Friday 20 February 2009

"Why don't you Systema guys train in techniques???"

The issue I would like to address in this article is the fact that, in Systema RMA training, we do not learn specific techniques, something that people who have trained in other martial arts find incomprehensible or sometimes even annoying. For example, check out this quote from a post to a very popular martial arts forum, written by a person who supposedly trained for three years in Vladimir Vasiliev's school, in Toronto: "We were never taught ANY techniques at all. Not a single time in my 3 years was I instructed on how to do something properly, like a choke or a double-leg. I was so insulated in the group-think cult-like mentality of most systema practitioners that I convinced myself I didn't need technique".

Before we I proceed, there is something I'd like to clarify, in order to avoid misunderstandings. Training in "martial arts techniques" is different from training in order to achieve "good technique". According to the Russian Martial Art basic principles, "good technique" is the integration of breathing, structure and movement during performance, and this is something we always give tons of emphasis to during our sessions. On the other side, "martial arts techniques" are sequences of movements that if performed in the "ideal way", will always produce predictable results. For example, the Ying Zhao Fan Zi Men system from Northern China (also known as Eagle Claw Kung Fu) has 108 techniques. Each of them addresses a specific combat problem (e.g. defense against a front kick, crashing attack against the opponent's guard, etc) and also has a title, ranging from self-explanatory (for example, "Step and Punch" of "Step and Grab") to really cool and poetic (like "The Eagle Pounces from the Sky on the Defenseless Sheep"). Techniques can also be sets of instructions on how to perform a simple skill "correctly", like the boxing jab (straight punch with the arm closest to the opponent, for those of you not familiar with boxing terminology). Now, the basic promise given by all combat systems who train specific techniques is that, if the practitioner performs endless repetitions of these movement sequences, they will become "second nature" (what they actually mean is conditioned reflexes) and this way he or she will be able to perform those under pressure. Of course, according to this rationale, the more techniques one has trained in, the more prepared he will be to face the challenges of hand-to-hand combat. There is also another rationale, according to which, since people nowadays do not have a lot of time to devote to their training, one should only train in "high percentage techniques", i.e. movements that give answers to the statistically most probable situations that might occur in combat.


Trying to break down a very complex activity (like fighting) in its partial components and dealing with each of them separately is actually a very... well, logical thing to do. That's exactly the way the human brain functions when it deals with life: it classifies everything that we see, do, or happens to us, and associates it with the outcome of our interactions. Then it attaches to the classified material one of the three following labels: "worked", "didn't work" and "I don't care". Afterwards, the brain bunches similar experiences into categories, transforming this way our experience from something specific to something generic. For example, once you learn to tie a pair of shoes with laces, you will most probably tie all the shoes with laces for the rest of your life the same way. Same way with driving - once you know how to use the stirring wheel, the gearshift and the gas pedal, brake pedal and clutch, you know how to drive almost any car. The reason our brains creates mental models and streamlines procedures is simple: it is more economical in terms of information processing. One cannot even imagine how arduous life would be if we were to learn anew how a key lock works, every time we had to use a different key, or if we had to figure out what a toothbrush is every time we saw one!!!


So, even if the human brain is an extremely complex mechanism, the world around us is even more complex. And since the human mind uses generalization and creates automated responses to practically everything in order to to deal with the world, why not use those to "organize" combat? Isn't it more efficient to learn one reaction for a left hand and one reaction for a right hand punch, one for the front kick, one for the double leg takedown, one for the side headlock and so on, and train these ad nauseam, till they become "second nature"? Well... not quite.


