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Kevin Secours Groundfighting Seminar - November 18th and 19th, 2006
So that's all in the past and it's a new semester, new challenges, but I haven't forgotten Kevin's seminars. This will be a bit rougher than usual because so much time has passed, but I wanted to share this with you anyway. I remember that Kevin emphasized three principles throughout the whole weekend:
So, in keeping with principle #1, we started with an hour-and-a-half of movement exercises on the ground. Kevin told us this modest investment of ninety minutes would be helpful for the remaining four hours. He demonstrated four types of full squats:
Kevin mentioned something about "unlocking the 5 & 6th vertebrae" that I didn't quite catch. I think it involved lifting the legs up and over the head, as if doing a leg lift, and then doing something else to unlock the vertebrae. I wish I had caught what he said because I am pretty sure that my 5th and 6th vertebrae are "locked" as I think he mentioned that it makes backwards rolls more difficult, and I have always had a hard time with those (I have to fling my legs over my head, rather than moving them in a controlled manner). We practiced "threading" to turn from laying on the stomach, to the back, and stomach again. This is where you initiate the sideways turn by "threading" one leg underneath the other—start on your back by making a kind of a "4" shape with the bent leg sliding under the straight leg, then rotate your hips to turn over. We also did some breakdance-style moves, the "helicopter" where you kind of wave your legs around, I can't even explain this one. But it was the foundation for the next one which I found pretty straightforward: rolling from stomach to back and stomach again, but without touching your arms or legs to the floor. You accomplish this by rotating your hips, and it just naturally turns your body, so that you don't even need to rest more than your upper thighs on the floor to turn yourself. Kevin showed us these "drilling"exercises where you "screw" your arm into the ground. This is a good exercise for stiff muscles. You just kind of rotate your arm on the floor, pressing slightly on the wrist, or the elbow, and rotating your shoulder so that it stretches your muscles. It's hard to explain, but I think these kinds of exercises warm up the joints by releasing sinuvial fluid for better lubrication. We learned how important breathing is with the next exercise. One partner lay on the floor on his back, the other leaned heavily on one part of his torso. The partner on the floor had to inhale "through" the part being leaned on, and then the leaning person would release that part and press on another point, and the person on the floor had to exhale through the released point and inhale through the other point being pressed on. So basically, your partner influenced your breathing with this exercise. But it's not so easy as it sounds. I found when my partner leaned heavily on my upper chest, it was actually pretty difficult to breathe "through" it. (By "leaning heavily," I mean, put quite a lot of weight on your partner, so that he might feel his breathing a little restricted until he adapts to it.) So we practiced breathing through different parts of the chest and stomach even when under pressure. This is a pretty crucial skill for groundwork, if you've ever been trapped underneath a much heavier training partner, I'm sure you'd agree! We did a little joint-locking work, first in partners, one person twisting the other's arm, then in groups of three, with two people twisting both of one person's arms. We also did a little practice with escaping from wrist and finger locks. I remember Kevin telling us that if you are locking the fingers and you bring the pinky across the other fingers, rather than keeping it parallel to the other fingers, it hurts a lot more. However, I don't have any further notes about the latter. But I can fill in the gap with some work we did last week in Edgar's classes with finger locks. Edgar showed us that when your fingers are being locked, you can help with your other hand, your leg, or even your head, by using these parts to brace your fingers are they are being bent backwards or forwards. You just use the flat plane of a part of your body that isn't locked to stop the bending before it gets too painful. Of course you do have to follow up and escape from the lock, too. Edgar also showed how to tense the lower part of the arm and the hand, then release the tension, to manipulate the person locking you. And a bunch of other tactics to prevent wrist and finger locks, which I won't go into further detail since I want to return to Kevin's teachings. We did a drill to improve shoulder mobility. One person faces two people, arms spread, around one of each of their shoulders. Then you dip your head in a deep circle, touching the back of the head to their torsos, and come up on the other side and straighten head. Kevin had the girls triple up for this since it really does involve rubbing your head all over your partners' chests. Later we did this in Edgar's class and I didn't have the benefit of female partners. I have to admit, I was pretty embarrassed when my classmate was rubbing his head all over