Systema Throwdown

[dtactics]

Frank Arias is a senior instructor who teaches at Vlad's HQ. Kudos to him for testing his mettle.


Ignore the annoying peanut gallery excuses. You don't enter a contest and bitch about the rules when the outcome doesn't suit.

Frank's gracious response to a Youtube poster's comment shows the real benefit of Vladimir's Systema... humility. Now we need to get the Zettler twins or Martin Wheeler out there for some fireworks.

[GrahamB]

Thanks - nice and kudos to the guy.

Shame about the idiot commentators on the vid. "He would have like so totally knocked you out in 5 seconds if he could use knees and elbows duuuuuuudeeeee"....

[Ian]

heh.. frank has some work to do.

but good on him for testing his stuff.

peanut gallery is right... they sound like sore losers.

[C.J.Wang]

who is the systema guy?

[GrahamB]

I'm guessing the shorter one?

[Mut]

god that is a peanut gallery.....

[dtactics]

who is the systema guy?

[strawdog]

Either that guy needs a lot of work or Systema needs some improvements.

[Dr.Rob]

I showed this to a buddy who is 3rd dan in Aikido. He is great friends with one of the other instructors at that school. His comment goes as such..."The problem I see (may be wrong) when I watch this and aikido is that your class mates are preconditioned to respond, attack and fall a certain way." " Which leads to an over-inflated sense that you are doing something right or Righteous" " It is a sin really cause this type of behavior will kill the system that has some valid points ...much like Tai Chi guys throwing people like paper. Ruins it for the real guys who can apply it as a martial art."" As for the peanut gallery, they are the people that suck at whatever they apply themselves too, so they complain like dogs at a fence."


I feel that those were very true points coming from a guy who has his own kids in Aikido aswell and hung around sytema for atleast 6-7 years of me talking to him. Sort of the same point can be said of a Wing Chun er who only does Chi Sao and a Tai Chi er who only pushes. If you don't spar and touch hands with other systems you can't get a feel for your art.

[Ian]

Either that guy needs a lot of work or Systema needs some improvements.

I don't believe there's a worldwide group of people practicing the same thing. to me there's a huge difference between training like this exclusively vs training like this.

"The problem I see (may be wrong) when I watch this and aikido is that your class mates are preconditioned to respond, attack and fall a certain way."

I agree. part of the problem is people not understanding the purpose of each drill. they end up trying to 'win' in the soft drills and not applying themselves enough in the hard drills. then you get people who just don't test their stuff so they have no idea what they should be working on.

as sonny puzikas says (paraphrasing): "systema is not a martial art - it's a methodology to build certain attributes necessary for combat, whether close quarters, hand to hand, weapons, no weapons..."

what you get out of systema depends on your mindset and how well you understand the purpose behind the exercises.

[RobP2]

what you get out of systema depends on your mindset and how well you understand the purpose behind the exercises.

You have to ask what your training is for and what events such as these are for and what mindset you will adopt. A group of us attended the UK Throwdown a few years back. It was mostly non-comittal sparring similar to the above, though none of the guys got tapped or subbed. With one exception we all treated it as a friendly encounter rather than a fight.

The upside is you get to train with some new people who will try different things out on you. the downside is you get involved in some mediocre sparring which then gets touted around as "Systema vs Wing Chun" or something

Still, if it helps raise issues that people aren't adressing in their training then all well and good, but it's never been a kind of work that resonates with me, whatever art I've been studying

[Wanderingdragon]

Just shows that as is with the basic principals of all MA systems, the soft yielding and soft qualities propounded by systema experts are not as easily applied in real time situations.

[Mut]

Not defending the guy in the clip in any way but it was certainly not an example of : "real time situations"

[C.J.Wang]

Perhaps one of these days Vlad and Mikhail could get into the ring with MMA guys and show us what Systema should look like.

[Dr.Rob]

I am with CJ Wang on this...I have not seen many of there senior students able to replicate their skills. But I will say from various sources, I know the 2 of them have been challenged several times and proved to be difficult to beat. A student told me from the last challenge by a Brazillian JJ the gentleman frozen and Rybuko dropped him...no video sorry..so I have an issue believing it aswell.