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This feature about Systema striking appeared in Combat magazine's column The Negotiator in July 2009. It has been edited for website convenience.
Tactical Striking
By Aran Dharmeratnam
In the martial arts people often looks for ways of making their strikes more powerful, much faster and simply more effective. Across styles and disciplines, most practitioners recognise the importance of striking. In Systema, the Russian martial art -there are many different types of striking. There are different objectives and different approaches for understanding and developing the strikes. Both open hand and close fist strikes are used. Sometimes other parts of the arm will be used for striking, including forearms and elbows. But today rather than discuss power generation or special training drills, I’d like to look at strikes from a different perspective.
Strike in a way that maintains stability
One of the big concepts that can be seen in Systema is that when the person strikes, they should be able to do so in such a way that during execution and impact of the strike the body is kept in effective alignment. There should be no excessive twisting, no over extension of limbs and no excessive distribution of bodyweight. The tactical approach to striking in this Russian art is designed to take into account some of the factors typically present in a confrontation. For instance, the practitioner is reminded that the striking method may need to be utilised in a situation where there is more than one attacker. As I tell often my students- aggression is a pack animal. Aggressors will often work in packs and they may rush in from all angles. So for this reason, the person must be able to strike on the move. Now if the body twists too much or the person plants their feet too much, they will find it harder to disengage from one opponent to handle another. Also with excessive twisting of the body or too much wild movement, the person can leave themselves off balance. Awareness also gets compromised.
Striking from versatile angles
There are other benefits to keeping the body effectively aligned and being light on our feet. Without excessive twisting, it is possible to strike very suddenly. This allows the person protecting themselves to hit targets very effectively. The aggressor may be charging and get caught off guard by the sudden strikes. The Systema practitioner must also study how to make use of some of the more subtle angles, when it comes to delivery of the strike. In this way it will be harder for the opponents to avoid being hit. Now the key to utilising the more subtle plains of movement lies in the practitioner’s ability to keep arms relaxed. A relaxed arm can work like a whip. It can also change vectors very smoothly.
Systema Counter Work: This clip conveys some aspects of tactical striking:
The calm state
By staying in a calm state the person can see things more clearly, they will be able to see where the opponent is open or exposed. The intuitive free flowing process works best when we are calm. If one is going to utilise tactical striking, they have to keep calm. This will also prevent them from getting too focused on one opponent. The person will be able to strike on the move. However, if the emotions spill into the work, the person can end up throwing wild flurries of punches that run the risk of injury to the hands. Those wild punches may end up hitting harder surface areas thus damaging the knuckles or wrist.
Different purposes
In Systema, some strikes are used to distract and disrupt the opponent’s attack. Other strikes simply flow out of some kind of redirection. The redirection may be used to evade and attack, but sometimes it makes sense to let the strike flow out of this movement. Again this makes tactics more sudden and unexpected. It also helps the person to work in a more economical manner. Now some of the distraction methods used in Systema are really interesting to study. There is nothing mystical about them; they actually work in quite direct ways. Incidentally, its easy to think of a distraction strike as being something light, that lacks power and purpose, but sometimes the distraction blow will have a significant effect upon impact. Then there are the more elusive open hand movements that may be used to hide one’s path of movement. There are also strikes that may be used to lead the person into a takedown or to make them weaken their grip. Often these strikes allow the person to transition between different tactics such as off balancing or disarming. So when training for strikes, while its certainly useful to train for power and speed, its also useful to consider some of these other factors. Tactical striking opens up an interesting area of study and helps the person to look at the training from new angles.
About the author: Aran provides one-to-one Systema training in London and group training in Stamford, Lincs. His clients include professionals, executives and martial artists, as well as those working within the media and security industries.
To book a training session contact: Email: aran@globalkick.com
Tel: 07939 678 356
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