Augmenting Krav Maga Training, Part II: Skills

In Part I, I discussed the merits of augmenting your Krav Maga training with a strength and conditioning—general physical preparedness—program. Let’s take a look at augmenting our current training with some specific physical preparedness in the form of skills work.

In a way, we’re already augmenting on a regular basis. The Bas Rutten Mixed Martial Arts Workout is something used by almost all Krav Maga Worldwide schools with great frequency. There are direct parallels to our system, but “The Bas Tapes” are, strictly speaking, not Krav Maga. Bas also contributed to the expansion of our groundfighting curriculum.

The open-ended circle around the kouf-mem represents the open nature of the system: New ideas and techniques are continually added into the system, while less-than-optimal ideas are removed. Now, that doesn’t mean that we can just go making adjustments all willy-nilly. Changes to the curriculum are made only after serious consideration by the most experienced senior Krav Maga Worldwide instructors. However, gaining skills and perspective from outside the system can serve to strengthen your knowledge of and aptitude for Krav Maga. Often times, seeing something new can make the light go on and make sense of something you previously struggled with.

Unlike a strength and conditioning program, I don’t necessarily think non-Krav skills work is requisite for everyone. I do, however, recommend gaining a basic knowledge of other arts/systems/sports. Watch some boxing, watch some MMA. Learn some terminology, learn to at least recognize the fundamentals. On the street, there are far more people who know things other than Krav Maga. The rapid rise in popularity of MMA means that there are now a lot of people with basic fighting skills, and not all of them are self-disciplined enough to avoid confrontation.

You can augment your training formally at another school, or you can take a more self-directed approach by studying from videos and books. There is becoming a glut of MMA books available; it seems like every combat athlete is releasing his own tome of kicking ass. And most of them are really well done.

Below is just a smattering of recommendations. I didn’t include any materials from “traditional” martial arts, but you shouldn’t dismiss them outright. Yes, most of the strip-mall Fred Simmons schools are worse than useless, but I can personally attest (and Brian would most assuredly agree) that past experience in traditional martial arts made many Krav Maga techniques even easier to learn than they are already designed to be.
 

• Krav Maga Worldwide
  Okay, this isn’t really augmenting, but there are some things (particularly more advanced techniques) that we don’t train very often in class. Having at least a familiarity with these techniques will help “string together” related techniques you already know, and also shallow the learning curve when we do address them in class.
  • Krav Maga for Beginners – Darren Levine & Ryan Hoover
  • Complete Krav Maga – Darren Levine & John Whitman
  • Black Belt Krav Maga – Darren Levine & Ryan Hoover
  • Krav Maga – DVDs
• krav maga
  There are a lot of other krav maga organizations. Some of this stuff is similar or even identical to KMW, some is different but intriguing, some is garbage that will get you killed. These are not garbage:
  • Krav Maga: How to Defend Yourself Against Armed Assault – Imi Sde-Or (the founder of krav maga) & Eyal Yanilov
  • Krav Maga: An Essential Guide to the Renowned Method – David Kahn
  • Advanced Krav Maga: The Next Level of Fitness and Self-Defense – David Kahn



• BJJ / Grappling
  Grappling is a lot like swimming, in that the inexperienced almost immediately begin flailing about and can’t catch their breath. When I first started Level 2, I quickly realized that what I thought I knew about and had previously experienced in groundfighting was a joke. I began training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. As Krav Maga practitioners we never want to fight on the ground if we can help it, but being acclimated to that type of fighting can only improve our odds of going home safe.
  • Jiu-Jitsu University – Saulo Ribeiro
  • The X-Guard: For Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, No Gi Grappling, and Mixed Martial Arts – Marcelo Garcia
  • Wrestling for Fighting – Randy Couture
• Striking
  Similar to my initial Krav Maga groundfighting experience, my sparring game was put into check as well. I began watching, reading about, and training elements of boxing, Muay Thai, and MMA.
  • Jackson’s Mixed Martial Arts: The Stand Up Game – Greg Jackson
  • Fedor: The Fighting System of the World’s Undisputed King of MMA – Fedor Emelianenko
  • The Mixed Martial Arts Instruction Manual: Striking – Anderson Silva