The Shapes We Make

Last weekend, NC Systema hosted my good friend and Senior Systema Instructor Martin Wheeler, for our annual weekend seminar. As always, it was a terrific experience for all.

Martin’s skill as both a martial artist and instructor continues to grow year upon year, with no sign of peak or plateau. There were insights and enlightenments aplenty for those prepared to receive them. But for me, one point stood out in particular: the issue of involuntary stances and shapes.

Halfway into day one, Martin stopped the group of 50 assembled trainees, and talked about the difference between a fighting posture and a fighting stance.
In combat, he explained, relaxed posture is essential. Excess tension in your body prevents free movement, and telegraphs your intent to all but the most oblivious opponents. Beyond this, the shapes you make with your body reveal not only your fighting skill, but also your current psychological and emotional state…

  “…right now, you’re all gathered around me, standing in ways that suggest you are relaxed, receptive, and listening to what I have to say. You have the shape of an student or observer. I am standing in a different way - making a different shape with my tension. Perhaps something like the shape of a teacher or transmitter.
Your shape reveals everything about who you think you are, what you're feeling, and what you want. So when fighting, you should avoid any kind of obvious shape, as they allow an opponent to sense your intent to strike, grapple, or control. Keep yourself fluid and relaxed, and your opponent will fail to realize there is danger until it’s way too late.”

“On the other hand,” he added, “relaxation alone is not enough. Relaxation without structure is weak, and of little practical use. So the balance lies in keeping a fluid shape while finding stability in the structure itself. Align with gravity, stack your posture atop itself, and let your muscles hang off the bones to generate heaviness. By all means, use tension, but use it at will. Control your tension, rather than allowing it to control you.”

…or words to that effect. The training continued, and everyone incorporated the lesson, to a greater or lesser extent.

Now if you’ve studied Systema for any length of time, then little of this will be new to you. The virtues of relaxation and posture are repeatedly extolled. But knowledge and understanding are not the same thing. Hence, most of us spend years trying to undo physical tension patterns formed by fear and reactivity. Prior training, too, can be a hindrance here. If you have studied other martial arts / fighting systems prior to training Systema, chances are, you’ll use stances and fixed positions out of habit.

The idea of a relaxed fighting structure, versus a specific fighting stance, is a rare one in the martial arts. Many so-called “Internal” martial arts - such as BaGua, Hsing-I, and T’ai chi ch’uan - aspire to the same apparent ideals. Yet they train structure via fixed (and often extraordinarily uncomfortable) foot, knee and hip positions.
The legendary Bruce Lee asserted much the same fluid positioning (“be like water, my friend”) in his teachings, and in his seminal work Tao of Jeet Kune Do. Yet in practice, he generally favored the fleet-footed, buoyant stance of the boxer or TaeKwonDo player. His shape was not of formless water, but rather of the stalking predator - every movement denoting a coiled, dangerous, spring-like energy.

In traditional Karate, it is kamae. In Aikido, hanmi. Chinese boxing, western boxing, Greco-Roman wrestling, Judo, Jujitsu, Ninjutsu, Kendo - all favor specific fighting shapes. These stances vary considerably between the arts - and even within them. But generally speaking, they all have one thing in common: they are shapes designed to create power and stability in a fixed position.

You may argue the relative benefits of crouching like a ninja or kung-fu master (“standing up exposes half the body to attack”); of the staggered, splay-footed Olympic wrestling stance (“lowers your center of gravity, making you harder to throw”); of the narrow, upright stance of the Muay Thai fighter (“legs can be lifted rapidly to shield the body from kicks”). Regardless, the goal is effectively the same - to make the fighter as stable as possible, allowing for whatever movements (punching, kicking, grappling) are permitted by the art.

The upside of this “fixed shape” approach is that you know (quite literally) where you stand with it. You have a strong base from which to launch attacks, and a strong base within which you may weather them.
The downside of this approach is that it sacrifices mobility, subtlety, and the capacity for truly “free” movement.

