Seminar with Konstantin Komarov

To be re-edited when more time is available. Just drills and random memories for now as a placeholder to that point in time.

Drills:

Saturday:

- Pushups/situps/squats while holding the breath. Gradually excites the psyche as holding the breath becomes harder. Learning how to calm the psyche after doing these exercises by breath work.

- Falling exercise. Partner stands straight and tall, and falls backward, not bending their body. Partner catches them at the neck about 2-3 feet before hitting the ground. Learning how to calm the psyche after a very quick excitation.

- Falling exercise. One person is on all fours, the other is standing on them. The standing person stands straight and tall, and falls backward, not bending their body. Two people catch them about 2-3 feet before hitting the ground. Reinforcement of previous falling drill.

- Studying an attacker without becoming emotionally involved. One partner approaches a few times without attacking. Then after a while they do irritating/jarring things: slapping, punching, etc. The other person has to remain aware of the person but not become psychologically involved in the attack. This is to find the state of the psyche where one can respond to the full situation, rather than hiding inside themselves, or becoming a slave to the attacker's movements.

- Falling/getting up with one breath cycle. Exhale while falling, inhale while getting up. Losing one's breath while doing this indicates excessive tension.

- Free movement on the ground with no thought. Thought interrupts the free movement. Some movements may appear beautiful when planned, but the transition to the next movement may be awkward, or some other aspect of movement/breathing may be crippled from planning the movements.

Sunday:

- Throwing a person drill. Four people grab each limb of the fifth person. They swing him and release on the count of three. The thrown person lands and regains a good psychological state through breathing. Repeat with the person being thrown while face-down. Additional challenge is to throw the person against a wall or pillar.

- Intermixing of social and physiological fear. Partner approaches a few times, calmly putting their hand on the person. Then the partner does something irritating and sharp: punching, slapping, etc. Then the partner goes back to calmly putting their hand on the person. There is often more fear in the partner approaching after being hit, even though intellectually the person knows that they will just calmly put their hands on them. We can develop social fears from physiological ones.

- Hitting a person standing on the wall (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFsMa5DuSFs). Experiencing deeper excitation and then overcoming it through breathing.

- Laying on the ground, holding the breath after exhale, then partner push/punches on your stomach when you start to recover from breath holding. After a few minutes or if they sense you've had enough, they let you breath and recover. After recovering, hold your breath on exhale, and they will slap your face/chest when you start to recover from breath holding. They stop after a few minutes or if they sense you've had enough.

- Stick swinging. KK swings the stick back and forth. Our task is to walk towards him and past him without getting hit AND while not changing our pace, being hesitant, thinking too much, or getting excited.

- Walking around randomly with eyes closed. Then walking faster and bumping into people/things. Breath work required to reduce excitation. Then holding hands out and touching those who walk by instead of avoiding them, to experience and overcome various social fears.

Random concepts from KK:

- The proper "state" is similar to a runner experiencing their body in motion w/o the nasty feelings experienced when running. They are just doing the work.

- The psyche has natural flows, like a wave, of highs and lows. A low would be waking up in the morning, transitioning to high when driving to work. There are thresholds for the highs and lows, which can be seen when a person "snaps" and doesn't remember what they did because they were so excited. What we try to do is increase our thresholds to remain aware during high levels of excitement.

- Admitting to being afraid is often socially discouraged, but the truth is that everyone feels certain levels of fear all the time. "I am afraid all the time, but I'm not a coward".

- We all have certain animal/chemical reactions that we can't necessarily work against: adrenaline, final stage of accepting death when attacked (like an antelope). Those exist for evolutionary reasons and often can't be trained away. Our goal is to either work around them or simply accept them as possibilities and move on.

- Advice for shock: slap them on the back a few times to get their attention. KK made the analogy of them being in their house (inside themselves), and someone needing to knock on the door (slap on the back) to get them to get up. Make them look up, and try to get them to follow your finger moving back and forth, to connect them with some external stimulus. Ask them their name to engage them on a social level. Look them in the eyes. If they aren't injured, this may be enough. If they are injured, this may need to be continued to prevent them from going back inside themselves. There was an anecdote about a soldier dying from a broken arm because he went into shock.

Shooting w/ KK:

Konstantin divided us up into two groups: those with significant or professional shooting experience, and the less experienced.

The first drill was to shoot three rounds from a classic one

- Watching him shoot was incredible and unreal. Watching him handle the AK was like seeing a shark being dropped into the water: powerful and natural.

- Difference between guns that are made for shooting from a static position, and those that are made for shooting on the run. He said it was hard to nail down the differences, but a lot of the older WW2-era pistols are made for the on-the-run type shooting.

- Shooting is mostly a result of a clean psychological state, resulting in smooth calm movement and a focus to keep the pistol from deviating even slightly on its aim, even while walking or pivoting.

- Fire at the end of the exhale, extend the step maybe by 6 to 12 inches and fire right before the foot hits the ground. The extending foot must go at the direction of the target, but the movement of the shooter can continue in the original direction after firing. When approaching from the left, if right-handed, the whole body has to face the target.

- Repeated emphasis on knowing where the bullet went. Missing the target is one thing, not knowing where the shot went prevents one from re-adjusting for the next shot, or from receiving valuable feedback during training.

- Two-handed shooting, while providing a more stable platform and allowing for an easier sight picture, makes any re-adjustment in a rapidly changing environment difficult. Running is difficult, both hands are occupied which hinders dynamic movement and getting around obstacles.

