Todays show is brought to you by the letter C and the number YOOOOOWEEEEE!!!!!!

I’m back home after an amazing week eating snow and falling on my ass learning how to snowboard and avoid the yellow frost. Slightly sore in all kinds of places but I had a great time, Snowboarding is so much fun seriously you should probably try it unless you’re a complete bungal.

Last night was my first night back at training and we covered how to release a grab to the shirt and how to block a kick with a kick. An easy sort of lesson with surprisingly little physical exertion which I was pretty thankful for on account of my sore ass.

Here’s what we covered.

1. Single handed shirt grab: Lets say some loud mouthed Baboon decides he doesn’t like your apres ski gear and decides to tell you just what he thinks about it and grabs you by the lepel of your favourite yule tide jumper. Don’t panic just step back with the leg furthest from the grab and spin your arm over the top of your opponents grip in a continuous windmilling motion, stepping back away from the grip. This has to be done pretty fast and strong and you should let your arm completely rotate a few times just to make sure his/her grip is broken.

2. Single handed shirt grab “C grip” to thumb squeeze: So in the same situation as above, we could also use a more…for want of a better word, “Seagal like” aggressive technique where we end up breaking said Baboons thumb. YOWEEE!!!! Now, I really liked this technique just because it’s so simple and you totally feel like your in Under Siege when you do it.
So once your opponent has grabbed your shirt/jumper/chest hair with one hand, grab their hand on the outside of the wrist with your hand in a C shape. Then with your other hand (fingers and thumbs cupped) push their whole thumb into their own hand. Don’t bend down as your opponent drops to their knees squeeling, simply straighten your arms and continue to apply pressure to that thumb…OUCHIES! it brings a tear to my eye just thinking about it. Obviously when you practise this with a partner be VERY careful not to break their thumb.

3. Double handed shirt grab: That’s all well and good, but what happens if someone then grabs your shirt with both hands!? I hear you cry. Well heres the answer to that: Again, C grip on the outside of one of the hands holding you. At the same time bring your other hand over the top of both arms to hold the same hand you have the C grip on, applying another C grip to the top of the opponents hand. Twist both C grips towards your opponent which should break their grip and twist their arm completely the wrong way. Again, if they fall to their knees, don’t bend down just straighten your arms continuously applying pressure.

4. The chevalier…? The cavalier??: I can’t remember what this grab was called but anyway it was something like that and it deals with the moment just before someone gets a grip on your shirt or is about to land a punch on you…So, the opponents hand comes towards you, you turn your body, at the same time you grab the outside of your opponents wrist with your hand in a C grip. You then turn back the other direction and smother their whole hand/fist with your other hand and fold their hand back in towards their forearm.
This technique uses a lot of speed and momentum to work properly and should almost completely throw them off balance and onto the floor. If this happens and the opponent rolls on the ground in the direction you are twisting you can straighten their arm out, clamp it between your knees arm bar or continue to twist their arm whilst standing above them.

KICK TO KICK ACTION!
Next we padded up shin guards and gloves to practise some kick defences.

1. Defence against a Roundhouse kick: As soon as you see the kick starting, mirror the move (block a right leg kick with your left leg) by raising your knee and touching your elbow to it forming a shield down one side of your body lean into the kick aiming towards your opponents thigh. Throw your leg forward kicking the kick off your shin to land in sparring stance. At the same time you should be throwing a straight punch to your opponents chin with your other hand.

2. Defence against a straight kick to the groin: As soon as you see the kick starting, mirror the move and intercept it at the shin on the outside of the leg with your shin kicking across your body. Throw a straight punch at the same time and land in sparring stance (one leg in front of the other.)

3. Defence against a straight Punch as the punch comes turn your body to the outside of your opponents arm, palm your opponents forearm to deflect the punch at the same time step forward to the outside of their arm and punch them in the face several times, then make your escape and scan. This technique is very similar to Wing Chun’s Pak sau block except you lean forward as you deflect the block and step in, creating more momentum for your attack. I’m not sure which way I prefer but I am trying to approach my training with an “empty cup” attitude so as to keep an open mind to these new techniques.

360 degree defence and how to not get stabbed with a pointy rubber knife

On the basis of how much i enjoyed last weeks class, I paid up for a whole month of beatings at the KM school JOY! and to be honest I really wasn’t expecting to be covering anything nearly as exciting as knife defence techniques on only my second lesson at the school.

So, this weeks warm up, included some wrestling games where we start on our knees and try to wrestle our partner to the ground without standing up, or both start in push up position and try to make our opponent eat rubber mat by scooping their hands from under them. Great fun! We then got onto techniques following on from last weeks lesson (where we learned some kicks) we covered some basic hand defence against kicks. I personally prefer to block kicks with my legs if I can and this was generally agreed to be the best option. However, it was great to see how Krav Maga deals with a push kick to the groin, basically you just punch, palm or scoop your opponents shin out of the way! Its pretty hardcore and being punched in the shin, I discovered, hurts like a motherfucker.

