Unlike athletes in a sport, we don’t really have “the big game” or “the main event” to prepare for. Instead, we often find ourselves training…to train. I recently did have to prepare for “the big game” in the form of the Level 4 Krav Maga instructors course. Through much research, experimentation, and trial and (lots of) error, I think I have put together for myself a pretty good training method that served me very well for my latest adventure at Krav Maga Worldwide West LA. Just so there can be no claims of false advertising, I’ll disclose now that I will detail this method in Part II of this series. Part I will focus on the methods used and lessons learned from the training for the first three instructors courses.

This post has been a work in progress for over a year. I didn’t complete it because it felt… well, incomplete. It wasn’t until I finished the Level 4 instructors test that I knew I had at least reached a meaningful mile marker on what has at times been a bumpy road of self-education. I offer what follows not as a paradigm of exercise science or as some sort of look-what-I-can-do braggadocio. I wasn’t training for a powerlifting meet or the CrossFit Games, so while it was important to get stronger and faster, I wasn’t concerned with adding a truckload to my total or shaving seconds off my “Fran” time. I just wanted to kick ass, and the methods outlined below had varying degrees of success and failure. My hope is that if you find yourself needing to prepare for an event such as this you can have a much less steep learning curve by avoiding my missteps. Alternatively, just find a good trainer and pay him or her handsomely to fuss with the minutia for you!

One more note: For those people who can just naturally kick ass without any regard given to specialized training and nutrition—I hate you with the fiery passion of one thousand suns.

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