For the Love of Children:The Importance of Emotionally Safe and Structured Training with Kids in Systema

Alot of people may be surprised at the heavy dose of children's work Andrey Karimov offers at his extensive seminars. Our 21 day seminar in St. Petersburg offered up a nice sized portion of in depth work with children. Before I go any further, Mr. Karimov is a practicing psychologist and has carefully spent several years constructing these modules for children and their emotional health. Each game and series is designed with a few key components in mind :

• identifying children's deep, emotional issues by gauging responses to activities
• helping each child work through such issues
• allowing parents to partake in witnessing their children's independence and strengths 
• formulate a strong sense of identity and free thinking 
• allowing children to try and succeed in a safe, nurturing environment without judgement

Does your kid have the wiggles? Body language is very telling.

• giving parents, specifically fathers, ideas and formulas to help improve relationships with not only their children, but the children around them

and much more.... each activity starts out quite abruptly with the balalaika(yes, I know...you don't know how to play one, don't have one, or don't understand why it's needed....) Remember the game musical chairs? The music played while we all ran around to get to the last chair but the minute it stopped, it was game on?
This, is how the balalaika is used. Now , if you try this in your school, you can certainly use whatever instrument or music of choice but the key is to be consistent. As with anything with children, consistency fosters stability.

Is you Systema kid's class helping or hurting them?

Mr. Karimov often started each session simply by monitoring the children. It was almost a given that the adults in the room were not to interfere or redirect the children in any way...(and if you know me personally, you must know how incredibly difficult this was for me). Without any cues or directions, Karimov began to play the balalaika at a moderate pace, he then would build speed and abruptly stop. The kids, once they heard the music, would run around the room(floor covered in mats) and drop to the ground and stop, when the music stopped. Usually, there would be a few seasoned kids in the group that knew of the routine and seemingly, the other kids just followed along. Again, not much , if any direction from the adults. Once the children stopped(most dropped to the floor face down), Mr. Karimov would quietly point out the children who were unable to keep still...the ones peeking, wiggling, shifting positions, or still walking around....
These were your rule breakers , for lack of a better term.Which is not necessarily a bad thing. These kids also maybe had a difficult time in general by not having a calm demeanor and often times would look back at their parents for approval to make sure they were doing the drill correctly. Again, there was alot to be said by witnessing this display of simple body language.
This all begged to ask the question, what were we teaching our children, in "Systema" in the United States? I know of maybe a few instructors who have done a great job formulating really amazing kid's classes , but that's only a handful. I've found more instructors who have completely thrown the baby out with the bathwater by having kids line up only to punch one another and claiming this was their anti-bullying program.
No one talks about the psychological effect of improper training, or how to help parents foster better relationships or even...dare I say, gets fathers involved?? Not anyone I've heard of.

And how does this pertain to you , as a martial artist? If you have a child, and you spend a ton of time away from you child, training...doing mainly "systema" things, why not utilize that time to the benefit of your parent/child relationship? Not only did some of our best warm up routines come from working with the children at our seminar, almost all of us had a ton of fun, were completely limber and loose, and all of us reached a level of training much more effectively than if we JUST DID SIT UPS.

Barring the musical mat exercise, the demonstrations that followed blew my mind(luckily, the adults got to play too!)...

The great and unmatchable Masha...you'll be hearing more about her

One demonstration in particular, knocked me off my feet, figuratively and literally. Mr. Karimov and a partner each had one end of a rope...they dragged the rope towards and lineup of children and either shifted the rope up or down forcing the children to make a snap-quick decision. Sounds easy? It's not. The goal of the game was to get children to understand that adaptability really is dependent upon them, not the people around them, and that they alone, were responsible for their decisions, so merely mimicking their cohorts may not work for them, especially since the rope was being moved at different angles. And guess what? Same game for adults and almost all of us fell. Why? Perhaps because we have what Mr. Karimov refers to as "maladaptive programming". We are conditioned to overthink, overdo, and over prepare for everything. Pre-jumping over a rope , as an adult, will most certainly land you on your face..(yes, this happened to me). Waiting until the right moment to decide whether you should leap, drop to the ground or merely slowly walk over the rope, was a key way in identifying what your natural behavioral patterns were, and for children, this is key for their parents to understand.

