Krav Maga Blog - Sep 2017

One of the ways to test security protocols and systems is to run a set of simulations against them to find out and discover their weak points, and the ways in which they can be breached and compromised. Every protocol and system has gaps and vulnerabilities that can be exploited, and running simulations allows you to expose and understand them. Changing a simple variable within a combination can cause a system to fail. Self-defense techniques, methodologies and solutions are no different; change a variable, such as the way a person reacts to a strike/punch, and you can see your solution...

At its root, martial arts and reality-based self-defense training is about intent; recognizing our partner’s, or aggressor’s intent whilst disguising/masking our own. Before I started training in Krav Maga I was – and still am - a Judoka (Judo Practitioner). A large part of Judo, is recognizing your partner’s intent i.e. what are they thinking about, and preparing to do, etc., and then formulating a response. At the same time, you want to prevent your partner from recognizing your intent, as this will allow them to formulate a strategy/response to prevent you succeeding, and possibly countering you. The earlier you...

The most important piece of training equipment you have is your training partner. The way the two of you interact together is an integral part of both yours and their development. To get the most out of a training session both of you must be “working” together, however this doesn’t always happen. Sometimes it’s because one partner adds an objective that they feel the instructor forgot to mention, such as adding in undue resistance so that their partner gets to experience how a real-life attacker might react or respond (something that at some point needs to be practiced, but not...

It is very easy to get bogged down in the fine details of something, and miss the point. A visiting student from another school, once tried to engage me in a debate, about the orientation of the fist when punching. His argument against me fully rotating the fist – so that the thumb is positioned down, at the “bottom” of the fist – was that this was unnatural, and that if you raised the arms straight up and made a fist, it would be at a 45-degree angle. I explained why I punched this way e.g. fist-to-wrist alignment, engagement of...