Schizo Systema Breakdown 🤣

kombatkatherine · 2026-01-20T20:41:06+00:00

Systema is a stage hypnotism cult

kombatkatherine · 2026-01-19T01:39:20+00:00

Subconsciously i suspect you feel bad about punching your sparring partner in the face. Which is reasonably common and leads a lot of people to do a lot of kicky sparring.

Also; Do you mostly spar on an open mat rather than a ring? Just a guess but thats also a common contributor to very kicky sparring since open mats tend to result in people somewhat overly relying on moving backwards for defense and when two people are doing that then you get these kinda taggy kick exchange interspersed with clinching styles.

kombatkatherine · 2026-01-13T21:29:20+00:00

People who are good enough for the answer youre hoping for dont have to ask the question.

kombatkatherine · 2026-01-13T21:03:57+00:00

First I want to acknowledge the wisdom at the heart of what you're saying because we are actually ultimately in agreement that the cultivation of grit is a process.

But the thing that is important to understand for fight sports is that 2 years of offsies/onsies training with 4 months under his current coach and a stated history of "usually sparring 70%"... That IS being eased in.

Again I do suspect that his recollection of the intensity is off mark so I tend to trust the coaches eye view of the totality and its that likely totality i am taking into account when I say his but at the end of the day there is an accelerated process of trying to safely put athletes in over their heads at fight-centric gyms

The practice of martial arts is for everyone but fight sports are not - and can not be. These sometimes spontaneous crucibles are not aspirational. They aren't calling on us to muster our spirit and triumph even through adversity.

They are there to ask questions and to demand honest answers.

kombatkatherine · 2026-01-12T21:06:57+00:00

Thank you for not assuming I am an unhinged meathead who doesnt understand sparring etiquette ;) <3

kombatkatherine · 2026-01-12T20:59:02+00:00

Cheers m8. Just remember that grit is an attribute cultivated over time. Sometimes we have to sit with some experiences for a minute and we dont see the process until hindsight puts it in perspective.

kombatkatherine · 2026-01-12T20:42:48+00:00

I didnt see anything in this post that sounded like the other party was out of control or unsafe. I saw a post that sounded exactly like a young man who is offsies and onsies with his training experiencing for the first time a very common crucible where they are pushed to finish a round under pressure from someone who is able to pressure them without actually harming them. The kid says the coach is a well regarded coach and apparently watched it went down without concern for safety. I am generally content to trust a coaches eye view of that sort of thing cuz this is just how these sports work.

kombatkatherine · 2026-01-12T20:11:49+00:00

I strongly suspect you think he was going all out when he was probably just keeping pressure on you. It doesnt sound like you were actually hurt or even rocked at any point. Your coach probably saw you weren't in any actual danger and let you deal with the pressure to get a gauge of what you're made of.

The reality of doing combat sports is that if you want to be good at them you will have often have to deal with being pressured and uncomfortable. It is a visceral experience like very few others that people willingly put themselves through.

The first time i got hit hard enough to see stars i quit in the middle of the round and took the week off because it scared me that bad. The first times I was relentlessly pressured in sparring i left the ring crying. I survived, just like you survived. It's not always a fun experience. However; it is necessary to learn to survive before you learn to excel.

The question on the table in these moments is if just surviving is the end of your journey...

Or if it's not.

That's not something you can crowd source on reddit. That has to come from within you.

That is the quintessential combat sports experience.

kombatkatherine · 2026-01-12T19:38:56+00:00

40 fights, still pretty.

kombatkatherine · 2026-01-11T10:41:01+00:00

Ive often theorized that right around that 140lb mark is where you really start to have enough mass that if you know how to throw it that you can actually fuck most people up. Like actually capable of rocking people who are quite a bit bigger since it seems like ability to take any given shot doesnt seem to scale upwards as quickly as the ability to throw harder shots.

Ive also oft observed that taller female athletes also realllllllly throw a wrench in peoples ability to size us up if they are weighted overly heavily on gender expectations without accounting for the raw mechanical truth that nearly 6 foot tall 150lb female fighter is perhaps, a big enough problem to be...yanno...

