Krav Maga Control and Goals
By Moshe Katz
CEO
Israeli Krav International

September 25, 2015, Germany

We watch world events and sometimes we wonder; who is leading and who is being led? Often it is not clear.

A real man is in control, of his actions, his behavior, his decisions. The weaker man is lead by others. Others set the tone, make the rules, and he follows.

Let us take a look at an imaginary scene. You are going out for a nice dinner with your girlfriend. Perhaps tonight will be the night you propose to her. Or, for our older readers; you are going out for your tenth anniversary, or fiftieth, it will be a special evening.

Now lets take a look at your goals for this evening

  • You want to impress your woman.
  • You want to have a wonderful evening, good food, wine, romance.
  • You want to share a special conversation, some laughs and smiles.

A man walks over to the two of you and begins to taunt you. He looks at your woman and says, "Why waste your time with that loser! Don't you want to be with a real man?

At first you are stunned by this behavior. And then the Bully continues with his taunts, he challenges: "I am a real man, he is a flake, come with me and I will show you a good time"

How do you react?

Do you accept his challenge and engage him in a fight?

Lets imagine for a moment that we live in the movies. It will play out like this. You accept his "manly" challenge, as any good Neanderthal should. You quickly beat him up.

If we are imagining a boxing movie, you finish him off with a couple of rapid fire jabs and a hook. If you are Bruce Lee a couple of high back spnning kicks. Chuck Norris, a slow simple side kick that totally knocks him out, Steven Segal, grab him and lock him up in an Akido lock, Adam Sandler, The Zohan, tie him up like a pretzel.

But as we say in Israel Ata chai be seret, you are living in a movie.

Now back to reality.

You get into a scuffle, you hit him, he hits you, whatever. Your woman is looking at you and trying to figure out why she was ever so foolish to ever pick you. The door seems like a better choice for her now. She would rather be with a true adult, not an immature adolescent. 

So lets look at what happened to your perfect evening.

  • You got into a fight
  • You look like crap
  • You showed your woman that you have a short fuse and can easily snap and get dragged into a fight at any moment
  • You had no dinner

Now lets compare that to your original goals for the evening, are they the same? 

No. They are not the same, not at all.

What happened is you were weak and you allowed someone to determine the course of events for you. You allowed someone with negative energy to draw you into his circle, into his bad negative energy.

His energy, his bad will, prevailed over yours. You lost as soon as you gave him that power.

You felt threatened, your ego was bruised and you felt a need to respond. Imagine you are a champion fighter and some kids writes on Facebook that you are a coward and a loser, do you feel a need to get on a plane, meet him some place and "have it out" with him?

Is this a sign of maturity?

You know how many people insult our political leaders on a daily, hourly basis and yet they never respond? Should they drop their important work of state to respond to some kid who thinks they "do not know how to do their job"?

We all know the answer to that. So perhaps we should think about that in our own lives.

A rabbi once said "I choose my friends, and I choose my enemies, I did not chose you for either" and he walked away. Yes, he walked away. At that moment in my eyes he stood 10 feet tall and was the greatest fighter I had ever seen.