It’s more than OK to learn Krav Maga for the same reasons you would learn most traditional martial arts. Many students enjoy the sense of community and the shared satisfaction of working towards goals together. Most people enjoy exercising their body and mind, walking out of class tired but happy and energised after an hour spent with friends. But what is the point of Krav and why is Krav Maga different to traditional martial arts?
Having fun training and becoming fitter, stronger and happier is not the founding reason behind Krav. Unlike Judo, where living a better life is the explicitly stated goal, Krav emerged primarily from a need to efficiently teach people how to walk away from violence safely when their lives or jobs put them in harm’s way. It is usually a big side effect and probably one of the reasons students train week in and week out.
One of the secrets to effective training is context. Ever been to a training course, got back home or to your desk and realised you have no idea how to apply what you learned? In Kinetic Zen we teach our Krav Maga so that we don’t just show you isolated techniques to solve problems, we teach you how problems emerge and aim to solve them before they become serious. The physical skills in Krav emerged originally from boxing, jiujitsu, british military fighting systems and the dirty fighting experience of its pioneers. In some respects it’s an MMA precursor but for ordinary people who prefer to avoid fights.
It means that while we teach physical solutions to common problems with combatives skills like punching or throwing elbows, our solutions usually start before violence erupts.
The US Marines studied violent encounters and Patrick Van Horne wrote a book about the learnings. Avoiding ambushes and gaining valuable time to plan your response to something is a goal that Krav embraces thoroughly. Bang is the component of an incident where things get violent or kinetic. Left of Bang are the moments where we try to avoid, or position ourselves to better deal with an emerging problem. When current or former students tell us about using Krav to make their lives safer in practice this idea is one of the things people consistently rave about.
If violence is likely to emerge from a situation making a serious effort not to be the problem yourself is both ethically and legally sound practice. If you genuinely don’t see a safe alternative then responding to or even initiating physical contact can be both legal and appropriate. But if the opportunity presents itself using our body language, demeanour and carefully chosen words to try and walk away first is usually the best choice. The power of No, Verbal Judo’s five universal truths and Chris Voss’s tactical empathy drive a lot of our approach to de-escalation. There is also huge power in just not being where the escalation is happening.
Despite your best efforts sometimes things go bang and in context this doesn’t necessarily mean physical but certainly something worth describing as an incident. Fight or flight gets all the airtime, but freeze comes first. It’s the shock of something emotionally charged and outside your normal experience. Your adrenal system floods your body with adrenaline, and the part of your brain built for problem-solving goes quiet to make way for a high-stress response. The freeze by the way isn’t really negotiable, but the duration and what happens next is. A freeze reaction and a flinch reaction are normal. We accept this in our training, plan for it and mitigate as much as possible. How long does it take to get competent? Depends partly on your goals and your previous experience, but 20 hours training usually sees people able to respond decisively to challenges under pressure. Embracing reality helps and we train with Goldilocks Resistance to get the most out of your natural learning process.
Every drill we run has one goal. Getting you out or closer to out of the situation. We don’t celebrate a good kick (well maybe a little), we celebrate disengaging. It’s a small thing, but what you train is generally what you can hope to do under pressure. We aim to have fun, train safely and make sure that our goals are always about getting clear. When you live in the UK it makes sense to train within a framework that understands and complies with UK law.
There are some really good self defence workshops that focus entirely on the left of bang. It’s a good skill and absolutely worth understanding and having plans for. Most martial arts focus on the bang, how to deliver kicks and punches, how to use or avoid strangles and joint locks. We do that too. The context matters though. Understanding and drilling left of bang, bang, and right of bang makes Krav, not a perfect martial art, but a really really good self defence system.
