Maryland Systema Instructors Train Military Personnel: 5 Powerful Skills

Individual service members independently seek additional practice in breathing, balance, movement, awareness, and self-defense.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ROCKVILLE, MD, March 25, 2023 — Maryland Systema instructors train military personnel who independently seek additional martial arts and self-defense practice. The instruction focuses on movement, breathing, balance, situational awareness, and decisions during controlled physical pressure.

The participation has been informal and initiated by individual service members. The training was not conducted through an official partnership with the United States military and does not represent an endorsement, contract, or official training relationship with any branch, unit, or government agency.

Maryland Systema provides opportunities for participants to examine how they respond when distance, timing, resistance, and available space change. Exercises use controlled contact and progressive resistance, with adjustments for experience and physical ability.

“Service members often bring valuable experience, discipline, and physical ability into training,” said Jim Eglin, founder and Chief Instructor of Maryland Systema. “Our work gives them another opportunity to examine how breathing, balance, movement, and decision-making function when conditions become less predictable.”

How Maryland Systema Instructors Train Military Personnel

Instruction begins with a clear task and a manageable level of pressure. Participants first examine the movement involved before adding changes in speed, direction, timing, or resistance.

Depending on individual needs and experience, practice can include pushing, pulling, grabs, restraint, controlled striking, ground movement, and movement in restricted spaces. Exercises can also address awareness around multiple people and preserving mobility while helping another person.

The purpose is additional martial arts and personal-protection practice. The instruction does not imitate military operations or replace official training.

Maryland Systema instructors train military personnel through the same emphasis on observation, controlled progression, and useful feedback that guides the school’s adult instruction. Five connected skill areas give that practice its structure.

1. Breathing During Effort and Physical Contact

Breathing practice helps participants examine their reactions as a task becomes more demanding.

A participant may hold the breath before contact, tighten the hands, or become rigid while working against resistance. Those changes give the instructor a starting point for examining unnecessary effort.

Exercises connect breathing with walking, turning, physical exertion, ground movement, and controlled partner pressure.

The aim is to notice interruptions while remaining attentive to the task. When the pace prevents useful observation, the instructor can reduce speed or resistance so the participant has time to identify what changed.

Breathing is not presented as a guarantee of calm or protection from injury. It is one part of maintaining attention and movement during practice.

As Maryland Systema instructors train military personnel, participants have opportunities to study these habits without needing to complete every exercise at maximum intensity.

2. Balance and Recovery After Disruption

A missed step or unsuccessful response does not have to end the learning process.

Participants practice recognizing changes in their position and recovering the ability to move. Controlled pushing, pulling, and grabbing exercises reveal when someone leans too far, fixes the feet, or relies on the arms while the rest of the body remains poorly positioned.

The next task is to identify an adjustment.

That adjustment can involve changing position, restoring support, reducing unnecessary tension, or moving toward available space. The appropriate response depends on the pressure and surroundings.

This work gives participants time to examine recovery after mistakes. Instead of restarting immediately, an exercise can continue at a controlled pace so the participant studies what comes next.

The emphasis is on responding to the present situation. Repeating the original movement with more effort is not always useful once the conditions have changed.

3. Movement in Restricted Spaces

Open training areas provide room that is not always available elsewhere.

Furniture, walls, doorways, vehicles, and nearby people affect where someone can step or turn. Carrying an object or starting from an awkward position introduces further limits.

Training can include these restrictions gradually, allowing participants to examine which movements remain available.

The instructor helps participants connect movement with a clear purpose. An adjustment should improve balance, create space, reduce a restriction, or preserve the ability to move again.

Maryland Systema instructors train military personnel to examine these relationships through controlled exercises rather than depend on a single starting position.

Participants also practice recognizing when a larger movement creates a problem. A smaller adjustment made earlier can be more useful than a forceful action made after space has narrowed.

The objective remains mobility and awareness as the exercise develops.

4. Awareness of Distance, Contact, and Surroundings

Partner work asks participants to manage more than the point where contact occurs.

Concentrating entirely on a grip can make someone overlook a change in footing. Focusing on one partner can reduce attention to another person or an available route.

Exercises encourage participants to notice the wider setting while continuing the immediate task.

Distance, movement, obstacles, and changes in direction all provide information. Participants practice recognizing those details and adjusting before their options become more restricted.

The same process includes observing internal reactions. A pause in breathing, rushed movement, or increased tension can signal that attention has narrowed.

The aim is not to monitor every detail equally. It is to recognize information that affects the next decision.

Changes in pace and complexity allow experienced participants to examine these skills in greater detail while maintaining control.

5. Decisions When the First Response No Longer Fits

A planned response can stop being useful when another person changes direction or resistance.

Systema practice gives participants opportunities to identify that point and choose a different action. The work emphasizes continued assessment rather than completing a familiar sequence regardless of what happens.

