Defy Your Destiny

In July 2017 I checked my luggage in at Heathrow airport to take an Etihad Airways flight from the UK to Abu Dhabi. This was the first phase of a two-part journey back to Australia to complete the Krav Maga Global, Australia & New Zealand General Instructors Course (or KMG ANZ GIC 2017 for short).

Over the preceding week I had had many thoughts about my future and the very real possibility that I would fail the GIC. 

The course comes in three parts in most countries, two in some. KMG ANZ do it in two. Part 1 had been in the Gold Coast of Australia and was 12 days of learning under the tuition of Expert level 4 examiner Rune Lind**. The course, while enlightening, educational and mainly fun had also been bone jarringly exhausting and physically painful. 7 to 8 hours per day of training isn’t that hard to handle if you are even reasonably fit. But with the necessity to teach, make notes and stay mentally aware, it was VERY draining.

I thoroughly enjoyed it but on the last day, when Rune took us to one side individually to give us our personal feedback he said to me “If you carry on as you are, you won’t pass part 2. But do it anyway, because then 1 is locked down and you can retest 2 later on if you need to”.

I have covered the anxiety issues, and how it felt to fail, in my blogs Schroedinger’s Pussy and After A While… but recently I realised just why I really did it.

Just why I went back at all.

When part 1 was getting closer I was exercising as much as I could. I was backpacking in New Zealand at the time and, in order to get my mind on the right wavelength, I booked the return flight back from the UK to Oz for part 2 months before it was due to happen. Retrospectively this wasn’t necessary as you can do part 2 in any country where they are happy to accept you on the course, if you’ve completed part 1. However at the time I wanted to convince myself that I could see this through.

A tourist visa to Australia (or at least, the one I had) is valid for 9 months per year from the date of first entry. However, you must leave every 3 months in order to keep the visa active. So I had no choice but to quit Oz after part 1 had finished and I intended to spend it with my dad in Greece. 

When it came time to pack up my groin guard and fly to Melbourne for part 2, I had figured out how to “not go” and also get the money back. A lost passport would have been covered by my Platinum insurance and the non-refundable return flight as well. I decided only when I handed my luggage over at check-in desk to actually go back.

After another, more arduous, 12 days of training I failed the GIC as I had known I probably would.

Now…

All my life I have dreamed of being brave, being a warrior and defeating monsters. My earliest dreams, at the age of about 5, involved me as Lance cowboy, a hero of playschool*** who other kids held in awe and was loved by all. However, growing up my reality was very different. I had no ability to fight and while I wasn’t a coward (I’d stand still and take a beating to prove I wasn’t scared) I gave up trying to make a difference to my own limitations by about the age of 14. 

If something came unexpectedly, then I’d deal with it as best I could, but I would avoid situations that could cause me pain, loss, humiliation or other draining emotions, and keep my life on an even keel.

When I was 19 two bouncers in a pub I worked in, held me down and forcibly cut my hair. I did nothing and tried to laugh it off.

When I got a job after leaving uni, I quit due to bullying from my supervisor after making zero effort to fight back against her behaviour. 

My next job was populated by a bunch of wankers who were banal and bullying in equal measure. Again I did nothing.

A job I got in 2002 where my boss refused to pay me properly on my final day, I put up no resistance.

When I fell in love in 2004 and couldn’t deal with my emotions I ran away and hid for over 8 years, telling myself outrageous stories about how the woman must have felt about me.

When, in 2010, and a police officer, my sergeant bullied me gleefully until I resigned, I put up only token resistance and only made peace with the situation after publishing a book about it all.

Any key event in my life I wouldn’t see it through. I would stop and say that I’d stood my ground long enough and now it was time to move on.

And then GIC came. 

I had been training in Australia and New Zealand at a few clubs when I asked Adam White, the head of KMG ANZ if he’d let me take the course. I made it clear I couldn’t promise regular training but that I would still give it my all. Problem is, techniques need to be absorbed into muscle memory and by not training in clubs more than once every month or so, there was no way I was ready and deep down I knew that.

To fly back to Melbourne from London was going to take me about 30 hours. It was winter in Australia in July so I would not only be tired, I would be cold and uncomfortable too. The training would start early and end late. I would have homework to do. I would be facing a range of negative emotions and would hopefully be able to get over what I found out later is called The GIC Hump. This would be hard. It would be one of the hardest things I had ever done and to top it all off, I had little chance of success. I simply wasn’t ready. 

