Systema Training is “B.S”….and That’s a Good Thing!

In his groundbreaking book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, Stanford biologist Robert Sapolsky contrasts the life of a zebra on the savannah with the life of a modern human — and the difference has everything to do with stress.

A zebra lives with a calm psychological baseline. It grazes, drinks, wanders. Occasionally a lion gives chase, the stress response fires hard, and then — if the zebra escapes — everything returns to normal. The alarm goes off, then it shuts off.

For humans, the alarm rarely shuts off.

We face chronic, low-level stress from every direction: screaming kids to shuttle around, demanding bosses and customers, the pressure to appear hyper-successful, the social media scroll that never ends. The body’s natural stress response needs a corresponding relaxation response to return to homeostasis — but modern life never gives it the chance.

The result? Chronic stress that quietly dismantles you from the inside out. High blood pressure, weakened immunity, disrupted sleep, reproductive problems, obesity, diabetes. Sapolsky’s research is thorough and sobering. (Read the book.)

What Most Martial Arts Training Gets Wrong About Stress

Here’s the common belief in martial arts training: pile on as much stress as possible so your students can handle it in a real situation. Fight fire with fire. Match aggression with aggression.

To a point, it works. But remember the zebra.

The zebra’s stress response fires rarely, hard, and then fully recovers. It doesn’t run sprints through the savannah all day to “stay ready.” Chronic activation of the stress response — even in training — carries the same health costs as the stress you’re supposedly learning to manage.

I know this firsthand.

When I was younger, I trained to channel fear and anger into power. I learned to get amped up, to flip the switch, to go. And it made me worse. My precision broke down. I got emotionally hijacked. Outside the dojo, I was quicker to anger, easier to set off, perpetually braced for a fight that wasn’t coming.

I was living inside a chronic stress response. I had become the exact thing Sapolsky warned about.

A Different Path: Martial Arts Stress Relief Through Systema

That’s when I found Systema — and everything changed.

I had always believed that true martial arts mastery meant staying calm under pressure: the still point in the middle of the storm. I just hadn’t found a training method that could actually get most people there. The “reality-based” arts I’d trained in got results, but at a cost.

When I trained with Vladimir Vasiliev and experienced Systema firsthand, I saw something different: genuinely brutal effectiveness, trained through a method built around calm, breath, and relaxation under duress.

Systema training is what I call B.S. — Beyond Stress.

Rather than repeatedly spiking the stress response and hoping students adapt, Systema teaches you to deliberately access your relaxation response in the middle of chaos. You learn to breathe when someone is on top of you. To think when the situation is unclear. To stay in your body when everything in you wants to flee.

Your options in a crisis expand beyond “fight or flight.” You learn to flow — physically and psychologically.

Why This Matters for Stress Relief Beyond the Mat

For Longmont residents looking for martial arts training that addresses stress — not just combat skill — Systema offers something genuinely rare: a training method that makes you healthier the more you practice it.

The same skills that help you stay calm when someone grabs you also help you stay calm in traffic, in a tense conversation, in the middle of a hard week. The breath work, the relaxation drills, the controlled exposure to discomfort — these aren’t just tactical. They’re physiological training for your nervous system.

Your training should not do you more harm than good — in the short term and the long term. You may have to fight for your life one day, but you have to live your life every day.