I promised an update to the Krav Maga training. I just couldn’t raise my arms to the keyboard until now…
After a week of recovery, I can now cough or laugh without pain, and I can lift a bottle of water to my mouth with only one hand for support. What a butt-kicking!! Ooof. I ventured back into the gym today. I thought about the money just dropped on a membership and the pants/shirt/mouthguard/boxing gloves/wraps that went with it, as a condition of participating. The cup was optional, so I opted out, finding them profoundly weird for women. After today’s session, I plan to get over that and buy one anyway.
Today’s lesson started with medicine balls and kettle-balls (cool concept!), reviewed basic jabs and crosses (with interesting differences from boxing), added top-loading hammer-fists, and then proceeded into clinches and kneeing. I was partnered up with the smallest guy in the room, (who was still 6 foot something), and when he punched the pad I held in front of my chest, it sent me back a foot each time. And he was mostly pulling his punches…
Then it was on to the clinch scenario- This is where the attacker rushes you from the front, with the intent to subdue you in some unspecified, but surely terrible way. The defender uses an arm bar at the clavicle and a shirt/jacket grab behind the head plus body-position to hold the attacker back. As the defender, let’s say you’ve chosen the left side of the body to clinch, and so you use your left arm to hold down the attacker’s right arm to his/her side.
Since the attacker has momentum, you have some positional control – use your feet to draw the attacker to the left (this will be the path of least resistance for you both). Since you control forward motion to the left, and you are positioned to the left, the attacker’s right arm won’t have the benefit of leveraged strikes or choking. As the attacker re-centres against you, he’s open for a leveraged knee to the groin – or in our case, the great big protective pad. Once he’s doubled over, you can quickly follow with immobilizing hammer fists to the back of his neck. Voila! You can escape.
I was kind of good at this, probably due to all the kid-fighting/grappling I’ve done in the past (thank-you little brother!), and at one point, I even sent my assailant flying into the ground. But oh- when it was his turn to be the defender, and I had to hold the pad- oh, did those flying knees send me across the floor!
During wrap-up, we were reminded that Krav Maga is not a sport- it’s real self-defense. “There are no rules in Krav Maga,” intones the instructor. You use any method to disable your assailant and give you space to get away. This is all about the cheap shots.
I keep forgetting that Krav isn’t boxing- it’s not recreational, and it’s not like the fights I had as a punk kid, where everyone instinctively obeys unspoken rules about cheap shots or really hurting each other. Krav reminds you that if you’re in the wrong place and someone attacks you, it’s going to be for “realsies.”
It’s quite a sobering thought, since I’ve really joined this gym for fitness sake. If you want abs of steel, this is apparently the place to get them. But it forces me to think about a topic I’ve successfully buried from my consciousness- that I could be the subject of completely random attack some day. Someone could be in the house. Someone could rush me in a park, or a parking garage.
I feel a little shocked at being reminded of this at each class. When I was in my teens, I remember being seriously terrorized by thoughts that someone bigger, stronger, and probably male could attack me, control whether I lived or died, or irrevocably damage me. I developed safety protocols that I thought gave me the best chances of not being in the wrong place, and I still practice them all. I put thoughts of actually being attacked firmly into the “Let’s Never Think of This Again” pile. I needed to bury it to not be ruled by it.
I have to say- it is more than a little creepy to go back there now, and to bring myself face to face with an attack scenario. On balance, I think this is good- and something I should have learned 20 years ago. I’m not sure any of my elaborate personal safety protocols will change, but I’m pretty sure something will. Being personally uncomfortable has been a pretty reliable indicator of future growth. So I am pondering this, taking some deep breaths, and figuring out when I can back in there to learn some more.
If I need to, I will pretend I am Batman. : )