On day 12, the last day, I gave it as much as I could. I had passed both the theory and teaching exams on days 10 and 11 and while I knew I was bollocksing up the techniques that part 2 examiner Franklyn Hartkamp was asking us to demonstrate I still lived in the moment. After 5+ hours we all got our results and Franklyn made it clear that while I had got good passes on the first two exams he wanted me to wait a year before retesting, my techniques had been that lacking in polish. He also expressed surprise when I said I would be flying back to Europe in 2 days, asking “But you’re coming back?” and then saying that he’d never had this situation before, where someone had been in a country ONLY to take the exam and was leaving straight after.

Through all that pain, and eventual disappointment, I had spent a lot of money, time, sweat and pain on something that I now needed to do all over again if I still coveted the Instructors’ T-shirt.

But then….

I had come back. I’d sen this to the end. I’d not made a false insurance claim and told myself that I could do part 2 “another time”. I’d travelled a ridiculous amount of miles and gone through a world of pain. And that was the achievement. For possibly the first time in my adult life I had, with my eyes wide open, decided to not turn the ship around, tuck tail and run, or do a U-ey. I’d faced my fears of both failure and pain and both participated in and completed something that, even three years previously, I NEVER thought I would be able to do. I had fought with guys both better and worse than me, and had my 42 year phobia of fighting finally cured during the sparring on day 11 of GIC part 1.

I resigned my jobs, I didn’t protest when two thugs cut my hair for a laugh, I hadn’t been able to tell the woman I loved how I felt about her, but now, knowing that I was 80% likely to fail I had still gone back and done this. 

This was the achievement, not the G1 patch or the Instructors’ certificate and T-shirt. To know that I could trek across the world to pursue a dream. Something I’d always wanted, and not back down when the odds were against me. I’d faced my demons and I’d had a good time. A video of me fighting during the grading shows me getting my arse handed to me by a much bigger, better and stronger opponent (who at one point, kicks me in the HEAD from a standing position). The same video also shows that while I’m out of my league, I’m also not backing down. He was the personification of the GIC. I knew I couldn’t beat him, but I tried anyway and stood my ground.

This experience gave me back a lot of the self esteem I lost growing up. In 2010 I had a tattoo done on my left arm that said “Defy Your Destiny” and for once I tried to. 

I now know that even if I never retake the GIC I have the power to try whatever I want.

** Now Expert 5.

*** Kindergarten to Yanks.

Roam...New Zealand

Latest holiday video. Some Krav in it. Music courtesy of the B52s.

KMG Auckland, New Zealand

Nomadic Kravver

KMG Auckland

Wednesday 1st &

Saturday 4th February 2017

After a glorious 3 months in Australia I decided to take in the delights of New Zealand and flew over to Auckland a few days before my Ozzy visa expired. 

I was happy to find out that the only Krav Maga club affiliated to KMG in the whole of Kiwi land was in Auckland**. Run by E1 instructor Aaron Moore it had several branches that were dotted around the city and I dropped Aaron an email after I landed, asking if I could come and train with them on the Saturday class as I wasn’t intending to be around long.

Turns out that the weekends of January 22nd and February 3rd are both three day holidays, meaning that there was no Saturday class on either week.

Boo! Hiss!

However, my Couchsurfing host offered to let me stay on a few extra days which meant I could attend the advanced class on Wednesday.

Hooray! Hooray!

KMG Auckland started just a few months ago in September 2016. In that short time it has gained around many members, including some higher P grades, a few of which had graded with IKMF before transferring over. 

When I got to the YMCA in Grays Avenue in the city centre, the beginners’ group was still going at it. I chatted with a few guys waiting outside in the foyer, including a lad called Craig who had emigrated to NZ with his wife and while new to Krav had done martial arts for much of his life. 

At around 7pm Aaron brought us in and we had an 18 minute warm-up (should have been 20 apparently but Aaron said he’d “let us off this time”).

After that we were doing some work that I hadn’t seen before including everyone grabbing a shield and running in a circle, before Aaron yelled “NOW!” and we then had to run across the floor, pile driving everyone in our way. Lots of fun provided you remember to keep your mouth closed for fear of losing lips, teeth or even your tongue. 

