Seminar review of our spring seminar.
I want to thank all the participants and instructors for a wonderful seminar. We had a few new faces from the local community as well as had people travel from California, a few from the new Portland Oregon study group, and some come down from Canada. A special thanks to the affiliate instructors who contributed so much to the success of the seminar, thank you Vali Madj
www.pacificcoastsystema.com , Ed Whalen of Norcal Systema and Kaizen Taki of Systema Northwest.
The seminar started officially on Saturday March 19th but our friend from North across the border came and taught our Friday night class. For those who have not had a chance to train with Vali Majd or have never met the man I encourage you to do so, not only for his understanding of Systema but also for his ability to run the pace of class so that all from the weakest to the strongest are able to train up to their potential while learning the entire time. Vals class this time dealt with using open palms and using them from where ever they are while dealing with whomever is around you, as you move through and around one or more attackers. It was a wonderful class that tied into beautifully with what Emmanuel would be teaching later that weekend.
Once again Manny lived up to his well deserved reputation of a calm, deliberate and very deep Systema instructor. His instruction and warm-up were uniquely Manny indicative of the body awareness that he would help install us with over the coming weekend with much partner work (buddy body squats, push-touch tension relaxation push-ups and piggy-back strangle rides and others) as well as individual work and group work during both the warm-up, cool down and during the main body of instruction.
One of the topics that we were working on all through the seminar was percentage work. Learning to control your body, breath and mind to be able to do the work at 10% or 30% or 70% of your ability. Being able to grip with one hand at 15% and the other hand working at 60% is much more difficult than it would first seem, we also worked on the ability to recognize what percentage a person is working against you and the benefits that the recognition brings.
I have started to add percentage work (at least awareness of percentages) in many of my daily tasks and it has proven to be not only entertaining but educational as well. Thank you Vali and Emmanuel for peeling yet another layer of the onion. There is a thread about the seminar on Vladimirs forum here
http://www.russianmartialart.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1042 if you want further reading.
See you on the floor soon
Friends
Brian King
Ah to live in Factoria.
