Imagine you are standing in your martial arts class and the instructor swings a 4 foot long stick at your head. What would your reaction be?

You’d most likely say duck, right? However when we do this in class with new people (it’s a good way of finding out how people react to the unexpected) we’ve noticed an interesting trend.

Kids or people with no previous martial arts training tend to duck out of the way. People with previous martial arts training tend to stand still and get hit . One or two attempt to block the stick (and so get hit in the arm instead).

Oh, and before I’m accused of being a smart ass I got hit when it was done to me. And the reason people most often give for not ducking? "Oh, I didn’t realise I was allowed to move".

Why should this be? Vladimir Vasiliev explained it to me in the following way:

"your body knows self defence. It knows how to protect itself. If it touches something hot or sharp your body moves. If a car comes speeding towards you, you jump out of the way. This is self defence. Martial arts is learning to apply that to different situations"

I think this is maybe why young people have an easier time of doing his sort of work - they are still "natural" in their movement. By natural I mean totally unself conscious and doing what needs to be done. It’s sad to say that sometimes "martial arts" training seems to interfere with this natural reaction and locks us into a fixed method of movement. It could also be that sometimes more "experienced" people (and this was certainly the case with myself) are more interested in protecting their ego rather than their body.

So movement and evasion are cornerstones of Systema. If you are not there you can’t get hit (which of course works on several levels). The words I remember most from Vladimir on my last visit to his school are "escape, Robert, always escape" (you’ll have to imagine the accent). The most memorable occasion of him saying this was when he was driving me back to my hotel after class and he started "attacking" me in the car. I’m sure both hands were off the wheel at one point and I wasn’t sure what to be more scared of, Vladimir or the approaching red light. Maybe I should have leapt from the car (funnily enough one student there said to me "you should have been here last week, Vlad was showing us how to roll out of a moving car", but I digress).

The key is to become totally free and "unconscious" in your movement. There are several drills we use to get this mindset working, here a few basic ones

The Stick

You can start by attacking with a set movement - for instance swing the stick at head height. Your partner simply has to duck underneath it. Then you can thrust the stick towards the stomach, swing it at waist height, hit downwards towards the head and so on. Work slowly at first - the aim is for the person being hit to study their own reaction and movement. Always breath as you move, holding the breath just causes tension.

You can then do this drill freestyle, so now the person with the stick attacks with any movement and either end of the stick. Speed can be adjusted according to the person’s level.

One other variation is having one person in the middle of a group swinging the stick. Now and then the instructor will wander through the class swinging the stick, hopefully developing the "eyes in the back of the head" ability.

Daleks

This is a group drill, one person in the middle of five or six others. At first they just have to walk towards the person and he has to slip out of the way. You are not allowed to "track" the guy in the middle, just aim for where he is and go.

You can then jazz this up a little by having the "attackers" outstretch a fist before them (hence the name "daleks"). The one in the middle now has a fist to avoid too. Again, don’t track, just aim and "fire". For added work the guy in the middle can raise his hands above his head - this will encourage him to keep good posture. It doesn’t need to be too quick at first and of course I’m sure you can work out other variations to add in. The main thing is keep it simple and remember the aim of the drill - to work evasion skills.

Kicking on the floor

This is a two onto one drill, the one being on the floor. The other two try to kick and stamp on the guy on the floor who simply has to roll, dodge and twist out of the way. A couple of important points - again at first work reasonably slow to get the hang of things and to avoid accidents. Secondly, make sure you are feeding the guy a good attack - don’t just wave your foot at him, the kick should go in - so if you make contact you are actually pushing him with your foot. This way you can work slow but with power. Breathing is very important again here, plus keeping everything relaxed as you move on the floor - most people get tired very quickly with this drill.

So these are some basic drills that we use to help get people moving. Of course you can add in parries, strikes and takedowns , but they are not the real point of the exercises at this stage. In Systema we try to get away from the conventional attack-defend - counter-attack approach. There is no attack or defence, just movement. If your movement is good you will have defended yourself and also attacked with it.

A simple example is someone pushing you on the chest. Go back with the movement and, if your body is relaxed you will notice how your foot can just swing up and kick him in the groin. Because you have moved with the push you have taken most of the sting out of it and you have used his own movement to hit the guy. The beauty of this type of work is that it is unobtrusive and it doesn’t look like you are fighting, which may have advantages in some situations. It also means that you conserve your own strength and power for when you really need it.

If you do this sort of work, over a period of time you will find that your movements become much more spontaneous and your reaction time much better. Of course what influences the body also influences the mind - and vice-versa - so be adaptable in your thoughts and views too, don’t be too quick to adopt a "stance". Structure can be comfortable and give security, but that structure can also become a prison that binds us. Movement is life and life is movement. Systema helps you to study both.