Author: Arkadiy Kadochnikov
During the russian hand-to-hand combat your main task is to overbalance such a complex psycho-biomechanical structure as a man. It may be your opponent or the group of opponents. According to the method from the contrary one of the main postulates of the Kadochnikov Systema you can attain this if you learn to balance the objects you are going to interact to. The basis of the exercise we are going to discuss is the theory of the rods’ stability. As a universal equipment we are going to use in this exercise a straight stick. Its height should be about 150 centimeters and the diameter is 8-10 centimeters. The closest to it thing is a handle of a spade.
The most elementary variant of the exercise is balancing the stick on the palm using efforts only needed for holding the object. When doing the exercise you need to relax your body as much as you can. We should control our attention to keep the object absolutely upright. You can just focus on the imaginary line that joins the upper and the lower points of the stick.
After the first attempt you will prove that that’s not so easy to keep the stick in an upright for a long time (2-3 minutes for example). Try to listen to your senses and understand what keeps you from fulfilling such an easy from the first sight task. Are your muscles relaxed? If it’s so that’s great. And it means that you spend not too much energy to keep the stick upright.
Check your breathing. The more calm and natural you breathe the easier it will be for you to control the position of the stick and you will have to apply less force to hold it. Breathing in a slow and calm manner you soothe your nervous system and the thoughts in your mind won’t distract you from solving the problem – holding the stick upright.
Thus you need to reach the state when your muscles are relaxed, the breathing is slow and steady and the thoughts are focused on the given task. This allows you holding the object upright without much effort for a long time. After you’ve managed this you need to make the task more difficult.
Before I tell you about more complicated variants of this exercise I want you to read the small parable from the book written by K.S. Stanislavsky “The Self-cultivation of an Actor”.
Maharajah was choosing him a minister. He was going to give this job to the one who would go on the wall surrounding the town with a big vessel full of milk and won’t spill a single drop. Many tried but people called to them, scared and distracted them so that no one could fulfill the task. “These are not ministers” – said maharajah. But then one more man started his way over the top of wall. Neither shouts nor threats could take his eyes off the overfilled vessel.
“Shoot!” – cried the master.
But shoots didn’t help.
“This is a minister,” – said maharajah.
“Have you heard the shouts?” – he asked the man.
“No!”
“Have you seen how they tried to scare you?”
“No. I was looking at the milk”
“Have you heard the shots?”
“No, Your Majesty. I was looking at the milk.”
This parable exemplifies how the abilities of a man increase if he can control his attention. You need to reach firm inner state to solve the given problem. Now you should not only hold the stick upright but to interact with the surroundings. There are a lot of variants how to do this. You may recite poetry or prose, sing something, talk to someone close to you, solve arithmetic problems mentally and so on. It’s up to you. In other words you should balance and at the same time do something outside the process. The best variant is to make the motion task more difficult. For instance you can draw some figures with the free hand or do something of the kind.
Next stage when doing this exercise is holding the object with other part of the body, for instance with fingers or an elbow and moving it from one point to the other keeping it upright. In this way the stick may become an indicator of your inner state. It will show you how good you are at controlling your psycho-emotional state.
Due to this method you can assess your psycho-muscular and psycho-emotional reactions. Thus you can make adjustments to your training in proper time.
In the end I’d like to warn you. Sometimes people ask me: “Can we balance two of three sticks at the same time?”
Alexey Alexeyevich Kadochnikov underlines that the balancing is not our final purpose. It’s one of many ways to reach the aim. Doing the exercise we don’t want to look like juggler and entertain the public with out skill to balance. We learn martial art for self defense according to the Kadochnikov Systema and this element just improves our physical and mental abilities.
You are welcome to leave comments concerning this topic.
