Re: Systema Sucks

[Damian (Instructor)]

Believe it or not I took a ROSS seminar. A few of us back in 2002 took a ride out to Lancaster, PA to take knife and bayonet fighting course with those guys.

Personally, they were extremely respectful and didn’t have attitude. As far as the training…at least I picked up some Apple Butter (the Amish make that stuff).

The course focused on “joint recruitment”. Which means the more joints you use, the more power you can produce because your incorporating more muscle groups and body weight. Makes sense, I think I learned that in every sport I ever played, but it was never phrased like that.

Now here comes the goofy part. In order to “train” our bodies to recruit more joints was part yoga, part break dancing. There we were holding these knives in the middle of this field trying to “move around the weapon”. Scott told me I was doing it well, I still don’t know WTF I was doing.

At the end of the day we wasted several hours in something that could have been solved in a few minutes.

If you want “joint recruitment” HIT HARDER! Pavel puts it best in Power to the People. “The heavier the weight, the more muscles you need to recruit. It takes more and larger muscle groups to push a 45 pound plate than it does and empty soda can.”

I guess they used the term joint recruitment instead of muscle recruitment since Pavel was their competition. He has kettle bells, they have the Bowling Pins?

As far as self defense, I have not seen anything from that camp ever worth incorporating. You’re better off getting a makiwara and just punching the crap out of it.

Damian