Krav Maga Blog - Dec 2017

In last week’s article, I looked at some of the reasons why people are reluctant to act, when they are presented with a threat or danger. This reluctance, is very different to “freezing”, which is largely an emotional response, rather than a psychological one. Reluctance, is much more akin to the denial and discounting of the danger, and the deliberation involved in reaching a decision, as to how to deal with the threat, than the physical inability to respond i.e. freezing. This is not to say that the two won’t occur in tandem, just that the methods to overcome a...

There is a huge difference between “freezing” in the face of a threat or danger, and being “reluctant” to act; yet we often make the mistake of confusing these two very different things as being one and the same. When somebody truly freezes, they are experiencing an emotional response to danger, however once this passes (and this often happens before they are physically attacked – as most assaults happen face-to-face and are preceded by dialogue), an individual is still left with their cognitive process intact, and so has the ability to act. Unfortunately, many people will still fail to do...

We have already lost a lot of our survival skills, due to our modern lifestyles. We are no longer as aware or curious about our environments, as we once were, and we generally spend less and less time thinking about and considering our personal safety. Modernization has meant that our lives our generally safer than they have ever been – compare living in a city today, with a century ago, etc. Some of these changes are good i.e. the chances of being murdered and killed, are a lot less than they were a thousand years ago, and some of these...

The elderly are a naturally vulnerable group; with age there comes a deterioration in physical abilities. Strength and movement start to decline, and because of this, the ability to physically defend yourself when attacked is reduced. It would be nice to think that through training we can delay these things – and to a certain extent we can – but for those of us with elderly parents and relatives, who have never trained, this isn’t an option (my parents are in their 80’s – and have never done any martial arts or self-defense training). There are those who would suggest...