Making It Work

When I completed the General Instructors Course (part 1) in April I had a week or so making my way 1000 miles south from Gold Coast to Melbourne before flying back to the UK. After a few days there I headed over to Crete where I now reside with my awesome Dad in his flat overlooking the beaches and village of Plakias. 

Now...

With GIC's that run in Europe, you usually get about 1 to 3 weeks between the first and second parts. In Australia, presumably because Oz is so flabbergastingly vast, you get a whopping THREE MONTHS between the two chunks of training. 

Of the 15 of us who took the 12 days from April 3rd to 15th under the tuition of E4 instructor Rune Lind, I am the only one to reside outside of Australasia.
To keep your skills and fitness sharp, you are advised to keep training regularly between 1 and 2, and to teach if at all possible, preferably at your own club under the supervision of your existing instructors.

I know that most if not all of the other guys are doing this, both those in Australia and those who came from New Zealand. 

Now...

I'm in a place which is 57 miles from the nearest KMG-affiliated club. While I have the DVDs for P4 and P5, I'm currently missing P1 to 3 and also G1.

I'm also living in a sun kissed paradise of sand, sea, surf and cold beers. so it would be very easy to simply kick back and spend my time drinking, eating and shagging.

However...

I went into GIC with a mindset of wanting to achieve something I've not achieved before. That was/ is to push beyond my pain barriers and get into a state of fitness that would leave me ready to do, as Rune put it "everyday tasks without problems".

My fitness for GIC 1 was just about enough. I was in a lot of pain throughout but carried on and joy of joys, my phobia of fighting was cured on day 11 of the course, after 42 years (stemming from THIS childhood incident).

But now in Europe in a lovey Cretan fishing village...what to do?

Regular training was out of the question due to the 114 mile round trip to get to Krav Maga Chania to train with Dimitris and his students. 

Nobody in Plakias is into Krav so I would need to practice on my own...meaning no one there to correct any mistakes I make. 

I had to think of ways around this.

So I did.

The closest thing to a sports shop in this village is the beach ball section at the local supermarket so a punch bag was out of the question. I took a trip to the local DIY store on the outskirts, and bought 2 rough sacks and a length of rope. Then I scrounged a load of old clothes from friends and out of my own luggage, two old pillows and stuffed hey presto! A makeshift punchbag**

Then I decided to get fit enough to come home from part 2 without limping onto the plane. I go running twice a day, morning and afternoon. I do the Moby "Bring Sally Up" leg raise thingy nearly every day. I do the "punch, punch, sprawl" that is AC/DC's 'Thunderstruck' workout on my homemade punchbag. I do yoga for my lower back once per day. 

My fitness, after 3.5 weeks of this regime, is now pretty good.

On the roof of the building I'm living in is a nice, big, flat space where I can roll out my yoga mat and practice the basic moves of Krav Maga.

But how to train and teach?

The first week I hired a car. A friend was meant to be sharing the cost but bailed at the 11th hour. Despite the rental being relatively cheap, it still cost me 55 Euros including the petrol, which isn't peanuts if you're living on savings. 

So the following week I took the bus. Not too brilliant either as it's 2 buses there and 2 buses back and I need to stay overnight due to training finishing at 10pm.

So...24 Euros for the transport, 14 for the hostel and about 5 for food. 43 Euros...better than the car but still not great.

Then I hit on the best option. A scooter hire place down the road rented me an older 125cc bike for 200 Euros for a month. That works out at 8 Euros a day and the petrol to travel the 114 miles is about 7. 

Awesome!

So now I can go and train Monday, Wednesday and Friday with the club and it will cost me 15 Euros per day.

A friend who is an existing instructor in the UK had recently posted me the DVDs for P1 to G1 so I can practice what I need to do before I get to Oz again. 
As the postal service here sucks, it will take a week but it means I will have the curriculum to practice with on the roof with my laptop and yoga mat.

My appetite has obviously spiked since I started working out and protein is high on that list. The beauty of having the scooter is that I can stop off at the only Lidl in 40 miles...halfway between here and Chania..and stock up on oodles of cheap tinned tuna and meatballs. 

I've also found a place where snails are hiding and despite the yuck factor, cooking them with rice is a great way to bulk up for free, even though you have to hang them in nets for a week to purge them of the toxic crap they've been munching on.***

Overall, I'm not as confident as if I was training with a club a mile or two down the road where the students spoke the same language as me. BUT....Dimitris from Krav Maga Chania is a great guy who lets me teach while he translates into Greek and gives me both feedback on my teaching AND private one-on-one lessons before the group arrives.

This feels good because I'm making a situation work that was initially hard to solve.

The future's bright. The future's solvable.