Enter Russian Systema - with its emphasis on natural posture, free movement, subtle strikes and controls. Provided that relaxation is maintained, it is quite possible to break posture and still deliver devastating strikes - as evidenced by Martin Wheeler, Maxim Franz, Vladimir Vasiliev, and other advanced exponents. In Systema, there are no fixed positions for punching, kicking, and grappling. There is no “stand-up” position, and no “ground” position. There are no predetermined shapes. There are only situations, transitions, opportunities.
The upsides of this approach are greatly increased mobility, the ability to hide your movements in plain sight, and exponentially greater freedom of expression.

There are also considerable health benefits of not bouncing and lunging your way through decades of martial practice. Many trainees - myself included - come to Systema with pain, injuries, and surgeries sustained by the practice of sports and arts less mindful of the long-term effects of training. With correct, Systemic exercise and movement, these injuries tend to heal themselves over time.
This is perhaps the single most powerful physical aspect of Systema practice - not only does it not destroy the body, it actively repairs and strengthens it. This, in my view, should be the bare minimum expected of any self defense / survival system. Regardless of how effective you deem it to be in combat, if your mode of training cripples you by age 40, you are effectively practicing self-attack.

The downside of the “no shape” approach is that it is far more difficult to learn. Moreover, without proper attention to structure and balance, you will start to exhibit unintentional, reactive shapes under pressure - ones far less useful than the traditional stances we take such pains to avoid. If you wriggle and bend like an eel to avoid a strike, but in so doing become trapped in place by your own tension, you are probably not doing Systema. You have simply surrendered one fixed shape (a specific striking stance) for a weaker, more vulnerable shape. The strike that follows will remind you of this quite abruptly.

If you step and slip out of most holds with ease, but freeze and sprawl when clinched in earnest, you are not doing Systema either. You did your best to avoid a fixed grappling stance - well done. But now your opponent has chosen your shape for you. Make a habit of this, and any skilled wrestler or judo player will teach you the error of your ways.

If you move your feet to evade knife slashes at slow speeds, but then reach out with stiff arms to block faster ones, then - you guessed it - you just took a momentary break from practicing Systema. Your static, grasping shape was born of fear, not skill, and your arms will likely be slashed to ribbons.
With correct practice, you can of course learn to differentiate the body when needed, yet also keep it stable under pressure. This is the surface goal of all those squats, pushups, rolls, crawls, and other Systema exercise variations. We don’t do these to bulk up or “do cardio”. We study them mindfully and regularly, in order to build relaxed, efficient, powerful, and unified movement.

But there is a deeper point here, I think. One related to Martin Wheeler’s original assertion - that shapes reveal who you are, how you feel, what you want.

If this is true, then if you want to avoid making specific shapes, you have to change what you want, how you feel, and quite possibly who you are.

If you’re scared of being restrained, hit, or slammed into the ground, then under pressure your shape will reveal that in an instant. A skilled opponent will read that tendency in your reactive stance, and make use of it accordingly. A good boxer will feint to create a reactive flinch, then follow up with a real strike to your exposed jaw or midsection. A good wrestler will feint high, then shoot low to catch your immobile legs. A good knife fighter…well…you get the idea.

The word attitude, I think, best encapsulates this idea best:

at·ti·tude (ˈadəˌt(y)o͞od)
noun

1.  a settled way of thinking or feeling about someone or something, typically one that is reflected in a person's behavior.
      synonyms:  view, viewpoint, outlook, perspective, stance, standpoint, position, inclination, temper, orientation, approach, reaction
2.  a position of the body proper to or implying an action or mental state.
        synonyms: position, posture, pose, stance, bearing

Notice that the words “stance” and “position” appear in both definitions,
There is little sense, then, in trying to hide or mitigate your fear (mental attitude) with a forced, defensive or aggressive stance (physical attitude). Why? Because your attitude is your attitude.

If you assume an aggressive stance, you’ll become aggressive, without acknowledging the fear that still motivates you. You’ll drive forward recklessly, without respect or regard for your opponent, or what he might do to you. Some martial arts actively seek this animalistic state. We do not. We seek to remain human.

Assume a defensive stance, and you’ll become defensive, again without acknowledging the fear that drives your reactions. You’ll fight like a cornered animal, lashing out at anything that comes to close. But ultimately, you will lack the capacity to control or counterattack your opponent, and repeated attacks will leave you drained, exhausted, and unable to continue.