The blocks were broken down into several stages again to clarify the technique from the very beginning, but the fact that defence and counter attack should be delivered simultaneously was clearly stressed once we had got the hang of it.

step 1: Intercept the attack (either with fist or palm) attack your opponents face and move your body out of the line of incoming force.

step 2: Step around to the outside of your opponents guard (preferably so you are behind them.)

step 3: Deliver several blows to the face, back of the head, kidneys wherever you can and escape scanning your surroundings for other attackers or anything we can use as a weapon against our opponent (such as a bus, or a pro wrestler).

After we had tested our three different blocks we then moved onto 360 degree defence!

Now, one of the reasons I chose Krav Maga to study is its simplicity. It doesn’t have any katas, forms or set patterns to remember ( I have enough of those already), it relies mostly on your natural reflexes and instincts. So, that being the case the 360 degree defence basically involves throwing your forearm straight into the attackers limb before it can do you any damage whilst at the same time throwing a punch/eye gouge/brick/kick into your opponents face/throat/balls/spectacles etc.

The video below illustrates the 360 degree defence idea.

So we all had a go at attacking or defending using this idea and by golly, it worked! nice and easy. Obviously the one thing to make sure of is that you move your body out of the way of an attack and don’t collapse your arm when it gets struck. This point was further illustrated by adding a rubber knife to the mix!!!

At this juncture in the lesson the instructor (Dean) showed us the classic types of knife attacks:

1. The ice pick (ramming a fist straight down)
2. The oriental (low to high stabbing motion that cuts from groin to chin)
3. The slash (side to side slashing favoured by crazy guys with double sided blades)
4. The nervous stab (thumb behind the hilt and a repetative straight stabbing motion to the body)

YIPES! The video below illustrates a defence against an ice pick style knife attack.

We used the 360 defence against the ice pick and the oriental knife attacks and it worked really well, but you are instantly aware of how easy and gross it would be to get jimmied by a real knife and how easy it is to get slashed limbs! So it was a great step in the right direction…

We wrapped up the class with some more pad work, push-ups and a timed horse stance to finish off those quads! Oh, and a quick reminder of what we covered in the lesson, pros and cons of one technique over another and that was it. Another great lesson!

first impressions!…from a noob :)

So, last Thursday the 28th of February 2008 I joined a Krav Maga class at the SDF (self defence force) Krav Maga centre in Hendon, North London. I rocked up a tad early to see what was happening in the kids class which is just before the adults class, get a feel for the place and to warm up a bit.
The kids seemed like they were having a blast, kicking pads and generally having fun with the head instructor Golan, who managed to keep them all in line without being too strict on them. No mean feet if you’ve ever had or taught young kids.
Anyway, so after the kidlets filtered out of class exhausted but still giggling I introduced myself, got changed and met the class and the two instructors who would be teaching us (Chris and Dean). One of the other students joked that Thursday was a good day for a “noob” to start because its a hardcore session. If by hardcore he meant the room stinks of kids farts then yes, he was right about that.

We started with a basic warm up to get the blood going (star jumps, running on the spot) followed by some duck walking around the gym and some stretches. We then moved on to our first technique the long push kick. The guys broke it down into three simple stages which really helped to highlight the key elements of how to get power into a kick. From sparring stance (one foot in front of the other, knees bent)

step 1: Turn your waist and shoulders together which will raise the heel of your back foot.

step 2: Raise the knee. How high you raise your knee determines the height of the kick.

step 3: Throw your leg out, kicking with the heel or ball of the foot, driving through with your hips.

From here we were encouraged to land with our kicking leg in front and aim for the torso of our opponent, really step into them to knock them back.
After going through these steps a few times in the air as a “dry drill” we then partnered up and tried the kick out on some pads. After some tweeks from the instructors, I felt like I was kicking like a mule! I could really feel a difference in my kicks.
We were also shown a groin kick, a roundhouse and a knee demonstrating the different ranges. Again the guys broke each kick down into the three stages similar to the way I described above.
After we had tried each of the kicks we were all asked what we thought of them, what each kick can be used for and what range they work best at, also what felt most effective: kicking with the heel or with the ball of the foot when throwing a push kick? I personally felt using the heel was the best.

We then put on some groin and shin guards for a bit of light sparring, where we were encouraged to try out the kicks with a partner and get a feel for different ranges.

We wound down with some stretches and sit ups and bowed and said “kida” to the class. Kida is similar to the term “ching” used in kung fu meaning respect for your teacher, you and your classmates.

There was a great, friendly atmosphere in the class and I was really impressed by how much I had learned in a single lesson, let alone how much I felt I had improved my kicks. Wasn’t really a killer workout, I kept up pretty well, though I was sore for the following three days, either way not too bad for a Krav Maga noob. I also thought it was great that we were asked what we thought about the techniques, we were encouraged to think and give our opinions.

All in all a very productive learning environment…and I totally didn’t get kicked in the nuts!