Bored of Training Krav Maga
By Moshe Katz
CEO
Israeli Krav International

May 7, 2019, Israel

Sometimes I see a photo of a person with a gun to their head. It is not a Krav Maga training photo, it is real. It appears in the newspaper, sometimes we already know the fate of the victim.

And I wonder, how ready are we? Yes, I know the defense to this situation, I have taught it countless times, but still, honestly, the thought enters my mind, if this situation were real, would I be able to pull it off?

The answer is always the same, we must keep training. The answer there that there is no such thing as "I know it well enough, I can move on".

No, when you realize that someday your life may depend on your ability to do this Krav Maga technique under pressure, you will realize that there is no such thing as too much repetition. 

People will come to class, or a seminar, and guess what? the teacher is reviewing something that "we already know". And then I ask you to bring this image to mind, imagine yourself on the street, or outside your car, or even in your home, and some low life psychopath has a gun to your head?

Are you still bored of training? Do you still feel that we have done enough of this and can move to something more interesting? Are you coming to class to be entertained? 

No one facing a bullet, or a knife, ever thought to himself, wow, this is so easy, why did I waste so many hours training on this technique?

No, when the truth arrives we know that every second spent training was a step in the correct direction. Every day spent training improves our odds of surviving a violent confrontation.

We need to choose a training method and stick with it. There is an old Jewish saying, You can't dance at two weddings at one time.

Sometimes people think if they train in two systems at the same time they are achieving 200%, i.e. they are doubling their knowledge. Actually this is false. What is actually happening is usually the two systems are incompatible. If that is the case then they actually cancel each other out, so that you do not end up with 200% knowledge, you end up with 0%. 

I often hear people say, I attend other seminars, train with other instructors because I want to increase my knowledge. Again, we have an expression for this; a jack of all trades, a master of none. 

My Karate teacher, Saiko Shihan Shigeru Oyama, told me that it is good to have some basic knowledge of other styles, such as Judo and Jujitsu, but he stressed that when he said "Basic" he meant black belt level and minimum five years training. i.e. If you have chosen to study a style, take a period of at least five years devoted to that style. Jumping from one dojo to another will not achieve this goal.

I return to the point where I started; a real life violent encounter, a gun to your head, this life may be over in a few seconds, do you feel you benefited from jumping around from style to style, seminar to seminar, instructor to instructor? or perhaps it would have been better to stick with one style and practice this technique a thousand times?

Visit our other site

Israeli Krav International.com

Please note that all fields followed by an asterisk must be filled in.
Google