in a specific place, use the stick to massage that area.

3 - Walk around a large space on the various different parts of your feet: the heel, the ball, the sides, on the toes.
Then try to make a fist with your foot and walk around like this.

4- Rotate your ankles clockwise and then anticlockwise, then try to spread your toes as wide as possible then try to bring them together as tightly as possible.

More than 60% of people in the UK will have foot problems at some time in their lives . Most of these problems are minor but some can be quite serious . Foot pain is not normal and if your feet hurt you should find out why and take steps to correct the problem.

Have fun
Tom

Keeping the body healthy

In this post i am going to talk about how to keep the whole body physically healthy.

To have health in any part of the body we need 3 key things:

• Strength - Strength of muscles and connective tissue, Correct alignment and structure
  

• Relaxation - The overall tension quotient of the body part must be low, so that all movements are carried out with the least possible effort, which reduces the risk of injury or strain.
  

• Mobility and awareness - The body part must be mobile in all planes of movement. You must also be kinesthetically aware of the body part.

Here are a few tips to accomplish the above ideas -

- Do body weight exercises as these strengthen the muscles as well as the connective tissue(tendons, ligaments etc)
- Exercise every part of your body not just the obvious ones from the neck and spine to the feet ankles and toes
- While laying down on your back, bring your awareness to a particular body part and consciously try and relax it.
- Stretch out the muscles in unusual ways. Google: stretches and make up your own.
- Circle and move all your joints in various planes. One of Mikhails drills for this, is to write out your name with 1 arm or both arms in the air.
- Pick a specific body part and inhale through your nose and tense that part as hard as possible, hold the tension for 10 seconds and then exhale and relax that part. Repeat as required. This drill teaches you to become aware of tension and relaxation in specific body parts.

Have fun
Tom

Systema - furthur applications after BASE

Systema uses the methods of Systema Breathing to strengthen the student physically and psychologically and to get the student to the BASE level.
After the student has mastery or a high level of understanding of the the BASE then then they can progress to further applications of the training principles.
The Systema method of physical education allows a person to learn any skill or ability in an accelerated way through fun and exciting drills.
For example if a person wishes to learn how to roller skate, here are a number of drills which are Systema based,
but, teach the student to:

- become aware of a foreign object (skates) touching the feet
- Enhance awareness of your own body ,while wearing the skates, in a dynamic way
- Allow the student to learn the skills in an easy and fun way as possible
- teach the student to access the flow state for enhanced learning

Drills - while wearing roller skates (remember to breath

- Rotate the ankles to warm up the joints
- flex the ankle forward and backwards to strengthen the ankle
- stand on one leg and swing the other leg around
- now with both feet on the floor put on a blindfold and walk around in the skates, forwards, backwards, side to side, round and round you choose
- now perform all of the *core exercises(push up, sit up, leg raise, squat) with as good form as possible while wearing the skates
- Now stand up and try to get down to the floor any way you can, now get back up
- same drill as above but use no hands
- Now walk again with the skates on and now with one foot try to push off the floor and roll forward.
- Now standing up, try to inhale and tense every muscle in your body, then exhale and at the same time relax, try this a few times .
- now with a partner have them pull you along by your arms, then push you at the lower back level
- same drill as above but now the partner has to push you along (forwards or backwards) while pushing any part of your body - head, chest, hip, legs etc

*For correct form in the core exercises read the book "Let Every breath, secrets of the Russian * breath masters"

These are just some example drills of how to learn to skate. The number of drills you can create with Systema is limited only by your imagination, and as i said before, you can potentially learn anything with the Systema principles/ drills/ mindset.

Have fun
Tom

Walking as a diagnostic tool

One of the most common activities in our day is walking. It allows us to get from one place to another with minimum effort and can be sustained for long periods of time.

Walking can also be used as a diagnostic tool to determine the condition of your body or psyche.
To start you need to be aware of your excessive physical tension.
To feel this the first drill is to start walking and breathing calmly, in through the nose and out through the mouth.
After a short time exhale and hold.
That's it, hold your breath after the exhale, for as long as possible.
Now the important part of this exercise is to stay calm and feel what is happening inside of you.
Do you feel an uncomfortable pain in your stomach or chest, or is it somewhere else. The place where this feeling arises is where you have excessive tension.
Repeat this drill a few times and for a variation count your steps while holding your breath.
Try to hold your breath longer and longer each time.

Next we will long for muscular or structural imbalances.
Start walking again and breath calmly.
Now try to notice a number of things about your walk:
- do you have a slight bounce or bee-bop
- do you sway from side to side or forwards and backwards
- does one leg tighten up excessively more than the other
- is your lower back or spine tense
- are your feet facing forwards or are they pointing outwards like a duck
are you allowing your feet to strike the ground heel to toes or are you slapping them flatly down
- are you holding your shoulders up or keeping your arms stiff and not allowing them to sway.
Try to feel as many things as you can about your walk.

For the final drill we are going to train our walk to be as free and relaxed as possible. This one requires a partner. You start walking around and first the partner looks at you and tells you where he/she sees tension. After this they will walk beside you and massage any tense points they see. Do this drill for a while and you will find that your spine, hip and shoulders are a lot more free and mobile.

have fun walking
Tom

Massage - Russian style

Massage

The purpose of massage is to relax the body and mind. This can be with more physical vigorous massage or by lightly tapping points on the body. I will go into greater detail in a later post, but for now hear are some interesting ideas -

-Put a tennis ball underneath your back, while laying on the floor and roll it around your back or move it to a point where there is pain and tension and breath and relax become aware of that point and learn to relax it.

- You can also do this with you leaning against a wall and the tennis ball being held up by your back.

- You lay a Stick on floor, you then lay down on top of stick any way to target tension in specific muscle groups, when the stick is on a painful area stay in that position and breath and try to relax that point.

- Ways to have stick: underneath spine, lower back, lay on stick sideways to target side shoulder muscle and tricep muscle. Stick under chest or abdominals, put stick underneath front thigh muscle or side thigh muscle and slowly work from the top of the muscle to the bottom.

After tension is mostly dissipated you can also lay on the stick so that the stick is under a flat plane of muscle and then move your body up or down so that the stick rolls from top to bottom or vice versa.

- Rolling on stick , across stick any way, long sideways roll , front, back, sideways

- Falling onto a stick anyway

- These two drills can also be done with multiple sticks

This type of massage can be very painful, it is important to push yourself. If you feel the pain is too much just concentrate on breathing and trying to relax the tense area.

have fun
Tom