We’ve come a long way from the 20th century view of the brain as computer, and body as mindless robot. Modern neuroscience has revealed many of the mechanisms and pathways by which state of the body affects the state of the mind. We ignore these effects at our peril.

If you really want to change the way you move - you should start by working on yourself. Examine your fears, your reactions, your limitations, the things that drive your reactive attitudes - both mental and physical.
Once these are better understood or resolved, you’ll become less reactive both mentally and physically. The mental and physical attitudes you assume will then be more natural, more honest, and more based in actual reality than your emotion-laden perception of it.

For me, this brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “get in shape”.
I’m working hard to get in shape. But it’s an honest, natural shape that’s all my own.

What's Your Motivation (Part 2 of 2)

In the previous post, we looked at the importance of motivation in training - how it forms the foundational layer upon which all other aspects of training are built. I said there was more to say on this, and there certainly is. Greater men than I have written on this subject before - including my own teacher Vladimir Vasiliev in his original Russian System Guidebook (now, sadly, out of print) and more recently, Major Konstantin Komarov in his excellent Systema Manual. But for what it’s worth, here is my own view on the subject.

It’s clear that without clarity of motivation, your efforts in learning to breathe, move, grapple, and strike will be haphazard at best - causing frustrating plateaus in training.  At worst, you could stall, backslide, and find yourself doubting whether you’ll ever attain real skill. Or question whether your system works at all.

I’ve seen many devoted trainees drop out or switch systems at this point, unaware that the fault usually lies in themselves, rather than their training method. This may happen after a few weeks, a few months, or after years of dedicated training. In the martial arts world, disillusioned black-belts abound. Some find solace in other styles and systems. Others take to the Internet and spread their bitterness through comment threads. Many give up martial arts altogether, and look for less frustrating pastimes.

This is a great pity. It’s not that cross-training in different martial arts isn’t valuable. Nor that other, non-martial pastimes are not useful. Clearly, they are. But often, this “jumping ship” through confusion and self-doubt results in a lost opportunity - a chance to stay the course, figure it out, and gain maximum benefit from your art of choice: be it Systema, Judo, Jiu-Jitsu, or otherwise.

So how can this be avoided?

The first step, as we described in the previous post, is to establish absolute clarity of purpose. You must ask yourself: Why am I doing this? What is this for? What am I attempting to gain?

These questions may not be so simple to answer. People begin studying martial arts for a host of different reasons. Systema, in particular, seems to attract people from a wide range of backgrounds, with varying motivations for training. In my own classes, we have students from all walks of life - personal trainers; physiotherapists; neuroscientists; biochemists; bankers; lawyers; journalists; playwrights; carpenters; military, law enforcement and corrections officers…the list goes on and on. What single purpose could possibly unite this diverse group?

In his 1952 book Higher Judo, physicist, judoka and somatic education pioneer Moshe Feldenkrais observed that broadly speaking, people take up martial arts for one of five reasons:

1) a desire to equip themselves with skill in self-defense
2) an awareness of insufficient physical strength
3) an awareness of insufficient physical coordination
4) a fascination with the spectacular prowess of martial arts masters
5) a need for an interesting pastime, or physical recreation

As Feldenkrais points out, the common factor here is the desire - be it conscious or unconscious - for “further self-development, or to harmonize relations with your environment.”

This holds true, I think, across all martial styles of any real worth. Martial arts are about more than winning contests, kicking ass, or gaining confidence. They are a path to maturity and self-development. Obvious? Clichéd? Perhaps. Why, then, do so many students (and instructors) seem to talk, act, and train as if this were not the case?

The answer, I believe, is mission creep, plain and simple.

In military speak (long-since adopted by gurus of project management), this phrase describes a mission that begins with one aim, and ends with another - often failing in the process.
One less-than-hypothetical example might be...say...invading a foreign country with the aim of deposing a fascist dictator, but then staying for decades to assist with defense and non-specific “nation-building”. Here, the original aim is forgotten as new issues present themselves, and new conflicts arise as the scope of the mission becomes broadened or diverted.

In a similar way, students may take up a martial art for any of the five reasons given above - perhaps all of them. But somewhere along the line, their motivation becomes muddied or tainted. Often, this happens through fear, insecurity, and a desire to hide weakness.