The human brain functions on one basic assumption: what happened before will most probably happen again and what has not happened won't probably ever happen. And this assumption works reasonably well in linear, logical systems that always function according to the law of cause and effect. I personally very much doubt that the world we live in is such a system (that's why accidents happen), but for the moment, let's just focus on the field of hand-to-hand combat. First, have a look on the following video of Mixed Martial Arts bout between Russian fighter Alavutdin Gadzhiyev and Japanese fighter Hikaru Sato on March 2008. I have been a MMA fan since the dawn of the sport in the early nineties and I have never ever seen a knockout such as this. For those of you, who have little knowledge on the subject of ground fighting, let me quote here the Wikipedia entry what is known as the "mount position": "The mount or mounted position is a dominant grappling position where one combatant sits on the other combatant's torso with the face pointing towards the opponent's head. This is very favorable for the top combatant in several ways. The top combatant can generate considerable momentum for strikes, such as punches or elbows to the head of the opponent, while the bottom combatant is restricted by the ground and by the combatant on top" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_mount). In a few words, in the world of MMA, when one fighter has mounted his opponent, he is practically invincible - he is not supposed to get knocked out by a punch coming from the ground up!!! What was the fighter on top thinking the moment before Gadzhiyev's punch shut his brain down? Probably that, what happened before, will happen again and what has not happened will never happen...


Charles Perrow, a sociologist known for studying industrial accidents wrote*: "We construct an expected world because we can't handle the complexity of the present one, then process the information that fits the expected world, and find reasons to exclude the information that might contradict it". Classical science is a typical example of predicting an outcome and then conducting an experiment to confirm the prediction. Martial arts techniques, by providing answers to a number of questions, choosing to ignore a number of others, are also a form of prediction since, in a way they aim to control the future. The fault in this particular way of thought is that there are systems which do NOT behave predictably. Take the weather, for example: you can describe what a lightning is using basic math and physics, but can you predict with accuracy when and where it will strike? Same thing with hand-to-hand combat: it is fairly easy to describe (after all, it's just punches, kicks, throws and takedowns, ground positions, submissions and chokes, right?), but being able to accurately predict what's going to happen in a fight is… well, you better ask Hikaru Sato about this, but I bet he'll answer that fighting is rather a complex system (check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory) than a linear one.


What most martial artists who practice specific techniques fail to see - or refuse to understand - is that there is no such thing as an “ideal technique”. Every time you throw a left jab or a front kick, every time you go for a double-leg takedown or a hip throw, it is a different movement you perform, since it is practically impossible for the human body to perform the exact same movement twice and since the relative position of two opposing bodies in space cannot be exactly the same twice. The difference between one repetition and the next is always there and although it might be slight, according to the postulate of complexity theory, “enormous consequences flow from trivial-seeming events”. If you have ever witnessed novices practicing judo, being unable to understand why they threw their partner in the first attempt of a technique but not in the second, “while they did the exact same thing”, then you know exactly what I mean…


So what exactly do we do in Systema RMA, in order to prepare for combat as if it were a complex, chaotic system? Actually, there are a number of things. First of all, we don't train techniques and we definitely do not name them. We don't "execute" a lunge punch, a reverse punch or a fruit punch, for that matter - we just learn how to deliver impact according to the principle "from any position, any strike". Personally, instead of using the term "punch", I prefer to ask my students to "apply force with the fist”. We do not learn how to "execute" a major outer reap or a single-leg takedown - we learn the principles that make a bipedal creature lose its balance and fall and then improvise throws specifically tailored to each relative position between us and our partner. Sometimes, the result might be a major outer reap or a single-leg, but we wouldn't know that:-) When we train to defend against specific attacks, we consciously try to come up with a different response every time. We never "graduate" from the study of a specific subject, but we keep on revisiting it and viewing it from different perspectives (for example, the basic pushing drill, the most fundamental drill in order for a practitioner to learn how to absorb force, is done with hands and fists when our subject is unarmed combat, with knives when our subject is knife fighting and with sticks when we study stick fighting). But most importantly, we try to view each one of our drills and each one of our training sessions with a beginner's mind, as if we do it for the first time each time, always curious and always inquisitive! Because sometimes one can be too sure of himself and, in a non-linear world, this might prove lethal.


* as quoted in the book Deep Survival (Norton, 2003), by author-journalist Lawrence Gonzalez

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