my breasts. I know that he didn't intend to embarrass me and generally I'm pretty easygoing about close contact, but I'm not anxious to repeat this particular exercise with the guys! Kevin told us you can also use a wall to do this. Face the wall, spread arms flat and parallel to floor, palms to the wall. Dip your head down as far as you can go towards one side, and slide in a circular motion to come up on the other side. The back of your head should touch the wall. We spent a good amount of time on chokes. Kevin is not the first instructor to tell us that air chokes are too dangerous for everyday practice. I wish that students would heed this a little more. A blood choke might require a little more precision but it's pretty safe even if you are choked out. An air choke if applied with too much force has a greater chance of fatality. Yet whenever we practice chokes, inevitably one of my partners will begin to strangle me, and I don't feel comfortable with repeated oxygen deprivation, sometimes it leaves me so light-headed that my vision blurs and I have trouble standing. I think this is something I should practice rarely at this point, but it seems most students prefer applying it rather than the blood choke. But we practiced this as a technical skill, which means one person was passively allowing the other to choke, then tapping out. So there was a safety net. One thing about tapping out: if your partner taps out while you're choking him, just release him, even if you think he could stand a bit more. Don't make the call as to how much he can stand. Maybe he can stand a bit more but on the other hand, maybe he's about to black out. It is hard for another person to judge that. Don't put your partner through agony because it will make him tougher. There aren't too many Systema exercises that call for tapping out but when it is part of the drill, heed the tap out and don't push it. Kevin also demonstrated how to bring someone back if you choke them out. As far as I recall, this involved propping the person up into a sitting position. But I don't remember too much else about this part of the seminar. Kevin often illustrated his instruction by recounting his experience of the injuries he had seen in others or sustained himself. Some of his descriptions were kind of grisly, but he wasn't trying to impress us with his battle stories. He was just telling us how the techniques we applied could lead to serious damage, even accidentally. I remember in particular his description of demonstrating a strike to the upper thigh, towards the outside of the leg. Apparently there is a vulnerable point at this area. He was demonstrating on a student who appeared not to feel anything when Kevin struck him, so he kept asking Kevin to hit him harder. But the next day, his leg was completely swollen, apparently he didn't ice it as Kevin advised him, and he ended up in the hospital, I think they had to drain his leg. I hope I've remembered that story correctly; it was only one of many that Kevin recounted to illustrate the damage that can be inflicted even in just practice sessions. It's worth remembering that you don't have to put your partner in agony to cause a lot of damage; some injuries don't hurt much at the time but could lead to serious complications afterward Unfortunately that's all I have from Saturday; big chunks are missing but that's what happens when you write about training months after you've completed it. I have a little more from Sunday, though, so please, read on! Sunday We warmed up with some small joint rotation of the arms, "drilling" the limbs, loosening the sinuvial fluid, rolling shoulders, wrists, and elbows, as we did on Saturday against the floor, but standing freely. Kevin mentioned the "cat's whisker's analogy"—each of a cat's whiskers correspond to an area of its body and that's how they know whether they will fit into a tight space just by poking their heads into the space. He talked about "prioception" and knowing your own body, demonstrating how many movements of Systema can be initiated by touching your own limbs. For example, the wave-like movement can be initiated by touching your midsection as if you are drawing a sword from your belt. Kevin also told an interesting anecdote about Vlad teaching shooting to some students whose aim was off. He had the students touch the target with the gun and this improved their accuracy. He even had the guys move a huge cannon, touch the target with it, and move it back, which improved their aim. Kevin showed how, when escaping from a lock, if touch yourself as you move, grasp your other hand that isn't locked, and so forth, you can generate movements to escape. He told us that George Foreman was well-known for touching the face of his opponent before landing the strike. We did some rolling drills—rolling very, very slowly. I have a hard time with this, I asked Kevin why I always collapse just after reaching about 90 degrees and I can't control the rest of the roll. I think this may be related to the "unlocking the 5th and 6th vertebrae" that he talked about on Saturday. Or it could be that I just don't have very strong abdominals even though I can do lots of Systema-style sit-ups, but I think those are not really an ab exercise, strange though it may