Systema

I've done a lot of different martial arts.

Um, around '92, 1992, um, I started training in a type of martial art called Systema.

Um, and I kinda stuck with that one.

I really enjoyed it, and I've been doing that one ever since 1992.

Um, the best thing your listeners can do if they really want to follow along with what I'm doing is, um, Fight Club has an app.

You can download the app.

It's literally Fight Club Systema.

I'll give you the, I'll give you the contacts and you can share it with your listeners if you want.

In this episode of Boundless Authenticity, we sit down with Emmanuel Manolakakis, owner and head instructor of Fight Club in Toronto, where every class is a master's class.

With over forty years in martial arts, thirty of them dedicated to Systema, Emmanuel has spent his life refining rare knowledge and, more importantly, learning how to pass it on.

We explore a simple question: How do you take decades of physical and philosophical training and distill it into wisdom simple enough to change someone's day, yet deep enough to change their life? Emmanuel shares stories from his journey from earning his degree at York University to a decade in business to founding Fight Club in two thousand and three to becoming a renowned international instructor known for his humor, creativity, and uncanny ability to bring out the best in people.

I hope that as you listen, you may find yourself reflecting on your own path, where you've been rigid and when you needed to flow, and where a little more authenticity could change everything.

And then ever since then it just, it, it's only grown.

I've, I've done many different martial arts, um, along the way, like all young men do, just hopping around, trying different stuff.

But then in nineteen ninety-three, ninety-four, I found a club called Systema, a form of Russian martial art, and I started training in it, and I never looked back.

I said, "This is the one for me." And, you know, I think most people can attest to that.

Kadashnikov deals with principles.

He very similar to Kadashnikov with respect to his form of Systema.

So this is very, very d- it's not like...

The closest thing if I would say, and just because of the animal system, the closest thing would be Silat.

10 years Muay Thai.

So all of this stuff, you know, that, that, to bring in, not, not because I want to, but you know, Muay Thai, I spent pretty well 10 years almost every, you know, a couple times every day on something like Krav Maga, the same thing.

You know, Systema, you know, 10 days down in southern Russia with Kra- Wichan Kol.

But what happens is these all things added to me, my knowledge on, you might say, a combative aspect.