River Training

Mark and I did some training in the river today. What made the training a little more interesting was the significant strenth of the current. Any takedowns, strikes, or movement in general had to be adjusted to work with the current. Since the water was thigh deep, the current had the greatest affect on one's footwork. Some of our work would result in us both falling to the ground due to too much focus on breaking the structure, etc. The density of the water prevented our feet from regaining any balance disrupted by the current. Regaining balance in the water with or without a current seems to be one of the significant differences between training on the land and in the water.

A fun drill Mark came up with was avoiding all the plant debris floating by while striking eachother. Other drills involved being held and struck underwater. I found that being brought up momentarily then shoved back down was the most difficult to deal with psychologically. Strikes, chokes, and being crammed pretty hard against the bottom were relaxing until I started to run out of air. I'm advanced SCUBA certified and I've always been comfortable in the water, so a lot of the drills were no less intense than all the roughhousing I did in the water as a kid. One of my favorite SCUBA exercises is "dive and don", as it is the most difficult for me to do:

Wade out into at least ten feet of water with a mask, fins, and weight belt. Swim down to the bottom and weigh your fins and mask down with the belt. Come back up. Catch your breath and then swim back down. Put on your fins and mask at the bottom, then clear your mask (tilt your head back about 45 degrees, pull the bottom of your mask away from your face about half an inch, and blow out with your nose). Swim to the surface.

This exercise is pivotal in learning how to stay calm while doing a task underwater. Initially, most will rush down to the bottom and usually panic before they even get to their mask and struggle back up to the surface. I thought I figured it out the first time by not rushing. So I slowly and calmly swam down to the bottom, put on my fins, then panicked before I could get my mask on and struggled back up to the surface. It took me three or four tries before I could actually do the exercise, and even then my actions had some panic in them. Our instructor demo'ed this exercise for us by going down, putting on all the gear, clearing his mask, then swimming up halfway, and hanging out there for another twenty seconds.

Anyhow, back to training, though there isn't much more to it. We did a few more exercises in the water. One fun one was receiving an "onion" then getting dunked, held under, and punched some more. We definitely concentrated more on the psychological aspects of the water rather than the mechanics of doing work in the water.

The Onion

After our meeting today, we were talking a little bit about how strikes blossom, "like a flower", as our friend Brad described after he had finished whacking us all a bit. Eros described the internal feeling of a deep strike getting stuck in the body as an onion rather than a flower--he had just gotten hit and had that lingering internal discomfort (he had a slight look of disgust on his face when he said the word "onion"). I think he created a good piece of terminology for us--I will see if I can do the word justice with a hastily created analogy:

Onions have layers (like parfaits, as Eddie Murphy points out in Shrek). Onions also release a nasty vapor when peeling away the layers, causing the eyes to tear up. Onions only cook well when peeled into their layers--e.g. sautee-ing onions with a steak. Ok, I got nothing... sorry. Nevertheless, "onion" will be added into our study group's Systema dictionary.

Manipulating the Structure

In Gene's class on Friday and our group meeting today, we covered some good ground on manipulating the structure with respect to breathing--both in us and our partners. We worked on manipulating the structure with pushes, strikes, joint locks/shearing, and a little bit of psychological work if the situation presented itself. In today's group, we discussed the simplicity of this type of work--If the leg needs a push, push it. The mind can become locked away from the clarity required to work as though "buttering the toast". All of the guys we're training with come from previous martial arts backgrounds, and so they feel that the reality of the situation is skewed by their previous training wanting to impose its own will--often apart from reality. I think all of them have felt the ease of doing good work. It comes and goes to some extent for all of us, but we get exposed to a higher standard when we feel (and let) ourselves do the work without inconsequential effort. Exposure to that standard keeps us training--we've all tasted a little bit of freedom in doing this type of physical work.

From my perspective, without any previous martial arts background, the reality of the situation is skewed by my own frustrations. There are situations where I shut down and feel very inept. The funny thing is that some of these situations are where my partner is waiting or frozen in a vulnerable position for me to work on him. One example is where my partner is bent over in somewhat of a squatting position with their head towards me. A little neck crank or push away from me on their head are just a few examples of how easy a take down might be in this situation. I seem to gravitate towards the most difficult or impossible way to take them down. I am trying to approach this from two directions: 1) I remind myself that I don't always see the easiest option, and try to train in such a way that I explore and 2) I do my breathing, praying, pushups, living, etc. I lack the discernment to tell whether these situations where I go brain-dead are from lack of training experience or stem from some muddle in the psyche. Either way, there seems to be a little progression out of this phase, so I'm happy enough. I'm actually extremely happy for our little group. It's grown since I've been away all summer (Gene is a good salesman). Everyone seems interested and seems to enjoy the work.

Striking with the Staff

Mark and I did some striking work with a wooden staff. For the past five or six months, I've had some issues with tension building on different areas in the right side of my body--neck, shoulders, abs, and back. The staff strike seems to resonate through my body much differently than a strike with a fist would. A strike with a staff takes a much narrower pathway while going through, whereas a deep strike with a fist will expand through the body a little more. There are exceptions to this though. Anyhow, with one of the staff strikes to my back, I noticed how sharply it traveled up the right back muscle that runs parallel to my spine. I felt as though I was struck pretty squarely in the back. However, the difference in tension on the two sides of my body was easily observed in how the impact traveled.

The last few strikes with the staff are of course always the best. We both allowed the last two strikes to get inside to really work the breathing (maybe tomorrow we will work on getting the strikes inside whether we want them to or not *evil grin*). The very last strike to my solar plexus with the staff was good. It went straight through me with a little bit of breathing and actually accumulated in my back, almost in the exact shape of where I was hit in the front--no expansion of impact, just narrow travel from the front to the back in the shape of the staff. I tried to breathe it out of my back, but I couldn't get the hang of it. I had Mark whack me a few times in that spot to help my breathing and relaxation in the area along. That seemed to do the trick--one good strike to the back and the nasty accumulation of the impact was gone.

Training Log

I will be keeping a weekly account of training on here. Nothing fancy or complicated--just things that I find to be of interest.