• Are you raising an overconfident child who is impulsive? Early rope jumper.
• Are you raising a child who struggles to decide what to do and goes with the crowd? Cautious rope jumper.
• Are you raising a child who makes the very obvious wrong choices frequently? Opposite end goal determination rope jumper.
• Are you raising a child who waits until the very last minute , but makes a successful choice? Again, cautious, yet thoughtful rope jumper.

Not as easy as it looks. Better than sit ups, squats, rolls and pushups.

You get the idea. And this was only one game, of many, many games. This game, by the way, works great for adults and the kids LOVE to watch the adults play. Not only do you get a heavy dose of plyometrics on board, you start to really work on yourself. Now that I look back at pictures of myself doing this demo, I can reflect on what it felt like participating. Not only was I wearing a skirt, I
noticed that I waited until the moment the rope touched me to move. Again, I'm not a big fan of using excessive energy ( I'm old, what can I say?), but this also is a slow process I've learned to use throughout my life. Normally, I would have panicked, already wondered how I would jump or which direction, but knowing that Karimov was liable to raise the rope in any direction almost gave me a better sense of calm in my own quick decision making and adaptability skills. I , in fact, was relearning to trust my own judgement.

Again..this was a game designed for children, but worked really well for all of us. I will be continuing writing about child-specific , and emotionally safe children's games and training from the seminar in St. Petersburg with a highlighted focus on the importance of adequate work with children. Oh, and at the end of each children's session, the kids lined up to thank the adults... mutual respect was very key in wrapping up each session.

***Photos courtesy of the great Evgeny"Eugenious" Pechkin. You'll be hearing more about him too.

We're in Russia, Ya'll!!! Delayed update and new beginnings....

I just got my laptop charged up and have been feigning to write about the first few days of our journey...(I am now two weeks in to the seminar, so I will try to remember as much as possible)...

Our flight to Russia was pretty uncomplicated, however, we ran into a few S.N.A.F.U.S....one being the airport in Amsterdam....(it is under construction and our gate to board to Russia was horribly far from our landing gate). The entire time we ran to our gate, I remembered Andrey telling me once " this is all training"( he was referring to the amount of computer work I became involved in while researching his methodology). And he was right... everything I do now, I consider part of "Systema Training" via his methods; remain calm running, breathing naturally, and trying not to panic at the thought of missing our flight. It was all training.

Once our plane descended closer to Russia, we flew over the UK area. The view was amazing. The song "London Calling" immediately popped into my head and I thought of some of the UK Systema instructors. I wondered what they were doing at that very moment. I glanced over and noticed my partner in mundane crime, Jesse C. , was welling up with tears. He discussed how relevant the sites we were viewing from the air were to history. He loves history. My mind went blank and all I thought about was how we were getting closer to our goal that I set out to reach almost a year ago.
Once we actually landed in Russia(our plane had to be turned around 10 minutes before landing time due to a dignitary who was set to take off from the same airport), I began thinking that this was such a surreal moment in my life. This was all going to come together, or not. This was one of the most significant times ever for myself , and later I found out, for others. This would be a life changing event.

Getting from the actual plane to baggage area and then through customs was a bit more difficult then I thought it would be. Our bags were virtually dumped open and our suitcases disassembled. It just so happened our customs clerks were filled with anti-American sentiment. Not a good first impression, however, I understood and remained somewhat calm. As they opened the candy that we brought for the Karimov children, I felt a smidge violated. That was for OUR friends. However, the impervious "this is all training" motto, ran through my head.
We navigated through the airport and exited the gate where Andrey Karimov, his lovely wife , Katerina, and our fearless translator , Jaroslav Repin were waiting. Andrey did not stand out immediately as I thought he would, because everyone was wearing black . Once I saw him, I broke into tears...my knees got weak... I felt overwhelmed by finally meeting him. His wife glanced at me with the warmest smile I had ever seen which made me cry more. Their combined energy was astounding. Everyone began speaking Russian at a rapid pace and all I could do was cry.