We then then had to do some forward rolls before coming up into a fighting stance. Not a big deal if you’ve trained for a while BUT I had never done this on a hard floor before. I long ago learned that “biting the bullet” and just doing something for fear of looking like a pansy is the wrong thing to do (a friend of mine did hard floor rolls on his P2 grading, and like me had never done them before, didn’t flag it up to the examiner and to this day has shoulder issues as a result). However I was confident it would be OK and after a couple of attempts it proved to be painless. Relief blossomed that I’d finally nailed the rolls to the point where a nice mat is now only a luxury.

Then we moved into 360 striking and defences with Aaron demonstrating the different techniques required and how you can defend with “right arm vs. right arm” if the attacker is too close or at too odd an angle for the “normal” counter measure. 

In groups of three or four we then had a pressure drill involving two guys striking and one with a shield against a lone defender. The shield guy would push the “victim” in the back who would roll forward or soft break fall and then come up fighting. This was tiring but again a lot of fun and the special treat was at the end when we moved to groups of 6 and one person lying on the floor. The others had to then try and prevent him or her from standing up, pushing down as the person fought their way clear. Knackering but less of a chore than I’d thought it would be, we all had a turn and then lined up for a final Kida. 

Aaron invited me to the stick defence seminar in Victoria Park the following Saturday and I was glad to accept, happy for the extra training before heading off further south to Wellington.

Saturday 4th November

The seminar kicked off at 10.30am and I got to the meeting point by the cricket pavilion at about 10 o’clock. The students began to drift in slowly and it was interesting that there were seasoned Kravvers there amongst newbies who’d only been attending Aaron’s class for a week or two.

When Aaron showed up we had a brief chat and then moved to a shady bit of the park. While we were strolling over, a young couple out jogging stopped to ask about Krav and, after a quick chat with Aaron, he invited them to join in the seminar with the rest of us.

We went straight into some partner work doing outside defences against punches. Then we did some stuff with inside defences before the training sticks were brought out.

One thing I was retested on after getting a conditional pass on my P4 was stick defences. While not hard as such, they are fiddly to get right and it takes a lot of practice, in my opinion this is because 50% of the technique is down to footwork as much as body defence and appropriate hand/ arm movements. 

The “fleshy foreram” defence was first up with a diagonal movement to the side of the attacker, in the path of where they are swinging the stick to. Once this is nailed it is straight forward to perform. Next up was the “one up, one down” defence, meant to be utilised when you have your hands down and are caught off guard.

After we drilled this for a while, Aaron then showed us a technique I hadn’t practiced in a while, what I call the “mill wheel”. This one involves an attack where the person pushes the stick horizontally against your face or chest and you respond my taking the blow against your forearms, preferably over their knuckles, and then grab the stick, doing a violent and sudden 360 degree circle with the stick in your grasp. Performed properly this will cause the attacker to not only let go of the stick but lose their balance.

We had some fun with that one and then Aaron found some actual branches off the trees (the huge kind that my dog used to find and insist on bringing home) and got us to attack each other with those. 

We then split into groups of three, and had two attackers with sticks going at the third guy, to see if the techniques had made an imprint on our muscle memory. The guy who’d just been jogging past with his girlfriend was pretty good for a novice and when a huge, hulking German P3 named Hendrick did the mill wheel release on me, I felt my neck whiplash.

Final drill was to chase a partner across to the trees and try and utilise cover, sticks or even loose dirt and leaves as something to prevent an attack.

Lots of fun had by all and after the final Kida I had a few words with Aaron.

“At the moment we have about 35 members and about 30 people on trials for the club. Today was a good day. It’s a long weekend so I wasn’t sure if many people were going to turn out, but good for a bank holiday. I was really pleased about how it went, being able to take it out of the gym and into real situations. It makes it much more real for people.”

I also chatted to Pia who was one of the couple jogging past who were invited to join in. She said “I’ve always wanted to do some self defence training. I’m pretty interested in joining, we’ll see about the nights. The techniques were useful but something I think I’d have to practice a lot. The sideways attack was the best.”

KMG Auckland run classes in Auckland Central and on the North Shore.

They can be contacted at their website KMG AUCKLAND.

** Another club has now opened in Wellington called New Zealand Self Defence Academy run by Andre Maritz. Originally with IKMF they migrated over to KMG in early February 2017.