sound, I don't really feel my abs engaged during sit-ups as they are during the leg lifts. Kevin gave me some advice about rolling. He explained that you have to move from one shoulder to another—somehow I never thought of this with slow rolls before, only with rolls to change direction. That slows the rolls down quite a bit but I still have an issue with control, especially on the backwards rolls. Kevin had us rolling from side to side starting in a "star" position with body elevated and palms and feet touching the floor. Then you just let one arm collapse and turn inward to roll from one side to another. Kevin thought I was doing this well, he asked if I had done this exercise before, I said Not that I recall, but later I remember that I used to do this a lot to get over my fear of rolling from a standing position, by starting on all fours which seems less scary than standing. I found that when I roll on my left shoulder, it's fairly smooth, but on my right shoulder, it wobbles. That's because my right arm is so much stronger, and so when I'm supporting my entire body weight on my left arm in the moment before I drop into the roll, it's a bit shaky. "That means you're human," Kevin said kindly. Kevin talked about "stirring the joints," rotating the limb until you eventually find some area of tension to work against. This can be a brutal technique, especially when manipulating the head. But it has a gentler application, for example, if you are taking someone down and they are going forward, sometimes it's hard to get the person to drop those last few feet to the floor. I think that many people are more unwilling to land face first than on their ass, because there's a lot more padding on the behind. So when you encounter this resistance, you can kind of wiggle their arm around with slight directional changes until you discover a point where a little pressure will drop them. But you have to be sensitive to do this, if you use brute force and the person resisting is a lot stronger, you'll just be deadlocked. We next did a very enjoyable exercise where one partner is on the ground, the other just stands still or approaches the other very slowly, and then the person on the ground practicing takedowns by rolling into his partner, or using the legs, or grabbing an arm, using the movement of the body on the ground to affect the other's posture. We spent a good long while on different kinds of leg and foot locks—torquing the ankle, the proper grip for ankle locks, also heel locks, and how to put pressure on the foot by rolling the shoulder back, leaning back with the body weight. This was kind of technical; I had a little trouble getting the locks. Kevin told us that, because the foot is so far from the brain, by the time you feel the pain, your foot is already broken. So he advised us to be gentle with the ankle locks. We also practiced escaping from these locks by "drilling" the leg forward before the grip is too secure, or by slightly rising into a squat so the foot is on the floor instead of being cranked. Once the twisting begins, you have to move your body to follow your foot, it's the only way to stop the break. I also recall some sort of vigorous arm or shoulder locks with both people on the ground, and the one being locked was supposed to tap out, though I can't remember the exact details, but I do remember that my partner wasn't really locking me well enough. He kept waiting for me to tap out but I was perfectly comfortable. I think both of us were getting a little frustrated; it was just like a nice stretch for me, and he was wondering why it didn't hurt. Finally he said, "I would have been screaming in agony by now!" And my classmate heard this and told him, "She's got the most flexible joints." And once he knew that, he was comfortable locking me a lot further than seemed safe to him. I guess it's hard to know how your locks will affect someone else. I don't think I have flexible joints, it's not like I'm double-jointed or whatever the appropriate term is. But I do have hypermobile joints which means some positions which might be locks on another person are just enjoyable stretches for me. That's why I prone to mistracking joints but on the other hand, it gives me a lot of flexibility in the hips and shoulders which is helpful for ground work. If you want to test your shoulder flexibility, Edgar showed us this exercise. Lay flat on your stomach with arms stretched out to your sides. Have two people pin your hands to the floor, and if you are feeling optimistic, have two more people holding your legs. Then see if you can roll onto your shoulders. It's very difficult to do this because you can't rotate your arm! But I found to my surprise that I was one of the few students in our class who could roll onto my shoulders in this position. I would not be surprised if the others also had hypermobile joints as flexibility is the main symptom of this inherited condition. We did some more chokes as on Saturday, the "half-ox collar," with one person draping arm arm over the other's neck in a choke from the rear, as well as a side choke. Kevin showed how to straighten your body by moving your hips underneath your head and standing up. He told us to look upwards, it almost naturally straightens you, and also to