Systema and Crossfit, together at last

The beauty of the internet is all the ideas out there ripe for the picking. The tough part is making sure they’re going to fit into your system and your method of teaching.

For today, I borrowed the technique section of the class from a Russian system of martial arts called “Systema“. We practiced moving “hitch free”. This means trying to eliminate those moments where we find our feet glued to the ground and our breath high up in the top of our lungs. The drills began with simply walking towards one another and stepping out of the way and ended with slipping out of the way of a punch and returning fire.

And as usual, I borrowed the conditioning bit for today’s class from crossfit. It’s called Tabata something else. I modified it a bit to fit into the last 10 minutes of class. We did 6 sets each of sit ups, push ups and squats. You go for 20 seconds and rest for 10 seconds. Each exercise is repeated for 6 iterations. Your score for the exercise is the lowest score you got in the 6 rounds. This means ideally you’d know how many of each exercise you could do in 20 seconds and sustain for 6 rounds.