At some point , Andrey and I skipped through the airport holding hands....I don't know why, but we just did.Perhaps because we felt like children and we just had to emote this feeling.
Within minutes, a black car pulled up and we began loading all our bags. I was not sure if it was a taxi or not, but we did not fit comfortably.It didn't matter. I was sitting in the backseat of a car with Andrey Karimov. Nothing really mattered at that point, not even the crazily high speeds and daredevil stunts of the Russian drivers.
As we zipped around St.Petersburg, I tried to take in as much of the architecture as possible. It was a task in futility. Apartment buildings looked like castles, museums looked like monuments and monuments looked like art sculptures. I knew I was not ready to even explore this city nor did I care. I was there to spend time learning from Andrey.
We unloaded our things to our apartment rental where our landlord was a very stern, older woman who looked like she could break my neck if she had to. All of us piled into the apartment and I realized that I had to take note of some cultural differences; in the U.S., if someone took you to check in a hotel , they would wait at the lobby until you were done. Here, everyone acted as though they must check our location to make sure we would be safe. It was a great feeling that I am pretty sure no one else would notice.
We decided to walk to a local restaurant for dinner.I noticed immediately the incredibly fast pace that the Karimov's walked. It was unreal. Jesse and I struggled to keep up on the rough cobblestone pathways. But we had no choice. My first crossing at a Russian intersection almost resulted in me jumping over a car. If you have ever been to Mexico, you are very keen on the driving styles there.Russians are like Mexicans....cultural mental note #1. St.Petersburg smelled exactly like Mexico City,cultural mental note #2.

We sat at the table to order and I realized that perhaps I should have learned some Russian, JUST TO READ A MENU(do'h). Luckily our translator jumped right in and helped. The entire moment was like a dream, except I began regretting the choice NOT to learn Russian. The food was perhaps some of the best culturally significant cuisine I had ever had. The misconception that I learned from culinary school that Russian and Slavic food had much to be desired, went out the window.

Sitting at the table with Andrey, I noticed several things. You can tell his mind works light years faster than most. You could tell he had ideas, plans and things to do. The next thing I know we were exiting the restaurant where he instructed us to "run" as though we were dining and dashing. I could not tell if he was serious or not, then he said "Cossacks never pay ...RUN!". This was the first of many humorous moments that happened. I told him I didn't run , ever and that I was ok if I ended up in the gulag. The bill was taken care of by the way, and I am still not sure if he was testing me with the "run" thing or not. Either way, it was fun to see his sense of humor play out in real life.

Once back at our flat, we realized we were here. We made it to Russia. Now what?

Train to Pushkin

The following day, Jaro met up with us to tour bits of Russia. The mist, rain and cold weather and wind was bizarre. At some point, Jaro left us to return to Andrey's house and I knew this again, was another "test". The subway systems were even more complex than I imagined due to the language issue. Streets were not labeled and not one map app was working well.I put myself in a horrible position to learn under fire..and it was working.

The following day we were invited to the Karimov's house in Pushkin. The train station was another test, but I was able to connect with other tourists to figure out which train we needed to be on. They were from Shanghi and also traveling to Pushkin. While we waited in line to purchase tickets, we ate cookies with them and witnessed two elderly men launch into a tirade with the ticket clerk. She gave absolutely no care for what was being said to her. This was cultural mental note #3;Russians, like Mexicans, are loud talkers. I loved this place more and more.

Myself, A. Karimov and Jaroslaw Repin

Andrey and his wife picked us up from the busstop. Even that part was surreal. I had a difficult time wrapping my brain around small details like that. But, I tried not to spend too much time thinking about it. When we got to his home, his children came up to us with curious smiles on their faces. I talked to them like they knew English. They smiled. Andrey's dining table was covered in balalaikas. This, may have been the only thing that rang true to exactly how I pictured.
Immediately after we ate some cheese and berries , we strolled to the nearby park at Catherine's Palace. I couldn't believe this was only our third day here. The park was so beautiful and there were so many pictures that there isn't enough room to post all of them. At this point, I would have been happy with what I had experienced so far...little did I know of the good things about to happen over the next few days.