Learn Krav Maga and Build These Skills
Krav Maga Worldwide® self-defense training was originally developed in Israel in the 1940’s for the purpose of teaching people who had little to no hand-to-hand combat experience how to be proficient in hand-to-hand combat in a very short period of time. Krav Maga is, to this day, the hand-to-hand combat system taught by the Israel Defense Forces and it still serves the same purpose. In Israel service in the IDF is mandatory and, as such, everyday people are taught hand-to-hand combat skills so that they can be effective as a soldier during their term of service.
This background and Krav Maga Worldwide’s® principle based system make it the most effective way to learn self-defense in a short period of time. When you learn Krav Maga you are learning to protect yourself and in order to do that your body has to develop certain skills and abilities. Applying yourself to training basically applies your body to learning these skills. Learn Krav Maga and your body learns Krav Maga…that’s really how it works. Three of the main skills that you build when you learn Krav Maga in Krav Maga Worldwide® self-defense training are; endurance, explosiveness, and awareness. These skills are essential to being able to fight back and win if you or someone you love are assaulted.
Endurance
If you have never done martial arts before than your body has never done anything like Krav Maga Worldwide self-defense training so your body is going to adapt. Endurance can be looked at in a couple of different ways, mainly physical endurance and mental endurance. When you learn Krav Maga you will develop endurance in both aspects.
Physical endurance is developed and reinforced in your body in the same way that muscles are built in your body. It is, after all, your muscles that are doing the work to move your body around in class when you learn Krav Maga. The principle at work here is called “applied resistance”. If you make your muscles do something they aren’t used to, aka apply a resistance to them, they will reach a point where they fail….in other words you will get tired or gas out. Your body (with a little bit of help from nutrition and recovery) then learns to adjust to this resistance. Your body will build to a point where it can withstand that level of resistance, and establish a new threshold.
Now, “resistance” doesn’t have to be overwhelming especially when you are first starting to learn Krav Maga. Realistically it can take some people a few weeks to build the endurance needed to train at a high level through a one hour class at Krav Maga Worldwide certified training centers. And that’s ok. That’s training your body. This endurance learning curve will have to do with the students overall level of conditioning and endurance before starting to learn Krav Maga. Some people have a threshold of endurance for training that is already very high because of genetics or because of previous conditioning. Krav Maga Worldwide self-defense training is unique however and it pushes everyone in different ways. Punching and kicking and working on self-defense techniques are a unique way of making your body do work. When you learn Krav Maga, it’s the adaptation to this unique way of movement that builds the endurance you need to be able to fight and defend yourself.
The key to building this sort of physical endurance is to be consistent with your training, which requires the second aspect of endurance; mental endurance. When you challenge your body with anything, especially something like the challenges involved when you learn Krav Maga, your body gets tired. In order to continue to develop, you have to stay focused on your goals and motivation for training and go to class. This takes effort. This takes a mindset that pushes you past the exhaustion. It’s the same mindset needed when you are actually in class and in a drill that will help you learn Krav Maga. You have to keep punching. You have to keep kicking. You have to keep giving the effort that will help you learn Krav Maga. The great part about it is that, learning Krav Maga is fun. Especially at Krav Maga Worldwide certified training centers. Our expert instructors know how to keep you motivated and pushing toward your goals so the mental endurance you build becomes more about getting to the goals you have established for yourself. Physical endurance and mental endurance combined are “endurance”. You’ll develop both, in a short period of time, when you learn Krav Maga at Krav Maga Worldwide.
Explosiveness
When you learn Krav Maga you are learning to defend yourself. There are two main components to Krav Maga Worldwide self-defense training that you will find in every class. One is striking and combatives, the other is what we refer to as self-defense techniques.
In order to defend yourself effectively you must lear to throw strikes or “combatives” as a means of causing damage to someone who is trying to cause damage to you. Fundamental strikes found in Krav Maga Worldwide self-defense training are punches, kicks, knees, and elbows. There are numerous variations of all of these strikes for example; a front kick and a round kick. Different combatives but both of them are kicks. The variations of combatives change with each level of training. For example; you’ll learn a straight punch in Level 1 (along with many other effective combatives) and in Level 2 you learn hooks and uppercuts, which are punches that come from different angles.