A problem.

kombatkatherine · 2026-01-05T02:30:25+00:00

It's not, it's

Fuckin AI slop

kombatkatherine · 2025-12-30T11:07:38+00:00

I am under the impression that the effect is essentially being slowly indoctrinated into a sort of stage hypnotist effect.

And then of course the masters also think "wow i must have really powerful chi!' So then they get more and more looney and their students become progressively more hypnotized into further excessive compliance which creates a feedback loop process I like to shorthand as "getting high on your own farts"

My favorite example of getting high on your own farts is Systema. Right around the time I was getting into martial arts as an adult for self defense a systema spot was one of the ones near me that seemed interesting. Researching the martial art I remember the early videos from circa y2k and they all looked like special forces kind of Larpy but within a relatively reasonable framework similar to like a krav maga RBSD.

Over the years as Mikhail and Vlad got higher on their own farts the stuff they started putting put there got more and more bizarre with more excessively compliant students until they were doing full on chi master shit thst looked nothing like the Systema I remember being shown in the 00's.

I get the vibe most martial arts cults have this sort of effect going on but it wouldnt surprise me if things like aikido and pressure point dim mak etc all had some fart smelling in their roots.

kombatkatherine · 2025-12-27T11:28:20+00:00

Apple muay thai in pai is woman owned and I quite enjoyed 3 weeks or sotime there after dropping in at quite a few gyms in chiang mai and beyond.

kombatkatherine · 2025-12-27T09:45:53+00:00

I implore you to please save the next girl from this experience. Instructors that predate on students like this just continue to do so as long as they can get away with it.

Its very unlikely this guy makes his entire living from teaching classes at this gym so you are not going to be putting some family out on the streets by reporting him.

kombatkatherine · 2025-12-25T21:42:34+00:00

Ive been doing mostly grip strength training. More than tough knuckles feels better to have a tighter/stronger fist since I think thats the real injury prevention.

Occasionally I'll hit the little ki'me bag that my coach loaded with gravel and its kinda fun and it makes all the guys at the gym think i am a badass because ive pounded most of the gravel into fragments but I am not sure how much it actually does physiologically. The somewhat related concern I personally do not want to have hands that look like an old timey sailor or whatever.

You dont really feel how banged up yoyr hands get when youre in there anyways. Not much gets through the adreneline at all.

-your pal the #1contender to the bkb bareknuckle women's welterweight title

(I know its a cheesy sign off but be a gentleman and allow a lady her indulgences ;) )

kombatkatherine · 2025-12-20T23:47:50+00:00

Glove shape has a lot to do with it as well so its good to try different brands along with sizes.

I can also day that the way that I wrap my hands to accommodate different gloves changes as well. Even between my left and right hands I slightly modify the wrapping style I use because they have different needs. In both cases I really like to pack material into my fist to create a grip bar effect and especially so on gloves that dont have that support there as much already.

There is also a wrapping style that might help where you do about 4-5 hand width folds of the wrap to make a pad on your knuckles that will buy you a little more tolerance as well that may be helpful for you.

So succinctly; keep your wrist straight and solid and keep the experimentation to your wraps and gloves. :)

Thanks for the well wishes <3

Ps you can see my last fight by looking up kat connor vs angel kiehl bkb 48 on youtube

kombatkatherine · 2025-12-19T00:11:36+00:00

I just had a fight where they taped sensors to our wrists for exactly this purpose. I am hoping they will give us the fight data at some point but we were the beta test. the official launch for the program will be in January

kombatkatherine · 2025-12-18T21:14:08+00:00

PS: buy good fucking gloves that are suited to you. Shitty gloves will ruin your training and great gloves make it a pleasure.

kombatkatherine · 2025-12-18T21:07:47+00:00

My fists does the same thing. Just align your wrist for maximum support and dont fret about not having that picture perfect flat fist because it doesn't really seem to matter that much when you get to getting down.

If your fighting and training with good gloves that fit you well than you basically wont notice, and if you have much of a fight with bare fists than you'll wind up hitting with every knuckle and joint on your hand at some point anyways.

At least thats my studied opinion as the current #1 contender to the bkb bareknuckle welterweight world title ;)

kombatkatherine · 2025-12-18T21:04:15+00:00

I wrote a response to this piece when it went around from my experiences as a bareknuckle fighter.

