Krav Maga Blog - Jun 2013

Knife Disarming I don’t really believe in Knife Disarming, and to be honest I never have. I believe it is a dangerous tactic/strategy to follow on the street – in reality – and that it leads to bad training practices on the mats. I have trained at many schools, where the disarming of a knife or other weapon signifies the end of the fight. Really? In what world is this true? If you believe that when you disarm somebody of a weapon the fight ends you are very much mistaken; maybe in the movies but not in real life. Take a moment...

Sparring Many schools use sparring as their method of “replicating” the dynamics of a street or real-life fight, and whilst there are moments and elements of sparring matches which contain some of those experienced in real-life incidents of violence, the differences between the two are greater than the similarities. This is not to say that sparring doesn’t have a place in training just that its place is not to try and replicate real-life violence. Sparring has its place alongside pad-work, stress testing and other drills, it is neither, less or more important than these other training tools and should not enjoy anymore...

A friend of mine was recently involved in a situation where he intervened on behalf of a stranger who had been given one hell of a beating by a group. He then became the target of the group’s leader who went to assault him with a bottle. By a show of force and posturing further violence was avoided, and the group ended up assisting the person who they’d assaulted (a friend!), and walking off with their tails between their legs, after having been given a lecture on the inappropriate use of violence. Whilst the whole incident when condensed into one...

A large matted space is a great training environment. It’s safe and allows you the room to comfortably practice techniques in a productive fashion. However it’s a deliberately artificial environment, and one that doesn’t reflect reality. This is why Krav Maga training has to be taken to other locations, so that an element/degree of reality can be brought into your practice – these “environments” don’t have to exactly replicate the ones you may find yourself in but should emphasize certain environmental factors that are universal to all e.g. unstable and uneven terrain etc. These environments should also challenge some of...