by Chris Boyens

The venue for the seminar was Hills Road tennis centre, Cambridge. Let the fun begin! Looking round the Sports hall for Sergei trying to pick him out from the crowd. I had never seen him before and was amazed when he turned out to one of the smallest men in the hall. A valuable lesson in "never judge a book by it's cover" I think. Sergei started the day with some gentle breathing exercises to help us relax, followed by squats and press-ups first breathing in on the way up then vice versa, and then gentle running round the hall whilst controlling our breathing. This was a very useful way of learning to overcome the feeling of being out of breath, taking one breath in/out with each footstep, then two, three, four etc. until finally running a full circuit of the hall without breathing. Sergei explained, well Jason did! (full marks for the translation skills mate) how using this breathing method quickly restores you natural breathing during or immediately after intense exercise.

Sergei then made us drop forward to ground as quickly as we could, into a press up type position as we hit the deck, OUCH! Again correct breathing made all the difference, and now, breathing out as I hit the floor seemed to take all the pressure off my body., and allowed me to drop faster with less chance of injury. The next exercise was rolling, around the room we went left shoulder first, then right. Personally I found this really difficult as I was a rolling "virgin" so to speak, and what a place to learn. No mats, hard floor and surrounded by people which made it look like falling off a log. I think I managed to bruise just about every protruding part of my body. When the exercise finished I was quietly relieved, until Sergei then demonstrated rolling with his hands in his pockets, followed by the famous words "try it". (Yes I did just say with his hands in his pockets!) Needless to say I didn't do very well.

Relaxation is the key to Systema, and something that I find very difficult, I currently train in an external Martial art, which is based around a firm stance and strong upper body. Systema is very different in it's principles to most traditional Martial arts, you learn to keep the body moving freely and never fixate on one area of the attacker, and always stay loose and relaxed. Sergei quickly demonstrated to me, (I ended up on the floor in a milli-second) how using strength to break away from a wrist lock, causes more pain than just going with it. By letting my arm go loose I found not only did it hurt less, but with thought and quick movement I was possible to break away from him. Do you think he was being polite? I think so, but it was still a valuable lesson to me proving strength is not important, but being relaxed is. This was even more apparent when defending yourself against two people at once. Sergei demonstrated this with two of the bigger lads training with us and manipulated them to the point where they were bumping into each other, falling in each others way. It was almost comical, especially with Sergei looking at his watch whist defending himself. I would like to say at this point, I mean no disrespect or criticism to the two lads, Sergei is just an true expert in the System.

He then showed a few techniques used by the Russian Police, which stem from the Russian Martial art of Sombo, these were particularly useful to those of us which were interested in the Security applications of the system, enabling us to safely restrain and search with minimum fuss. We finished the first part of the day by tightly gathering round Sergei then closing our eyes and walking forwards throwing punches, as you can imagine nearly fifty people all facing the centre of a circle walking and punching, it was chaos but absolutely brilliant chaos.

Part two of the day took place upstairs in the Viewing Gallery, a much smaller room than the sports hall, this meant that there was very limited space to train in. Sergei started us off in pairs, with one person up against the wall. We learnt how useful "distraction" is when trying to escape from a hold or choke. One technique which amazed me was how a simple flick on the throat just above the Adams apple causes such a big reaction, as did the pulling and twisting of my sideburns. We worked on escaping from throat grabs, and being pinned up against the wall. Limited space training help me a great deal as the option to move about in the heat of the moment is gone, causing me to take quick decisive action without all the ducking & diving I'm so used to from Sparing. Sergei also taught us simple AND WORKABLE takedowns, which were surpassingly quick to learn and very effective. From the front, from the side with your arm round them in a friendly way, and also from behind. At one point we worked sitting next to each other on the floor. I began to understand Systema is a quite sneaky art where anything that works goes.

We finished the training with body conditioning, probably the only time in life where you actually tell people to punch you harder. It's surprising how hard you can be hit with breath control. I was hitting Steve VERY HARD, the kind of stomach punches that have most people doubled up and he kept saying "go on, harder" . It was quite annoying!

We ended the session sitting in the usual circle and talking about the days events. Everybody feeling inspired and more keen than ever to learn more about the System. As a relative newcomer to Systema I found it both interesting and easy to learn. If had a pound for every time I've said "that's so simple" I could have paid for the seminar. The principles were taught, the rest was up to us. Sergei explained that everyone works and reacts differently, anything that gets you safely in control or out of danger, works. The seminars are open to everyone and over half the group were total strangers to me. It's good to train with as many different people as you can, for the same reason.

Unlike the rigid forms of traditional Martial arts there are no stances or forms etc. I strongly recommend training in the System to anyone who is interested in Self-defence or Martial arts. I can honestly say I've learnt more practical Self defence in the three months I've been training in Systema, than in the many years spent studying traditional Shotokan and Tae Kwon-Do. It has helped my reactions, awareness and avoidance skills.

The atmosphere was jovial all day and gave me the chance to meet and train with some really good people which I'm sure I'll see again, All in all I had a great day.

Copyright 2002 Chris Boyens