Thus, a student may begin training with the aim of learning practical self-defense. But in training, his weak grapples and strikes seem to have no effect on larger opponents. He becomes acutely aware of his insufficient strength. Building physical strength now becomes his mission, and he fills his training time with hours in the gym, kettlebell classes, or whatever makes him feel more powerful. Returning to class, he uses his newfound strength to muscle opponents to the ground, with some degree of success. But when paired with opponents of similar or greater strength, he finds himself powerless and unable to work.
At heart, the problem has not changed. Despite his efforts, he still feels that faced with a strong opponent, he has no self-defense ability. Now, he feels neither strong enough, nor skilled enough to face the world. Both missions have failed.

Another student might begin training with the explicit aim of becoming stronger and more coordinated. At first, she makes great progress. With regular and consistent practice, her balance, coordination and strength are greatly improved. She begins to feel powerful, agile, capable, alive in her body.
But in free-wrestling or sparring drills, she feels vulnerable, weak, easily dominated. Fueled by fear, the mission shifts, Now, her main goal is to attain the skill necessary to dominate and win. She spends most of her training time studying complex techniques. She watches DVDs and YouTube clips with a view to absorbing new movements. She cross-trains in other martial arts to gain a competitive edge. In class, she dissects and analyzes everything in her efforts to do it right, and do it right now. Again, her efforts yield some success. In free sparring, her knowledge allows her to control less skilled opponents - even opponents a little stronger than herself.
But in almost every class, she meets a partner with greater skill, and is controlled and dominated in turn. Crestfallen, she decides that her efforts have been wasted. If she’s still vulnerable to defeat, still unable to prevail against a skilled attacker, then what is she training for? Once again, both missions - the original and the acquired - have failed.

We can say, then, that long-term progress in martial arts training requires three things:
1) being clear about why you train, and
2) staying clear on your reasons as you progress
3) embodying these reasons in your actions

This is not to say that your reasons for training cannot change over time. They can, and they do.

For my part, I started martial arts training (aged 8) because I was impressed by the awesomeness of Hollywood karate and kung fu masters, and wanted to be similarly cool and exotic.
Later, I trained harder styles with the aim of defending myself against thugs and bullies.
Next, I sought philosophy and peace of mind through martial training, and gravitated toward traditional arts where I thought this might be found - Kendo, Iaido, Aikido - traveling to Japan to study with great masters to that end.
Later still, I was introduced to Systema, met Vladimir Vasiliev, and became aware of entirely new levels of skill, strength, and serenity - still far out of reach, but achievable through the right kind of training.

The point is, whatever your reasons for training, you must stay true to them in the moment.
If you’re studying martial arts to win competitions, then winning should be all you think about when you train. Ask yourself: Where am I weak? Where am I strong? What are the rules? What ensures victory within that framework? Do I need more strength, more speed, more skill, more unorthodox techniques?

If you’re studying martial arts for self defense, then everything you do should bear that in mind. Where am I still vulnerable? Would this work at full speed and resistance? Would this work on a less forgiving surface? Would this work if he was armed? Would this work against multiple attackers?

If you’re studying martial arts for self-development, the focus changes again. What am I feeling right now? Why am I scared, angry, aggressive? What is prompting this reaction? How can I gain independence from my fears, on a deep and permanent level? How can I expand the limits of my physical endurance, psychological resilience, freedom of movement, freedom of thought? Am I really exploring this, or am I cheating, making excuses, avoiding the issue, covering it up with feeble bravado?

For sure, you can focus on all of these things in isolation, over the long term. But try to do them all at once, and you will fail. Multitasking is a myth, and it has no place in martial arts practice. Things go wrong when goals and motivations are mixed.

So know your reasons, and stay true to them as you train. If the art (or instructor) you are practicing with doesn’t provide what you seek, you will naturally part ways and find another.

But chances are, once you commit to your one, true purpose, you’ll find exactly what you need - through your practice, through your training partners, and through yourself.

What's Your Motivation? (Part 1 of 2)

"The first and most important consideration for training should be to understand why you are doing it. You must ask yourself, constantly: why am I doing this? What is this for? What am I attempting to gain from this drill, or this manner of training?"

