Krav Maga Blog - May 2016

We often open ourselves up to the risk of property theft, by extending or changing the use, of things that belong to us. To give an example of this, I recently had to rationalize the use of a bag that I use to transport my laptop in; the bags original use was simply to house my laptop, but over the course of many months, it started to fulfil the role of a storage container, housing many valuable items, which would have been difficult for me to replace, had the bag been stolen. Also, because the bag had started to become...

A few weeks ago there was an incident in a restaurant in Taunton, Massachusetts, where an assailant went on a stabbing spree, killing one person and injuring several more. The incident, has caused several of my students to question what they should do in such a situation, and even if there is anything they could do if faced with a highly emotional individual stabbing and slashing everyone they come into contact with – it is worth noting that the attacker was in a highly erratic and frenzied state, and their attacks were delivered with full force, and complete commitment; the...

One component of situational awareness is recognizing abnormal actions and behaviors that individual(s) within an environment may engage in. To understand the abnormal - what is out of place, or an exception – you must first be able to recognize what is normal; this means establishing baselines. At the moment, as I’m writing this, my view overlooks a parking lot, and I have a “baseline” for what are normal activities to take place in a parking lot e.g. people moving to and from cars, loading the trunk up with shopping, fastening children into car seats etc. These are normal actions...

There’s a lot of different ways to use a heavy bag for training, however I know that many people have difficulty, using the bag and training, as if it were a “sparring” partner. Often bag workouts lack this component, and the bag simply becomes a target for unloading punches and kicks on, almost as if it is just an extra-large kick shield that doesn’t require the use of a partner to hold it. I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be used this way, rather that there are other ways in which it can be used, and these are worth exploring....

Many people who come to a Krav Maga class for the first time, have little or no experience of what real-life violence actually looks like; their last actual reference point may be a schoolyard fight they were in or witnessed. This, coupled with some CCTV clips from the news, and “realistic” TV and movie fights, could represent the whole of their understanding of violence. When someone takes part in what is billed as a reality-based self-defense class, they are effectively being told by the instructor that the attacks they are learning to defend themselves against are the ones they are...