MacDonald Academy of Martial Arts

Kenpo Karate, Krav Maga, and Fitness for the Boston / Watertown area

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Krav Maga News

News and articles for Krav Maga students

Fall 2012: Schedule Updates & New Classes

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We’re excited to announce some changes in the schedule to be rolled out in the coming weeks. We expect even more classes to be added once renovations to Training Room 2 are complete.

A new downloadable, printable schedule will be available on the Class Schedule page next week. As the changes below come online they will be added to it.

Kenpo

  • Belt Testing Week: Sept 4 – 6. There will not be regular classes this week
  • Black Belt Spectacular: Sept 7
  • The fall schedule begins Monday, Sept 10
  • Saturday classes resume Sept 15
  • The “Shady Hill” class resumes Wednesday, Sept 12 at 1PM

Krav Maga

  • Beginning September 7, the Friday evening Krav Maga All Levels class will be moved to 6PM.
  • Beginning September 10, the Monday evening Krav Maga Advanced class will be moved to 6:30PM.
  • Saturday morning Krav Maga will remain on hiatus until September 22. Beginning 9/22, the Saturday morning Krav Maga All Levels class will become Krav Maga Scenarios.
    This will still be an all-levels class, but the format will change to focus on environment- and scenario-based drills. It could be basic Level 1 defenses with an environmental twist, or it could be scenarios involving weapons, multiple threats, or a friend you have to protect. What if someone attacks you while you’re sitting in a chair? We want to apply Krav Maga principles to “what-if” situations not necessarily directly addressed by the curriculum.
  • Beginning October 3, the Wednesday 7:30PM Krav Maga Fundamentals class will be moved to 6:30PM.
  • Beginning October 3 at 7:30PM, we will be adding a Krav Maga Fight class.
    This class will operate on rotating blocks of stand-up fighting (boxing & kickboxing), groundfighting (BJJ), and everything in between (clinch fighting & wrestling). There will be sparring in all these modalities, but the focus will be on drills and skills to improve fighting ability at all ranges. There will be prerequisites for this class, and they will be posted in the next week or two along with a more in-depth curriculum.

Stay tuned for more!

Congrats to Julian!

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Julian
Be sure to congratulate Julian Bercu the next time you see him. Julian recently passed the Phase B instructors test at the Krav Maga Worldwide National Training Center in LA. It was seven consecutive days of very intense training, and he represented the Academy very well.

Congrats, Julian!

Training to Train, Part I: Misadventures in n=1

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Always keep a training log
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.

Read [much] more »

Order of Operations for Krav Maga

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While at the Krav Maga Worldwide National Training Center for Expert Series I, I picked up from licensing instructor Matt Romond a helpful way to visualize the kinetic chain of defensive and offensive Krav Maga techniques. Matt presented us with a simple mnemonic, but I’ll do my best to complicate it as a math analogy with ancillary nerdery…

With Krav Maga techniques, like solving a polynomial expression, the order in which the parts are assembled will have an effect on the result. The terms of our equation are BODY, HANDS, and FEET. The order of those three components will depend on the technique, but we can generalize into two categories: Offense (strikes) and Defense (self-defense techniques).

Offense: Feet→Body→Hands

Example: Straight Punch from a fighting stance.

Feet: All combatives must come from a strong connection to the ground. A good straight punch begins with a drive of the rear foot into the ground, and that drive continues through the entirety of the punch until it begins its recoil.

Body: The drive that begins in the rear foot travels up the legs, and the hip and shoulder on the same side of the punching hand rotate forward.

Hands: The rotation of the torso fires the hand. The shoulder and elbow extend, and the fist is clenched and rotated as it approaches the target.

Defense: Hands→Body→Feet

Example: 360° Defense vs. a big, sloppy punch. As distance and/or preparedness increase, the bigger the motion of the defense can be.

Hands: If the attacker is very close to you or you are caught very unaware, you may only have time to make a hand/arm defense (90° bend at the elbow, fingers extended, blade of the forearm out), and the punch will be blocked very close to its target (i.e. your face). This action is more of a flinch than a proper defense.

Body: If the attacker is a little further away or the punch is more telegraphed, you may have time to make the hand defense, extend and lock out your shoulder, and lean into the defense to get your weight behind it.

Feet: If the attacker must cover distance to punch you or the punch is very telegraphed, you may have time to form the hand defense, extend and lock out the shoulder, and then burst forward to close the distance and “attack the attack” (block the punch) at the earliest possible point in its trajectory.

See also: “Krav Maga: Techniques vs. Concepts”

 

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