George S. Ledyard

I couldn't tell from the announcement who was actually teaching the seminar. Just as in Aikido there is a huge divide between the skill levels of the folks who are doing this stuff. This is nothing against the folks who are teaching out there, it is the same with Aikido, most of the folks running dojos are not Shihan.

If you want to get some sense of Systema as you see it in the clip shown here, you have to train with Michael himself (shown), Vladimir (Toronto) or one of Vlad's students who are traveling around. You need to feel what the guys can do who trained directly under Vlad in Toronto. There are some excellent up and coming folks who are what we would consider "soto deshi". Several of my former students ar now instructors in Systema and could give one a good presentation of what it's about. They can do some great stuff, even after only training a few years. But if you want to see the "magic" you need to make sure you are seeing someone senior (they don't have ranks like we do so it's more of a resume kind of thing - who did you train with, how long, how often, are you still training with them regularly, etc?) You don't want to be making decisions based on seeing just anyone. It would be like deciding Aikido isn't worth doing after training with some Nidan from some obscure dojo somewhere...