- The pistol should be held like a bird that one doesn't want to escape, and the wrist should have enough tension so that it doesn't break from the recoil. The rest of the body should be relaxed so that it can adjust to provide a dynamic platform for each discharge.

A Day at the Range

We had a fantastic day out at the Best of the West range in Liberty Hill, Texas. Gene reserved us a bay, and took us through a series of shooting drills. Let me give some pretext to this post first. Konstantin Komarov is coming to Austin to give a two day Systema seminar, followed by a third day out at the range. As if the first two days weren't enough, the third day is an extraordinary opportunity, even for the most seasoned professionals. Konstantin is a very unique individual in that he has experienced combat psychology both within a highly formalized academic context as well as on a grueling personal level. He has a Ph.D. in combat psychology and has served as a Russian Special Forces Officer in the MVD and GRU. The first two days will involve experiencing and sustaining an optimal internal state. I have no idea what that will entail, and only an abstract sense of what it means, but I am very much looking forward to it. I also have no idea what we will be doing with firearms, but I am sure it will be extremely dynamic and not something to go about flippantly.

As such, Gene has been including pistols as a regular part of class for the last few months. For someone like me, who has little experience with pistols, the time spent with a pistol in hand during class has helped quite a bit. I've been shooting rifles and shotguns since I was a kid, and they feel quite natural to me. Pistols, however, are another story. I shot a pistol for the first time only a couple of years ago, and have only done so infrequently since then.

To me, they are little tiny things that make big noises and can cause a lot of hurt. I am slowly losing my hesitancy with them, due to the exposure as well as training. Pistols are different from rifles in that they have little to no hunting use--bluntly put, they are made for shooting people. The effect that a pistol can have on a person's psyche is different than that of a rifle, at least in my experience. Simply holding a pistol, even unloaded, can cause feelings of fear, aggression, or hesitancy. I am slowly shedding these influences from this particular inanimate object, as I come to understand that my judgement determines the outcome from using such an object. The ability to use judgement in order to effect outcome with regard to pistols is no different than in martial arts practice. I have a responsibility to hone my judgement, decisions, and resulting actions in such a manner that the outcome is beneficial to everyone around me. While that may be a considerably complex thing to consider philosophically, I place a certain amount of trust in the various social, psychological, and physiological constructs available in this universe to do the right thing (or next best thing). To do otherwise would be an affront to humanity. In that regard, I am grateful for Gene, Vladimir, and others for providing training that blends so homogeneously into my own life and circumstances (and heck if it ain't a lot of fun too!).

Anyhow, blathering aside, we started off the day at the range with basic static drills: shooting from a standing position, off-hand, laying on the ground, and crouched. The next level of drills included standing on a person laying on their back and shooting, having someone lightly push from behind while shooting, and shooting close up at the targe.

Every so often, Gene would make us take a break. Some of the drills became more intense, and built upon previous drills, and so we would gradually get a little more over-excited or overly eager. One goal in all of this is to stay calm, stay aware of our surroundings, and most importantly stay aware of ourselves and our internal mechanics (the psyche, breathing, etc.). Over-excitement and eagerness, while not a bad thing in and of themselves, can blind us to reality in situations that require alertness and vigilance. Handling firearms is one of those situations. Handling firearms while moving dynamically and making physical contact with others is, in no uncertain terms, one of those situations. During the breaks we did some pushups, squats, chatted a bit, and got ourselves back to normal before moving on to the next level of drills. Let me be the first to explain that this type of training is F-U-N, so getting back to normal required a little bit of focus. Very slow pushups while letting the rocks dig into my knuckles a little bit, and breathing very intently helped though.

Another level of shooting drills involved dynamic movement. We started at several meters distance from the target, drew our weapon, chambered a round, then advanced towards the target while firing. We then started at the target, and retreated while firing. We also did lateral movement, as well as a combination of lateral and retreating movements. Another sequence was to start from kneeling, then firing while moving to a standing position, then continuing to fire while advancing at the target. The final sequence to this level was to practice moving to cover while firing. These drills were absolutely new to me--I've never moved, ducked, squatted, or rolled with a loaded firearm before (to be candid, the pistol was empty when I rolled, I'm not quite there yet).

The crescendo of drills peaked with a partner drill. I forget the official term for this, but essentially the shooter mirrors their partner's work. Dene and I worked out a sequence in advance that we'd follow. We'd approach the target until Dene shouted "threat!", and then fire at will while still advancing. The first person to run out of ammo would shout "out!", and we would both get to cover and then continue to fire at the targets until out of ammo. This drill put the biggest smile on my face. It built on all of the experiences of the day and then topped it off by throwing another person in the mix.

We finished the day by spreading out across the shooting bay, all in a line, and shooting through two magazines while moving back and forth (and up and down). I even felt comfortable doing a little barrel roll with a chambered round, keeping my pistol pointed downrange of course. I have kept myself honest about hesitations and anxieties over handling a pistol, in the interest of not shooting myself in the foot (literally). Being able to do a little barrel roll with a cocked and locked firearm was especially gratifying, both in the Systema sense of natural ground movement and in the firearms sense of "oh dear this thing is loaded!" I think Gene did a fantastic job of building up these drills in such a way that we grew accustomed to our firearms, all while maintaining complete safety. I am extremely proud of us as a group for the work we did today and the vigilance upheld in maintaining safe conditions.