Power in combatives comes from being explosive, not the same way your body generates power when you are pushing or pulling something. When you learn Krav Maga you train your body to be explosive and to generate power when throwing these combatives. Your body has to learn to work in this way. Our instructors are experts at teaching combatives and striking. We know how to teach the striking techniques so that you maximize your own body’s ability to generate explosive power. Again, throwing a punch or a kick isn’t like lifting or pushing something, it’s an entirely different way of generating power and force. Just like with endurance training, explosiveness training comes from making your body do the movements over and over again. Your body adapts to the training and repetition and you develop the ability to be more explosive, especially when sending punches, kicks, knees, and elbows.
Explosiveness is also a fundamental part of self-defense techniques. We think of self-defense techniques as systematic responses to a given set of circumstances or attack. For example, a defense versus a choke from the front, or a defense versus a bearhug from behind. It’s basically the answer to the question “What do I do if somebody does X?”.
When you learn Krav Maga at Krav Maga Worldwide certified training centers you learn self-defense techniques that are based on your body’s natural reaction. For example; if someone grabs your neck, your hands are going to want to go to the spot where you are feeling pain or pressure. Your body’s natural reaction to that attack is going to start with your hands going to where the attackers hands are and we build our self-defense technique off of that response. What’s unique about when you learn Krav Maga is that you are often going to be making that initial reaction in a way that is explosive. Continuing with the choke example, your hands are going to go to your neck and when you make the self-defense technique agains that choke you are going to explosively pluck the person’s thumbs off of your neck. We don’t get into a strength on strength contest and try to pull the person’s hands off…we pluck through the thumbs so there is no grip on our neck. Check out the video below for a detailed breakdown on how to make this sort of pluck.
To do this effectively takes practice and, ultimately, training but the natural response (hands going to your neck) is already in you. We take that response and build the technique off of it, which is one of the reasons why Krav Maga Worldwide self-defense is easy to learn AND easy to retain.
With repetition and training you learn Krav Maga and your body learns to build explosiveness. Self-defense techniques and combatives work synergistically and, as such, synergistically build your overall explosiveness. These two components also work synergistically in terms of overall self-defense because one of the main principles of the Krav Maga Worldwide self-defense system is to defend and counterattack at the same time. If you consider the choke defense example once more, at the same time you are making the explosive pluck at the attacker’s thumbs you will be throwing a punch or a kick at the attacker in order to make damage to them. When you learn Krav Maga you are learning a self-defense system, so we consider that we have already been attacked and are one step behind in that encounter. We have to defend and counter attack explosively at the same time in order to make up that step and turn the tide of the encounter in our favor.
Awareness
Learn Krav Maga and you will gain understanding of what a potentially dangerous situation is. This in turn gives you the opportunity to avoid that situation altogether and, ultimately, not be put in a position where you are forced to defend yourself. Think about it, if you practice defending against being choked several hundred times, you are going to understand very clearly where someone who intends to choke you must be in order to reach you. If you practice defending against getting punched several hundred or even several thousand times, you are going to understand very clearly where you would have to be standing in relation to someone in order for them to punch you.
Now, these are very simple examples but overall if you are training your body for self-defense then you are going to start to understand more and more when and where dangerous situations could occur. When you learn Krav Maga, you will hear this understanding referred to as “situational awareness”. As you progress through the levels of the Krav Maga Worldwide system the situations you train on develop different complexities and factors, like weapons, like full-contact sparring, etc. The Krav Maga Worldwide self-defense system approaches each of these more complex situations in the same way.
Complex situations are broken down in a way that you already understand from training. Now, more complex situations can mean a greater degree of danger but, again, understanding and training on how to defend yourself in these situations gives you a greater degree and awareness of how they might arise. The awareness you gain becomes even greater and if you are aware of dangerous situations, you can avoid them.
Learn Krav Maga Today At A Krav Maga Worldwide Certified Training Center
When you learn Krav Maga at a Krav Maga Worldwide certified training center you are learning the most effective way to defend yourself in the shortest period of time from the best instructors. Our instructors go through countless hours of training courses before they become officially certified to teach in our training centers. Our system and the mandate to teach it were given to us by the creator of Krav Maga, Imi Lichtenfeld. When you learn Krav Maga your body will change and you will develop new skills and abilities. Among other skills and abilities your will develop endurance, explosiveness, and awareness, which will make you effective at defending yourself or a loved one. Start training with us today.
