eeeandrew

The worst he had us do was right at the end. Half of you grab pads. Attackers pin defenders against the wall with the pad. Rule is that the attacker can not move his feet forward. So defenders have to get out from behind the pad. Elbows, hammer fists etc and then drive the pad back until the attacker is against the opposite wall and then you swap. What I do love about it though is that I've been training for 3 months now. That big reaction session proved it last night. If I get in a fight then I will probably get hit a couple of times but there are about 4 or 5 sequences that I've got hard wired now. So if I can protect my head and take the least amount of damage possible the bad guy will throw that right eventually and I'll rain hell down upon him and then leave quickly. I assume you know the level of retention I'm talking about where you don't even think "he's punching me with his right" you just sort of react and before you've thought about it you've done a 360 defence, counter elbow to his jaw, grabbed the wrist, wrapped the back of the neck, kneed him twice in the crotch and then run. Which btw is my favourite sequence against a high punch.

That's actually one of the key lessons our Krav instructor likes to communicate to us regularly. Fighting sucks. You get hit, you bleed, you'll wake up sore for days or weeks afterwards. There isn't a magical method where you just step round his technique, poke him in the eye and he falls over. Krav is about limiting the damage you take whilst maximising your attackers pain so you can leave quickly. I've found Krav practitioners (at least the ones I've trained with) to be very grounded in this sense. They don't get their yellow belt and learn a kata with 4 strike points and decide that they can now fight 4 guys. Last night we spent an hour doing reaction drills. So the defenders stand around the room facing various ways with their eyes closed. You get punched in the chest, get that guard up because here comes the next shot and pile into whatever combo pops into your head. Worst thing you can do (it earned me a nicely bruised rib in about my 3rd week) is to freeze at this point and go "sorry that's not the right technique can I try again" because by the time you've gotten the sentence out you've been hit 3 more times. Anyway, I think I may have digressed. Someone find my point amongst that lot!

You're in luck then. Ninjas used weapons a lot and there should be significant weapons training from any ninjitsu school.

I'm not quite following your logic there. All martial arts were created as the highest form of fighting in that particular culture. Over time those fighting styles have evolved into modern martial arts. Take aikido for example, that was developed from Samurai fighting techniques designed for when your opponent had a weapon and you didn't. It was about breaking your opponents balance and having him land as hard as possible on a sensitive area. The arm lock technique was designed to lock out each joint in sequence so you could break them, in sequence and preventing him swording you to death. What then happens is O' Sensei looks at it and designs an effective but less brutal system designed to promote "gentleman warriors" and "true Samurai". Now you get further evolutions of that with some aikido schools teaching the techniques in such a way as not to harm an opponent. This is far from the original intent imho and therefore more art than martial art. I do my best to respect the benefits of all the different styles. I don't want to be punched by a boxer, thrown by a judoka or pinned by a wrestler. At the same time, we have to remember the martial part of martial art. That is, a system of techniques designed for one thing- to defeat an opponent in unarmed combat. I don't make the distinction between the streets of Glasgow on a Saturday night and a battleground in feudal Japan. If I'm attacked, I'm disabling and getting away. If that's all the benefit I get from my training and don't achieve the confidence, personal development and wisdom that I would get from a more "artful" style then I'm happy with that.

Snow, What I took from that is that I should be scared of you. I'm sitting here thinking that I'll just add another session in and make myself better and you roll up with your " I do all the workouts" and make me feel lazy. Back to the planning board.

I'll second Krav maga. I studied aikido in the past and after a year of training I had no techniques I could employ under stress. Krav is designed for you to escape whatever is being done to you. So in a general sense, someone grabs you, you break their technique, knee to groin, blitz punch to face and then run. 5 second fighting we're taught so you don't go in with a big fancy kick having a stand up fight while the bad guys' mate stabs you in the back. We train at full speed and half power. So you will learn to block at full speed, hit at full speed and deal with someone actively resisting your escape attempts. We do fighting with and against weapons, non aggressive resolution (getting away without hurting the other guy-much) and also scenario work. We recently did a pub brawl scenario where you get dragged to the ground and have to escape 5 guys attacking you. We also recently dedicated an entire class to rape defence.

That looks pretty comprehensive. Why didn't I think of changing down the number of sets in favour of more exercises? Should allow a higher rep max too. I'm stealing that routine I'm loving Krav. I trained aikido for a year during my final year at uni and much as I enjoyed it, I learned only a couple of simple wrist locks that I could pull off under stress. I love the physical training aspect as well as how simple the techniques are to pull off. Then you go and do them under stress and learn how to adapt your body alarm response to the technique.

My form starts off fine but by the time I've taken a dozen shots it's basically gone. I'm putting it down to lack of fitness as I'm getting tired and then losing form. Basically I'm looking for a programme I can do probably on Wednesday and Saturday (to give recovery time). To be able to hit harder and get hit for longer. We tend to train nice long pad sessions of 30-40 minutes taking turns and drilling different things. Then we'll train the techniques and escapes with each other at full speed around half power and making contact.

Hello all, Long term lurker here. I've been reading the blog and trying out various bits and pieces of training advice for about a year now. You now have the privelage of my first post! I started Krav Maga about 2 months ago and recently stepped up to doing 2 sessions a week(Monday and Thursday). I'm actually managing to complete all the reps in the "warm up" now. I'm not the biggest guy in the world at 5'6" and 150 lbs so I get knocked around a bit in pad sessions and don't have the big impact when it's my turn to get my own back. I'm after recommendations for good workouts to slot in between my Krav sessions to improve my power and impact. Obviously that's going to come from some form of strength training. I did consider adding a couple of 5x5 sessions but that would then only give me one A workout and one B workout a week which I understand isn't enough to give me much in the way of gains. Also timing issues so that I'm not still recovering when I come to the next session whichever one that is. Any thoughts?