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Augmenting Krav Maga Training, Part I: S&C

I often get the question (typically after a grueling drill that leaves students gasping) “How do I improve my conditioning?” More often than not, the answer is “Train more Krav.” But sometimes your personal schedule doesn’t align with the class schedule, or maybe you train every day and still feel your fitness isn’t where you’d like it to be. For the former, some of the ideas in this post can “fill the gaps” in training. The latter case can use this post to strengthen weaknesses for an overall training improvement.

For the great majority of practitioners, Krav Maga alone will more than meet their needs and desires for fitness. Krav Maga will certainly get you faster, stronger, and develop a bigger gas tank, but having a solid base level of strength and conditioning makes all of those attributes in the context of Krav easier to develop. Once you’re strong and fast in general, you can focus on coupling those attributes with the specific skills of Krav Maga instead of just trying to catch your breath between front kicks.
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Krav in the News: Carjacking

07.12.10 By Patrick Leave a Comment

One of our Phase B instructors, Pete Hardy of STW Krav Maga, was recently featured in a local San Antonio news story. The segment, “Carjacked! What should you do?”, discusses basic survival tips and also strategies for removing a child from the vehicle before the carjacker speeds off.

Key points:

“Anybody can learn how to do this. It can be man or woman. It makes no difference whatsoever.”
“But, it takes a lot of practice to get to a level that might allow for you to fight back. So Hardy never recommends fighting someone with a gun if you haven’t been properly trained.”

I was very happy to see the inclusion of the second point. It is consistent with Pete’s own phrase “All’s you have to do is”, and it’s rare to see this caveat made by a mainstream news source that more often than not conflates all self-defense as “karate”.

I’ve perhaps belabored these points in past posts, so I won’t elaborate. The takeaways are:

There is no Ultimate Defense Solution.
You must constantly train.

“All’s you have to do is _____.”

06.22.10 By Patrick 7 Comments

Vulcan nerve pinch — – "What the hell are you doing?"
– "The Vulcan neck pinch?"
– "No, no, no, stupid, you've got it much too high. It's down here where the shoulder meets the neck."

One of our Phase B instructors, Pete Hardy of STW Krav Maga in San Antonio, derided and warned us against ever using the phrase “all’s you have to do is [fill in the blank]”. As in, “if someone tries to attack you, all’s you have to do is apply the Vulcan nerve pinch.”

Sounds ridiculous, right? Sure, my example uses a much-lampooned chop-saki-type move, but it’s not too far off from the reality of claims within the self-defense community. There are many “systems” and many “experts” out there that assert themselves as The Ultimate Self-Defense Solution in disabling an assailant with one technique for which there is no defense. Don’t get me wrong, I fully believe in the power of pressure points and strikes to sensitive areas. (A lot of the more esoteric George Dillman no-touch knockout stuff, however, is a leap a bit too far for me.) But anyone claiming that something of the sort is the singular key to walking confidently down a dark alley is selling you a bill of goods.

Krav Maga, for all its effectiveness, is not The Ultimate Self-Defense Solution either, but it has also never claimed to be. It is easy to learn and implement, but you still must constantly train. Its techniques are comprehensive and can be applied to multiple scenarios, but you must be able to see within the fight to the next “thing”. This is where most other systems fail, relying on one technique to end a fight.

Will a swift kick to the groin demolish the will of most attackers? Yes. But what if it doesn’t?

Will our rotating defense defeat a choke up against a wall? Yes. But what happens when the attacker pulls his arms free and throws a punch?

Fighting is dynamic. Don’t fall into the trap of believing that once you’ve learned a technique for a specific scenario that an altercation would immediately end upon the technique’s successful execution. Admittedly, this can be a slippery slope to 27 ninjas, but not if you stick to the see-within-the-fight concept and hard training.

I will offer one possible exception: In many instances “all’s you have to do is” have situational awareness. It must always be stressed that by being aware of your environment you can avoid most dangers. Being able to read a person’s body language and verbiage, you can hopefully avoid or deescalate a tense situation. Or at least surprise them with the Vulcan nerve pinch.