The Benefits of Systema

I know that those people who have never trained with the likes of Vladimir Vasiliev, Konstantin Komarov, Sergey Ozhereliev, Vadim Dobrin, or the recently deceased Mikhail Ryabko, or some of their best students, all seem to think that Systema is fake and nonsense, but the reality is that I do not know of a single human being, regardless of their prior knowledge of martial arts, that has trained with any of the people I mentioned above that did not leave there thinking something like: “How the fuck did he just do that to me?!”

And I don’t know of a single person that has trained with them that thinks Systema is fake, or ineffective, or not able to kick the hell out of pretty much every other martial art I am familiar with given a comparable level of training in a comparable student. Yes the videos all look absolutely fake, but that’s because you don’t understand what you are watching. Systema drills are NOT meant to be realistic attacks. They are supposed to generally be either realistic movements in super slow motion, that can gradually progress in speed and intensity but only as long as the practitioners do not go into a state of “tension” that is fear, or desire to win, etc, as such emotions translate in telegraphing movement and stiff/tense movements that become easy to counter or take advantage of, or, drills meant to give you some discomfort and train you to breathe and move through them retaining a relaxed mental and physical posture, while performing whatever move is required to evade or overcome the drill.

I did karate-do in a very hard dojo for years and I was already a second Dan when I met my first Systema exponent in a training context, Val Riazanov, and I couldn’t touch the guy at all and he could do what he wanted with me. Similarly, after I became a Systema instructor I had everything from Boxers to ex-SAS to active soldiers asking to take me on in a more “realistic” way to test if it was all nonsense. Although I do not profess to be anywhere near the level of the exponents I named above, in every case, they very quickly decided I was absolutely not full of shit. This also included a couple of guys that had 20-30kg on me and worked as bouncers or bodyguards and had serious training in wrestling or other martial arts, I forget which, I think Krav Mama and some karate etc.

Anyway, the point here is not to try to brag, not about my skill, nor about Systema itself. The point is that the benefits of Systema go far beyond merely fighting or combat.

In some 3 decades of karate and delving into other martial arts from time to time, to test them, and myself, I had accumulated a variety of relatively permanent injuries. Impacted joints, an injured sternum which had also caused a semi-chronic stiffness in my spine on one side, various scar tissue that had accumulated from various muscle tears and so on. In my mid thirties I started to do Systema and by my early 40s I was healthier and fitter than I was in my thirties. Many of the injuries I had sustained re-presented themselves as I trained Systema then healed, almost miraculously.

Besides all of this, it had a profound effect on my psychology. It is a little know or acknowledged fact, that our connection between mind and body is far deeper and more important than literally any doctor has ever imagined, never mind spoken or written about. The training that you do in a martial art has a profound psychological effect too. Karate-Do is a hard style, and while the romantic theory behind Shotokan Karate-Do is that there is “no-contact”, the reality is that even in competitions, body shots are permitted and head shots are supposed to be “limited” but I had events where the opponent’s fist went past my head to the elbow, meaning if I had not dodged the punch he was trying to put his fist through my head. And in dojo kumite (the “friendly” sparring that happens in the dojo outside of any competitions) pretty much anything goes. You can literally bite a guy’s ear off if he doesn’t submit and no one will chastise you for it.

As a result, the mindset it fosters is a very rigid one. Flexible perhaps in how to go after a target, but the very idea of giving up is anathema. The ruling principle of Karate is: Failure is acceptable, but giving up, never.

In short, you can succeed or die trying. Nothing else.

Systema philosophy instead can be summarised as: Do the impossible, and survive.

Hence in Karate your value is zero. The mission is all. Honour is all. Death is irrelevant. Surrender or giving up is simply not an option.

In Systema your value is total. Win, achieve your goal, overcome impossible odds, but above all, survive.

After I had trained a few years I went to visit my brother in South Africa, and he noted in me a chance that surprised him to the point that he mentioned it out loud after a single day with him.

“What did you do man? You’re like a different person. A lot calmer, even if no less intense.”

I told him about Systema and as a result he went to do some of it with Vadim Dobrin, and I dare say that what he learnt with Vadim, saved his life at least once if not more times.

But now that I have passed the half-century mark, I do not burn with desire to lay out random street thugs, as I did in my youth, when I purposefully would walk around at 3 am through the parks and supposedly dodgy areas of London hoping for some unfortunate thug to pick me. That all said, if trouble comes looking for me, I am not exactly at the wheel-chair section of the “old-fighters” line.

However, I have realised that my lack of Systema specific drills for the last few years is something I need to change again and get back into training my body with those same drills and so on, because the benefits far outweigh the mild discomfort or time it takes to do them. In part I realised this thanks to rather strenuous pruning activity by climbing up and down trees for over a week. While stiff at first, thanks to doing the movements in a Systema way, several aches and pains have left me, and the more serious ones, the result of an injury from my stupidly lifting/shoving a 200kg or so stove into and out of a car by myself, have become more prominent. Which means either I need to see a good chiropractor first and then do the Systema training, or at least do the training. Again, the benefits I highlight are physical ones, but the psychological ones are really probably far more important.

Sylevester, the young guy who came to help me for a week has read my Systema Book and he was explaining to me how doing so had already helped him level up in his jujitsu class in a way that his training buddies couldn’t make sense of. It’s also helped him begin to understand his body and a muscle injury he had in his leg and shortened fascia he has in his feet. It was genuinely a pleasure to see a young man, learning such things so early in life and noticing how beneficial they are to him, but too the attitude he has fostered, which I am sure had its own inborn talent of course, but can only have been helped by the Systema training he learnt from the book, was really quite rare to see in someone that is just over 20 years old.

At one point, one of the branches he was standing on in an olive tree broke off underneath him and he simply fell to Earth as naturally as if he had chose to jump instead of been surprised by a suddenly broken branch.

These are the things you cannot prepare for and that Systema training gives you without you even realising it.

So, I shall begin to train again regularly, even as I continue to do a lot of physical work on the farm, as is required during spring.

I hope those of you who read here will also try to take an interest, as it truly is a beneficial system for your body, mind and soul. The recent sponsorship of the trees, forcing me to say more prayers, together with physical training to limber me up more, is truly quite a wonderful and life-affirming thing. I hope you try similar things in ways that work for you.