Principles of Systema
- Be good, be kind.
- Breathe.
- Be efficient. Use as little effort as possible. Relax. Don’t tense up.
- Be water. Flow down & horizontally. Use body waves. – flow of kinetic energy,
- Be fire. Flowing up define your structure.
- Accept. To see the situation objectively you have to accept it. To use the opponent’s force, you have to accept his force.
- Synchronise. Merge with an opponent.
- Get out of the path of the strike.
- Make a shallow angle to the line or plane of the strike / Strike perpendicularly.
- Expand your mind, vision and body.
- Keep it simple.
- Smile.
Breathing principles
1. Relax
2. Inhale through the nose & exhale through the mouth
3. Breath leading
4. Intake sufficient volume of air
5. Continuity of breath
6. Cycle (pendulum)
7. Breath independence
Enjoy!
Aspects
- Out / Into range.
- Active / Passive.
- Flow / Stay still.
- Keep an obstacle or not.
- Grounded / Free legs.
- Facing your opponent and move behind him / flow through any position.
- Yin / Yang. (e.g. Pull to push / Push to pull, or strike soft tissue with hard tissue & hard tissue with soft tissue.)
- Work with the bodywave (momentum/kinetic energy).
- Feel wave, see a wave, use wave, hide wave.
- Pendulum force (in phase / out of phase*, loop, constructive / destructive interference*).
- Wave from core / to the core. Bouncing power.
- Redirect, yield, absorb, renounce or crash force.
- Linear / Rotational motion.
- Balance / Unbalance.
- Close to core stronger / Further from core quicker.
- Expand / Contract.
- Expand your peripheral vision – watch the whole picture (not just weapon, lips or one attacker).
- Keep contact / break contact.
- Variety (training wide variety of strike or any movement)
- Creativity (let the body create movements; think out of frame, express yourself). Play.
- Tension. Relax / rigid / flexible / plastics / stick.
Tactics and guidelines
- Bend your knees.
- Give him a problem back.
- Disguise (mask) your action movement behind normal movements (don’t activate his alarm). Don’t telegraph it.
- Flow – Go to the zone.
- Don’t do a final step. Step such, that you can continue to another step.
- Don’t put yourself down to say: ‘I cannot do it’.