This, I heard a few years ago now, at the Systema Immersion Camp 2010. This event - for those of you not familiar with it - is held every couple of years in Ontario, Canada, organized and led by RMA Headquarters in Toronto. That particular year, Russian masters Mikhail Ryabko, Vladimir Vasiliev, and Konstantin Komarov were all on hand to impart deep and transformative lessons in Systema practice. And though I learned much from all three, it was this simple lesson from the legendary Konstantin that stood out for me at that stage in my training.

The reason was simple. I possessed all the enthusiasm necessary for training, but at that time, felt overwhelmed by the sheer scope of Systema. There was (and still is) so much to learn - everything from breathwork and body conditioning to grappling, strikes and defense against weapons.  How, then, to focus my efforts? Which elements should take priority in my own training? Should I focus on shoring up my (many) weaknesses, or cementing my existing strengths? Should I study more movement skills , or focus on my stability and structure? Though I had undoubtedly made great progress up to that point, it all seemed a little random and scattershot. A truth that was revealed every time I tussled with Vlad's strongest students at Toronto HQ.

Then with this simple, half-hour lesson, Konstantin threw me the rope I was grasping for. He explained that all these elements must be training simultaneously in order to understand and appreciate the greater whole, which at that time I could not even begin to see. At the same time, he laid out a kind of pyramid, or hierarchy, of elements - explaining that areas of study higher up in this pyramid could not realistically be mastered without a solid foundation beneath. I have not heard this explanation phrased quite the same way since - not even in Konstantin's own training Manual, penned some years later. So I apologize in advance for any misinterpretation on my part. But I'm reasonably sure my notes of the day were accurate, and this approach has served me well in the years since. So here goes:

The most foundational layer of training, he explained, was motivation. If you don't really know why you're doing something, or what you hope to achieve, then you're destined to veer off-course and miss your mark. I've heard this phrased elsewhere, in business-speak, as "you can't hit a target you can't see". But it goes far beyond that. More on this later.

The next layer up - built on a foundation of clear, correct motivation - is the study of breath. Without a solid foundation in breathwork, any higher focus (on say, movement, tactics, or technique) is largely wasted. You'll use too much effort, try too hard, and allow your psyche to become too excited, failing often in all kinds of drills. Worse yet, you'll fail to perceive where you've gone wrong, and perhaps commit to years of error-filled training.

Beyond this lies the study of the body - building what Vlad calls a "warrior body". Through this, you gain the strong, supple, powerful body needed for Systema practice, and are able to proceed to more intense, challenging work without fear of injury, or needless flinching reactions.

Beyond this lies the study of the psyche - including all aspects of your fear, anger, and other emotions, how they hinder or control your movement, and how that applies to relations with others. Without a strong body, Konstantin explained, serious study of the psyche under pressure is impossible, because your body fears excessively for itself. With a strong body, you can move beyond basic flinch/response training, and study more and more challenging themes, such as absorbing hard strikes, working in confined spaces, and perceiving / manipulating the psychological state of others.

Beyond this lies the study of movement - including movement on the ground, standing footwork, complex evasions, and everything in between. Again, without a strong, fearless body and a balanced, stable psyche, serious study of movement becomes tainted with fear, and your movements are still controlled - to a greater or lesser extent - by your own environment, or by the movements of others.

Beyond movement lies the rest of Systema - ascending through grappling, striking, and working with weapons and multiple attackers. Grappling should come first, because the direct contact makes pressures, angles and emotions easier to understand. Striking, while on the surface far simpler, involves more instantaneous making and breaking of contact, and therefore is far more subtle and difficult to master. And only when you can apply direct grapples and strikes to one opponent should you really consider attempting to apply the same to an armed opponent, to work against several opponents, or try to incorporate weapons and other objects into your own movement.

This is not to say you should never try to strike before mastering grappling, or avoid knife work altogether until your psyche is completely stable. For one thing, it would make for very tedious training. And besides this, you never really master anything, anyway. Thishierarchy, as I understand it, is far from set in stone. It's a fluid template, which allows movement back and forth between areas of study, whilst also recognizing the relative importance of each layer within the whole. It allows you to cross-train in physical, mental, and martial skills without getting caught up in just one area, and losing your focus on what is important - your own development as a person.

And that, shall be the subject of my next post...