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Krav Maga Learning - Does it End?Does Learning End As long as the mind is active we are constantly processing information. We look, we notice, we observe, we think. So you earned your black belt, you receive a certificate, a diploma, you have a trophy showing you took first place in the annual "All State Bahamas Competition:, does this mean you know it all? Are you ready to relax? Is it time to shut off the brain and the learning process? The answer is…no. In Judaism we believe that you are a life long student, there is no real beginning and there is certainly no end. So in Krav Maga are they new techniques all the time? This is not the relevant question, what is relevant is that every situation, every moment of life, and every individual are different. Self defense, or self preservation as my friend Louie B likes to say, is ever changing.
I was just in Germany, for the first time, walking around the airport when I arrived in Munich, I did not know where to go, I did not speak any German, I did not know the outlines of the airport. My total mindset, my whole being, was different than when I am home in Israel. It is like being a whole different animal. Your senses work differently, your body reacts differently. The mind controls the body, if your mind has changed your body actions will change to. So I found myself in a new situation and my awareness had to respond as well. Good techniques without the right mindset are utterly useless. How many stories have we heard about high ranking martial arts people being taken by surprise on the street! They train in the dojo, they fight in the ring but the street, or the airport, is not the ring. Here you must adjust your entire mindset in order to respond "like an echo". Your dojo style training is not even close to being enough. In a new situation I found myself have to take everything in, become a new person in a sense. It is like a trained dancer, what if he can no longer hear? Will his dance be the same? No, it will not, he needs to relearn how to move in a new situation, he needs a mental refocusing. Israel is known to always be a few years ahead of other nations when it comes to security. We do not only learn from the past, we learn from the present and anticipate the future. This involves learning to tune into a new situation, evaluate it, become in tune with it, aligned with it. Only then can our learned techniques be effective should we need them. We are constantly learning, we are constantly becoming new people.
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