Participants consider whether an action improves their position, preserves balance, or creates an opportunity to disengage.

Training also examines circumstances involving another person who needs help. Communication, awareness of that person’s movement, and access to assistance become part of the task.

When Maryland Systema instructors train military personnel, these exercises remain within the scope of supplementary martial arts and self-defense practice.

The purpose is to examine choices under controlled pressure. It is not to prescribe operational responses or substitute for a participant’s professional requirements.

A useful outcome is a clearer understanding of why an adjustment worked and when it would no longer fit.

Progressive Resistance Makes Feedback More Useful

Partner exercises provide timing, weight, contact, and changing movement that solo practice cannot reproduce.

The quality of that work depends on clear communication. Participants need to understand the task, the expected resistance, and how to stop or request an adjustment.

An instructor can increase one demand at a time. Changing direction creates a different challenge from increasing force. Separating those changes makes it easier to understand what caused a difficulty.

This progression is part of how Maryland Systema instructors train military personnel who participate independently. Existing fitness or experience does not remove the need to establish control within a new exercise.

An experienced participant can still benefit from slowing down to examine a missed detail.

The aim is to provide enough resistance to expose a habit while preserving enough control to work on it. Greater intensity has value only when it continues to serve that purpose.

Additional Practice for Participants With Different Backgrounds

Military personnel do not all arrive with the same martial arts experience, movement habits, or personal training goals.

Some participants may be familiar with contact practice. Others may want to examine breathing, balance, or movement from positions that feel less comfortable.

Instruction can adjust through pace, range, resistance, and starting position. The instructor can also help participants distinguish a familiar habit from a response that fits the current task.

Maryland Systema’s discussions of Systema versus boxing for self-defense and Systema versus Krav Maga provide additional background on differing training priorities.

These comparisons help explain the school’s approach. They do not establish that one method produces the same results for every person or situation.

Participants are encouraged to bring specific questions and examine their responses through controlled practice.

Independent Reading on Attention and Performance

The relationship between attention, preparation, and performance is also discussed outside martial arts instruction.

Human Performance Resources by CHAMP’s article, Mental Skills for Optimal Performance, published in 2017, covers goal setting, attention, mental rehearsal, and stress-management practices.

The resource offers background for readers interested in how deliberate practice and attention relate to performance. It does not evaluate or endorse Maryland Systema’s instruction.

Within the school’s training, participants can apply a simple learning process: identify a task, observe what happens, make an adjustment, and review the result.

A specific observation provides more direction than a general judgment that an exercise went well or badly. Participants can examine whether they noticed a change earlier, maintained balance, or recovered with less unnecessary effort.

Informal Participation and Scope of Instruction

Maryland Systema’s work with military personnel has involved individual service members participating independently.

It should not be interpreted as an endorsement, contract, partnership, or official training relationship with the United States military or any specific branch, unit, or government agency.

Maryland Systema instructors train military personnel as individual students seeking additional practice. The instruction does not represent military certification or replace official requirements.

The school also provides group classes, private lessons, workshops, and specialized instruction for adults from different professional backgrounds.

This distinction keeps the scope of the announcement clear: the reported activity concerns independent participation in Maryland Systema instruction, not an institutional military program.

Training Information and Individual Goals

Adults interested in additional practice can contact Maryland Systema to discuss their experience, goals, and scheduling needs.

A focused starting question helps the instructor identify useful work. A participant might want to examine loss of balance during contact, breathing during effort, movement from the ground, or the tendency to remain fixed on one point.

The discussion can also address physical limitations and the appropriate level of resistance.

As Maryland Systema instructors train military personnel and other adult participants, the emphasis remains on understanding the task before increasing its demands.

After an exercise, participants can identify one adjustment to revisit. That might involve moving the feet sooner, recognizing an opening, or reducing effort that does not improve position. Testing that observation with another partner or a changed task provides further feedback.

Continued practice gives participants opportunities to examine whether an improvement carries beyond one familiar arrangement. The goal is a clearer understanding of movement, awareness, and decisions under changing pressure.

About Maryland Systema

Maryland Systema provides practical adult self-defense training based on awareness, breathing, movement, balance, controlled contact, and responsible decision-making.

Founder and Chief Instructor Jim Eglin began training in Systema in 2013 and earned his Full Systema Instructor Certification in 2019 under Vladimir Vasiliev. He renewed his certification in 2022. His broader training includes Krav Maga, Judo, Knight Jiu-Jitsu®, and Boxing.

Additional information about the school’s teaching background is available on the Maryland Systema instructor page.

Maryland Systema offers adult group classes in Rockville and Takoma Park, Maryland. Private lessons and specialized training are available throughout the Washington, DC area.

For additional information, contact:

Jim Eglin
Founder and Chief Instructor
Maryland Systema
Phone: 301-326-9146
Email: jim@marylandsystema.com
Website: marylandsystema.com