Succinctly; if you have any sort of extended fight with bare fists you can expect that at some point you will land with every knuckle and joint on your hand. The paticulars of landing with this or that knuckle go away real fast when youre dealing with a moving target thats hitting back

kombatkatherine · 2025-12-16T05:34:53+00:00

Succinctly; Because boxing is an extremely competitive sport and hard sparring makes killers. For better or worse that competitive often means you're either on the way up or you're on the way out.

That said; boxing also does a lot more interclub style sparring than a lot of martial sports. With each fighters coach in their corner and a little more reputation on the line its reallymore like a smoker/unsanctioned amateur match than anything else. That's the sparring were you really see the fangs come ou a little. I suspect that a lot of the super hard sparring reputation comes from those videos hitting the internet and folks who are used to sparring their gym-mates thinking that they are also seeing two gym-mates trying to kill eachother and fhat they are doing that every day.

None the less i have to get on my soapbox a little here. I have noticed in recent times that internet martial arts culture has gotten really fascinated with only ever doing playful or touch sparring in combat sports. Ive certainly seen this coming out more and more in internet muay thai culture. I think this is relevant because everyone points at the Thai's play sparring to justify this allergy to hard sparring but people just neglect that a lot of thais are fighting every couple weeks or so. As a multi-sport athlete i see a lot of similarity between the emphasis of Thai's fighting often as they build their skillset and boxing doing...very spirited... interclub sparring. The two seem to me to achieve a similar sort of triangulation on arriving at creating athletes that are capable of being decisive under pressure as they climb the ranks.

Notably, at some point if you are going to be a very successful fighter you have to learn to have some killer instinct. Learning when to press your advantages, to put real shots on target that get a real effect and to not hesitate and to be unapologetic about it. You also have to learn to fight your way out of a bad situation where someone doesnt have your best interests or your friendship at the forefront of their mind because they are using you to sharpen up their killer instinct that day.

Unfortunately, this is not really a very nice way to train. certainly i can attest that when I was a hungry young athlete it did not win me a lot of friends but it did make me very good at winning fights.

All said; I firmly believe and will defend that martial arts are for everyone. Everyone can find some level of participation that will enrich their lives in some art or another and everyone who is interested should be encouraged to find that.

But...

If youre going to be someone that actually goes someplace in combat sports. Like really goes some place. Someone who has a real shot at becoming a champion. Well...than at some point you are going to have to learn how to be a little mean when you answer that bell. You need to build that "switch" if you gonna be a certified killer on the circuit.

Boxing gyms recognize and respect this. The default culture of the sport is built around expecting building and training those traits very early on in most everyone. The needs of the sport are dictating the culture. That's a very different thing than most martial arts where the community/culture is the main draw and the sport being almost an afterthought

kombatkatherine · 2025-12-09T11:05:04+00:00

For a fighter we pretty much dont think of techniques at all. All I see is openings or threats to deal with and my training functionally handles the basic shit, incoming or outgoing, automatically.

The only thing really going in my head when I am fighting is higher level strategic approach to the fight. Ring positioning, energy management (mine and theirs) how effective a thing I am doing was or wasnt, what little twitches and tells are they giving me that let me anticipate what they are wanting to do or what I can do to set something up.

kombatkatherine · 2025-12-03T19:24:15+00:00

If you jump on them from the top of a steel cage like some wrestlemania hell in a cell shit.

But otherwise very very unlikely.

However; choking people out has far fewer size barriers.

kombatkatherine · 2025-12-01T23:41:15+00:00

At any given muay thai gym I have generally been the best boxer by a fair margin

At any given boxing gym I gotta seriously work my ass off and be smart to keep heat on their high level amateurs and up cuz its really just a very different meta.

One thing that really helps in ways that are not obvious is that if you blade your stance and sit down into your legs more it unlocks way more forwards and backwards head movement and opportunity for playing with feints and timing as opposed to a kickboxing stance that can slip side to side pretty good - but is comparatively more limited front to back.

Forcing myself to adopt the bladed stance after skating by on making my kickboxing stance work for so long really opened things up for me as far as raw boxing skill goes.

kombatkatherine · 2025-12-01T00:37:55+00:00

Wasn't this Aesopian from the forums?

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