I like competitive sports. I always feel bored at the gym – it’s way more interesting to be in the ring with sparring partners. It’s a continuous competition. I want to prove – not to the rival, to myself, – can I or can I not, will I be able to escape or not. You go to the training and get some from the coach. And immediately jump into different reality. It makes you psychologically ready for unexpected. It’s kind of school of life through street brawl.
I’ve been going to a regular gym for one year, and it all was quite traditionaclass="underline" 15 mins warm up, then exercise. It was just gymnastics basically, nothing else. And here you have a school of life.
THE TRAINING BASE.
Victor Lesnoy: We’ve tried almost everything. We were fighting with bats and bars, learned how to get away from a knife attack, trained fully dressed in a suit and with our shoes on – to imitate getting caught by surprise. The one I remember the most is the training with knifes. Zayashnikov invited the sparring partner who is a cold steels master. And here you are, standing in you suit, getting hit by a knife. Your task is to duck away from the stab maybe even missing one, but with minimum harm for yourself. It’s not about defeating the attacker, you have to get away from the situation, you are to fear and defend properly.
Sessions are quite harsh. But you have to understand that if you’re really learning martial arts and not getting punched then it’s just gymnastics.
I for example can’t fully understand some strikes if I’m not getting hit a little by the trainer. I got some, a lot and regularly, I was even walking around bruised. But well, you’re not coming there to play chess. You’re not a glass Barbie for trainer and sparring partner to get care of you.
My personal advice is to train without a head gear, otherwise you won’t get it all to the fullest.
We’ve been coming in suits to some trainings and were working on purely street punch technics. In street fight no one is actually doing straight punches (crosses) – you don’t have time to build a guard stand. Plus in 70% of the cases you’ll end up with your hand broken if you punch straight. That’s why you mostly use hooks and swing – the so-called “wedding punches”. Plus you use painful blows to the knee, the groin etc.
Professional boxer will take a look at what we do and say we’re not doing it right and it’s not a real boxing. But this is what street fight art is. Now I easily understand what harm can be done to me and what harm I can make myself to other person. This is exactly why I do my best not to apply this knowledge. Within few years I faced only one really extreme situation. We were driving our cabriolet in Nice with my wife. And while we were waiting for the street light, two Algerian guys tried to nab my wife’s bag. I jumped and punched one of them, the second ran away…
Valery Duzhin: I started training quite late in my life. First I came to a Sambo school. And it was a complete nonsense. This huge dude comes to the stage and says, playing with muscles: “Finally I get someone to hit the floor with.” Other guys, around 100 kilos each, were happy too: they got someone to work their technics on. And I realized I have to keep searching – standard learning approach is not for my age.
When a guy like me, not really young or sporty, facings a big man, he’s getting overwhelmed with the physical advantage of the partner. This is why I was always put in sparring with big guys. And I was taught specific moves. With heavy-weight, it’s useless to punch each other – you can as well try to hit a wall with the same success. But if he punches you, you’re in trouble. You have to “pull” these kind of guys on yourself, catch them on their move. There is a certain strategy. Big guys have weak knees, they are heavy, and hitting this area is very effective. He’s coming at you, you let him, moving aside, and then punching liver area or somewhere else, you have to act according to the situation. Or there is a “merry-go-round” move: you roll over the neck and kick the belly with your knee.
Also I remember a good training when we were commanded to curse out loud. You lay down and attacker hits you at your abs from above. And you have to curse each other. It was funny and very offending at the same time, but it was necessary. It is important to stay calm while someone is cursing at you and do moves you gotta do. And when you are cursing the other person you are getting a psychological advantage. Basically, it’s one of the tricks.
Yuri Suslikov: One of the most interesting and unusual trainings was when there were three of us against our instructor. Rules are simple – trainer can punch us in any way. And we can punch him. There was a funny case. After a “start” signal, the light in the room went off. And we were running around the ring, punching and kicking trainer, and he was punching us. It all goes for couple of minutes. Very interesting, incredibly hard and extremely exhausting. Then the light switched on and we realized that trainer was standing quietly in the corner all that time, and we were just punching each other. After this you realize very clearly that in the crowd you can punch your attackers an as well get hit by those who are actually with you. When everyone is punching around, its way more easy to hit the guy next to you rather than guy standing on the opposite side.
THE FIRST FIGHT.
Viktor Lesnoy: I was fighting 3 times. No use to ask me about the first time – don’t remember a thing, everything blurred. I remember the third fight. We had a team of three people, and were imitating the real life situation – how to walk through an aggressive mob when you’re leaving a night club. We were supposed to come from the locker room and go through the entire room (around 25 meters) to the next door without losing anyone from the team. And we have 9 bad guys against us.
We’d been training for a long time, thinking over how to build a group so that we wouldn’t get split up and get out asses kicked apart. It’s useless to fight in that situation. You can try to punch someone when there are 9 of them – but well, you’ll hit one or two but will get knocked out by those who are on the sides. Or you’ll get one from the team lost so two will have to go back and then again you’re all done. We were going wedge. As the biggest fan of getting beaten up, I was walking in the very front. And of course got the most out of all. Then I had two of my team mates walking behind. One was kicking everyone who came by, what the other one was doing I have no idea. I was trudging through, got punched in a head, in the knee, but we went through it from the first time and won – the goal was achieved. The attacking guys were very surprised, they were sure we would stop and give them a fight. None of them assumed we would go through like this. We got some, a lot, but we won. During the fight and after you don’t feel the pain – adrenaline, happiness, euphoria.
Valery Duzhin: To work with punching bag and fight at the ring are two completely different things. You have no one else beside you on the ring – survive as you can. This is extremely important psychological thing: when you face the fact that you can get punched and fall. You’re there now, without police, and you gotta stand up for yourself. When you’re put in such conditions, it’s super cool. It’s like you feel you’re becoming a real deal.