Testing Week: September 3 – 6
Note: There will not be regular classes this week. Black Belt Spectacular details are posted here.
All students must have a signed Intent to Promote form and schedule a testing time via the sign-up form below.
Machete Defense?!
The usual question came up the other night at the end of a stick defense class: What if the object is not blunt? What if it’s a machete?!
My very brief thoughts:
- RUN!
- Grab anything you can to use as a shield and/or weapon.
- If you have to make a defense, it is most likely going to be a “stick” defense rather than a knife defense due to the size of the weapon and the hacking nature of the attack, which more closely resembles how a blunt object is typically used. When making the redirecting defense against an overhead or angled swing, we ideally make first contact with the wrist and avoid the weapon altogether. When making the blocking defense against a horizontal swing, we ideally burst in past the weapon and slam into the attacker’s arm. The key adverb here being “ideally.” Our stick defenses are designed to “work” (i.e. avoid fatal injury but not necessarily serious injury) even if we’re very late in our defense. Not so much with a machete, though. And, of course, I would not recommend using a stick disarm against a blade!
- For me, my ideal defense (if I were able to kindly request of my assailant) would be Knife Defense Against Backhand Slash: dodge a forehand slash and pounce in on the dead side before it comes back. You know, if I could choreograph it.
- We’re talking about a miscreant with a machete here, not a master swordsman. If you run afoul of these dudes, I cannot help you.
- Did I mention RUN?!
Colin sent this video. It is NOT Krav Maga, and I don’t agree with everything in it, but there are some interesting and useful points.
Takedowns for When You’re Losing
As civilian Krav Maga practitioners, we generally avoid takedowns because our goal is not to restrain or eliminate an attacker, but to eliminate the threat and go home safe. Throws and takedowns serve an important purpose for military and law enforcement, but for the rest of us they may unnecessarily prolong the fight and greatly increase the chances of creating a grappling match or going to the ground. Perhaps the most fundamental reason why we de-emphasize takedowns is because what we do emphasize are techniques that can be performed by people of all shapes, sizes, and abilities. Compared to a swift groin kick and a punch in the nose, an effective takedown generally requires greater athleticism and much more training time. But this is not to say that takedowns are never of use to even the least trained and least athletic of us. In this week’s Fight class, we trained some scenarios in which takedowns were our best option for regaining control of a bad situation.
I’m not going to reiterate the details and nuances of the techniques and drills. (You should have been in class!) Rather, this is just a quick recap of the highlighted situations. Be aware that these are not the only applications for these particular techniques.
Single-leg Takedown
When we throw knees, we do so in such a way to limit the possibility of our leg getting grabbed. If our leg does happen to get snatched up, we have a powerful counter for it. What if, though, the roles are reversed, and we find ourselves on the receiving end of knees? The single-leg takedown is one of our best options. Though the preference is to have the head on the inside, body positioning may dictate that the head be on the outside.
Knee Taps and Toe-Picks/Single-leg Hyperextension
From early on in training, we teach the following sequence (simplified here) for when you’re going to the ground: Fall break, tactical position, move, kick to create space, get up. In most situations, this series of techniques (with minor variations due to the dynamics of the fight) will serve you best in getting back to your feet and finding an exit. But when would it not be the preferred option? How about this: you’ve fallen to all fours and you’ve got two or more people stomping on you. Do you think being in Back Position is going to facilitate our strategies for handling multiple attackers [1, 2]? No, better would be to snag the leg of the nearest assailant; slam him or her to the ground (preferably hyperextending a knee along the way); then get up as protected as possible, using the fallen thug to stack the remaining threats.
These techniques are newly added to Krav Maga. For those who trained them this week, what did you think? Effective? For those who didn’t, are you excited to attend Fight class?!
Images © Krav Maga Worldwide
Russian Tie-up / 2-on-1 Techniques
In Wednesday night’s brief exploration into some of the curriculum newly added to Krav Maga, we came across a position called the Russian Tie-up or 2-on-1. As I mentioned in class, for Krav Maga this is a position of momentary and transitory control for setting up threat-eliminating, fight-ending combatives. We want to avoid grappling matches whenever possible. More importantly, we train techniques like this so that we can better learn to defend against them.
Here are a few more (mostly non-Krav) things you can do with the 2-on-1:
If you missed Wednesday’s classes, don’t fret; this stuff will be worked into the regular training rotation. For a reminder on the single-leg takedown, check out this post.
Multiple Opponents Strategy: Not Sanctioned by Krav Maga but Totally Awesome (and NSFW)
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