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