21 November 2014 Class Log In this short class last Friday we explored the reality of Systema in grappling. The reality which reminds me a little of the recent blockbuster movie Interstellar. I know it sounds weird, but I think there is a real lesson to be drawn out from the movie which applies to Systema. One of the primary reasons we train in the martial arts is to learn to defend ourselves and our loved ones. In other words, there is a very practical motivation for our training. In many martial arts systems, there are patterns and techniques which were developed in a bid to achieve the goal of self defense. If I may, as an engineering student, these martial systems are various models of combat and in that sense the martial artist is like a scientist who tries to understand the subject and takes time and effort to analyze the parts that make up the whole. Like an engineer, the martial artist then takes this knowledge and tries to apply to the real world of combat. This is where it gets a little tricky. For those of us who have taken at least a few semesters in SUTD, there is a recognition that on some level there is a disparity between the hard sciences and the engineering sciences. The scientist, in a bid to understand the true nature of reality will accuse the engineer of doing too much approximation and hand waving in a bid to simply get things done while the engineer might deride the scientist for being too far removed from reality - come on, we all know by now that a feather and a bowling ball drop at the same velocity when dropped off a building at the same time (where the area around the building has a perfect vacuum and air resistance is neglected and the worlds gravitational field is taken to be a constant and relativistic effects are taken to be negligible...). You get the idea. In true multidisciplinary fashion, Systema practitioners are, quite frankly, both trying to understand the inner mechanisms of what we do and yet at the same time resort to gross oversimplifications of the processes and end up saying the most esoteric sounding catchphrases when trying to describe what exactly it is that we do. We recognize the validity of all that the other martial arts have to offer in the specificity of their techniques and patterns, but at the same time, we recognize that in a real fight the same martial artists seem to resort to what essentially looks like drunken brawling. Study and reality seem so disparate. This is where Interstellar comes in. In the movie (I shall try not to spoil it too much in case you want to watch it), the astronauts travel great distances in a bid to find a place habitable for humans. They go as prepared as their context allows them to be with all their calculations and computers and equipment. They have their science. Their have a model of what reality looks like and to be fair to them, their models are able to explain much of the phenomenon around them. But having said that, there was a clear limitation in one model they might not have thought even existed. They had a limited experiential model of what it actually meant to travel under conditions where relativistic effects are not negligible. Their daily lives (training, if you might), did not prepare them adequately for the circumstances they were to face. Their experiential model was only developed around the less extreme circumstances of physics and they paid the price for the lack of a more developed model of reality. There is something to be said here about the position that we Systema practitioners are in. Holding the tension between trying to understand what we do and simply doing what works is the doing. In other words, in Systema, we discover the truth of our art neither in the dissecting of hypothetical or even statistically common combative situations nor in the practice of executing techniques flawlessly. We also do not simply neglect the inner mechanisms and simply resort to doing what works. In Systema, we hold to the paradox and do our work. And so I come to the part on why we train the way we train. Why do we not have techniques? Why do we seem to play strange looking games and put our training partners in the weirdest positions? Why do we punch each other in the gut? Why do we emphasize so much on things like breathing? Using the analogy of space travel highlights two very important points: 1) Our training is meant to expand our models of reality and 2) we recognize that understanding is not complete without experience. You see, all our strange looking exercises and strangely subtle or introspective drills are actually means of expanding our experiential model. All martial artists intellectually know the difference between ideal technique and reality, but Systema practitioners actually experientially understand the difference. And not surprisingly, since our training is meant to precisely highlight these things and give us an opportunity to handle these extremities. A very good example of this is in the practice of retraining someone in grappling. There are countless amazing techniques for doing precisely this and I certainly have a respect for the arts which practice this. However, it surely is true too that most of these techniques start becoming either excessively difficult or impossible to apply to a moving partner. In Systema, this is recognized and so for instance, a grappling focused session would involve not just a healthy dose of movement but also dedicate a big portion of time to understand restraint in the context of movement which by its very nature is always different. This is why we do not practice technique, but study movement. There is a lot more that can be said on the topic of Systema but because I recognize that I am only qualified to say so much (and I have far exceeded my imagined word limit), I shall stop soon. The last thing I want to mention will be that which I mentioned in passing about how understanding is not complete without experience. When applied to the vast richness of reality, I cannot help but wonder if perhaps both the scientist and the engineer are grasping at but a sliver of reality - the scientist trying to fit truth into a box and the engineer in his mere pragmatic view of reality. Perhaps there is an element of reality that is missing from both their ideals. Perhaps reality is simply not quantifiable in merely intellectual terms. I propose that the missing element in both their pursuits of reality is that of experience and I concur with all those who have said before me that Systema can only be understood through experience. And to do so requires faith and humility. Warm ups 1. Relax while lying down 2. Rolling with the limbs leading 3. Partner plank walking 4. Pushing partner to roll while planking on partner 5. Rolling to move a partner who is planking on you Drills 6. Grappling applications of the warm-ups: directing the movement of a partner without tension and working in the movement of the partners movement. 7. Dynamic work Circle Systema Hong Kong - Vladimir Zaikovski - The Understanding of Movement (1:30): https://youtube/watch?v=jq8cRah-Eqw
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 17:17:24 +0000
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