MacDonald Academy of Martial Arts
Kenpo Karate, Krav Maga, and Fitness for the Boston / Watertown area
News and articles for Krav Maga students
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.
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”
This week in the Advanced Krav Maga classes I introduced some brand new material (new for Krav Maga, anyway) from the major curriculum addition that Krav Maga Worldwide is calling “The Bridge”. This material is mostly comprised of wrestling and clinch fighting techniques that fill the gray area between our current stand-up and groundfighting techniques.
From KMW:
In our continuing effort to improve and evolve the Krav Maga system, we’ve called upon some of the best Krav Maga and grappling minds in the world and formed a committee to find opportunities for improvement in Krav Maga; specifically as they pertain to grappling, wrestling, takedown defenses, etc. The committee, consisting of high-level Krav Maga Worldwide Master Instructors, Champion Wrestlers, and Grappling Experts, are proud to share the next evolution of Krav Maga.
This material will be officially integrated into the curriculum by 2013, but we’ll begin training more and more of it as further details are passed down to instructors by KMW.
I worked through some of the techniques while at the National Training Center for Expert Series I. I’m pretty excited by this personally because it will, quite perfectly, “bridge” to my concurrent training in BJJ and MMA. I’m also very excited to be able to teach this stuff as Krav Maga, rather than sneaking it into classes with a disclaimer as I do from time to time.
Stay tuned. Perhaps we’ll kick it off with a seminar sometime in the fall…
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