History
Systema is a Russian martial art made known worldwide in the 1990s by Mikhail Ryabko and his student Vladimir Vasiliev, who opened a school in Toronto in 1993. Its teachers link it to old Russian fighting traditions and to the training of Russian special units.
Systema has no fixed forms or belts. Training focuses on breathing, relaxation, posture and moving freely under pressure, against one or several attackers, with and without weapons.
Historians point out that there is little written evidence of one continuous ancient "systema"; what is well documented is the modern teaching that spread from the 1990s. Classes include ground work, falls, knife and stick defence, and slow push-ups, squats and walks done in time with the breath.