press your tongue on the roof of the mouth. To facilitate straightening the posture while being choked, he had us work in groups of threes, one person chokes the other, then a third person comes along and hits in the center of the back, which naturally pushes the choked person into the right posture. But you can't push from your head, the movement has to start from the back and hips. I think it was towards the end of the day that Kevin explained a little about striking, how to take the strike out, and drill the strike deep into your partner. I kind of hung back during this segment, even more so than usual, because a lot of men don't like to hit women. I mean, they will hit me well enough if we're sparring, or even during the exercise where one person stands in the circle and the others all strike. But for some reason, they want to hit me when I'm just standing there to practice absorption. So I wound up partnered with Kevin's assistant instructor, Jordan, who asked if I preferred if him or Edgar hit me. I hadn't thought about it—Edgar hits me when we're training together, but I've never stood there and accepted strikes from him, he doesn't usually do this with us. I think in retrospect, it's better to practice with someone you don't know as well, if you have that opportunity. So Jordan hit me a bunch of times, sometimes on the ground, other times standing, and he said I took them pretty well. And I also practiced my strikes on him. But unfortunately, I don't have any more notes about the striking segment of Sunday. We practiced some defense "from the guard"—one partner approaching the other on the ground and trying to maneuver on top of him, while the one on the ground had to move offensively and prevent being mounted. At least I think that's what we were doing. I can't recall if the person standing was trying to get between the legs or trying for the mount, but I do remember that the one on the ground had to prevent the approach. I enjoyed this exercise a great deal; I always like to work on the ground. At one point I remember thinking, "this isn't such a grueling workout," I was thinking that I'd be exhausted after the all-day seminar. Sometimes seminars are very athletic, I remember doing 100 pushups at one of Martin Wheeler's where he was trying to get us into a state of controlled fatigue. It turns out I was sore by Sunday evening, but not unpleasantly sore—not the kind where you can't move at all—when you wake up in the morning so stiff you can hardly walk (OK, I've overexerted myself at some past seminars, I confess). Actually it's kind of pleasant soreness in my hamstrings and biceps which is good, it shows that I worked muscles that I am unaccustomed to using in different ways. Afterwards, Kevin stuck around to answer questions and offer healing advance and massage to people with specific problems. I wanted to stay and observe, but quite honestly, I was feeling uncomfortable in the environment. Kevin's visit coincided with a real down point in my training. It happens sometimes and I just can't seem to snap out of it. Then one day, it's suddenly gone and I'm back to normal. It was many weeks after Kevin left when I suddenly snapped back to normal. It was during the university's winter break so I had the whole week off and was taking advantage of it to do some extra training at Fighthouse. That's the weird thing about being in a plateau or ‘valley' as I think of them (plateau = leveling out, valley = bottoming). Although training is a little depressing in that it doesn't make me happy, at the same time, I don't want to stop doing it and will in fact train even more if my schedule permits. So I was in the daytime class at Fighthouse and we were doing exercises in a circle, one person in the center, the rest of the class surrounding and kicking or punching the one in the center, who had to respond in kind. I kept telling the guys to go slower, that it would be the same exercise even at a lesser speed, but a few guys just didn't want to slow down. And suddenly I realized that I wanted to hit them, felt they deserved it for ignoring my repeated requests. Because they were shoving, kicking, and hitting me hard and fast, I wound up flying in all directions and returning the same force to them. And I felt a certain satisfaction in nailing those few guys who wouldn't go slowly even though I asked them to. I know this is not appropriate, in many ways, it's the very opposite of Systema. But you have to keep in mind how prone I am to become too passive, even to the point of letting everyone else prevail over me so they don't feel bad if they have less skill. And for a too-passive person, a little aggression can be helpful. When I saw that I was holding my own even though the rest of the class was punching and kicking me, I felt a lot more positive about my training. And I just suddenly snapped out of it, but unfortunately not in time for Kevin's visit. So, Kevin, if you are reading this, I'm sorry I was not at my best during your seminar, but I hope we'll have the chance to train together again! Many thanks for your great seminars, and as always, thanks to Edgar and Peggy for hosting us, and to all participants. *Vsego nailuchshego* (best wishes), Rachel |
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