-------------------------------------------

** I killed it the first time I used it. Had to revisit my knot tying training from Scouts way back in the early 1980s.

*** Last year I didn't purge them and I had the shits so bad the next day that I set the smoke alarms off in the taverna toilets.

Krav Maga Chania part 1

My father retired out to Crete in about 1997 and for the last few years I have paid him a visit in the summers, having a wonderful yet usually booze-fuelled time in the sun kissed, beach paradise that is Plakias.

Last year I thought about training with a Greek Krav club while on holiday but the nearest one was on the mainland in Athens.

This year I was more fortunate as Dimitris Kontekakis recently converted from Pure Krav Maga to KMG in November 2014. His club has about 50 members, including a small kickboxing club and a junior Krav Maga club of children. When I contacted him he was more than happy at my suggestion that I pay him and a visit to train with them.

Plakias is fairly isolated and about 60km from Chania so I planned out getting there the day before and also laid off the beer in preparation for Kravving abroad. It took two buses to get to the city and when I rolled in, the hotel was a pleasant walk from the coach station and I checked in before phoning Dimitris to touch base. He offered to pick me up on his motorbike about 8.30pm and advised me to chill out with a coffee and get something to eat. When he arrived to pick me up I think it's the first time I've had an in depth conversation about Krav Maga, while riding through the streets of a city on the back of a motorbike.

We got to the club to see some guys already there, stretching and warming up. The heat was strong, which I assumed was the reason for the late start time, and even with two ceiling fans, the heat was something I knew I'd need to try and manage. After being introduced to everyone I got changed and we lined up for the initial Kida. We did some group warming up and more of the ever necessary stretching and then Dimitris formally introduced me to everyone and said that out of respect for "our guest" the lesson would be conducted in English, with him speaking in Greek after for the students who didn't understand it. This was decent of him as I'd imagined he would translate for me, not the other way round. Dimitris then said we would be working on blocking kicks, covering most types of both kick and defence and said he would appreciate my feedback on anything I felt like adding to the mix.

We worked as both attackers and defenders and despite going "light" during the drills (I had left my shin guards at home) me and my partner banged bones a couple of times and were hopping about, silently cursing.

I was finding the heat in the room oppressive but as we hadn't been told to take a water break, and no one else had asked to, I was determined not to be the first to ask. After about 30 minutes Dimitris told everyone to get a drink and I chugged about half a litre. I then jokingly mentioned not wanting to "wimp out" and, in the spirit of true Krav Maga common sense, he told me that I should have done as I wasn't used to training in this heat.

We moved on to blocking stomp kicks with arms and hands, and he used my wonky finger (from incorrectly blocking a kick in training with an open hand last October), to warn the others of the necessity of correct technique.

We switched to striking focus mitts, with a group of 6 in the middle and another half dozen guys holding the pads in a circle. You had to go full out on the pads with the guy holding them dictating what strikes were required by changing positions.

After this we had a pressure drill doing choke hold releases...but with the added twist of it being in the dark with the lights off. I hadn't tried this before and it got the adrenalin flowing to be fighting with shadows while INXS's "Suicide Blonde" was playing loudly over the gym's stereo to further up the mood factor.

Finally we moved on to some bag work to wind down, and then lined up for the final Kida. I was soaking wet with sweat and so tired that I was rummaging in my backpack for the Krav Maga Midlands T-shirt I'd brought as a gift, that it took 2 minutes before I realised it was someone else's bag. Finally locating it I handed it to Dimitris who grinned and said "I have one for you, but you beat me to it."

He then invited me back  in 2 weeks to train again and have a meal with him and the club.

So...I get to do this again in a fortnight.

Watch this space.

Brace Yourself

I have a snapped ACL (anterior crusciate ligament) in my left knee. It broke in 2001 and I've never had it repaired...but this year I finally will. It aches when I train in Krav and unless I wear not one but two elasticated supports on it, it will sometimes swell like a balloon and hurt like a bitch the next day. I can't go running (advice of a sports masseur/ knee specialist) and flexibility on that leg is piss poor (kicks to anywhere higher than an opponent's belly button are in the realms of fantasy). I have always regarded this injury as debilitating and something that has affected my ability to be fully effective in both Krav and the rest of my life. Last week I flew to Crete for 4 weeks holiday and made doubly certain that I packed BOTH knee supports for when I go to join Krav Maga Chania, a club on the island who have invited me to train with them.

Today I was hanging out at the beach with a few pals and got introduced to an Australian girl with a broken foot. I initially believed that her foot HAD BEEN broken and now had healed...but was probably still a bit sore.

Turns out that her foot was STILL broken and was in the process of healing. She had come to the beach with her pals, but as its access is via a rocky cliff face only...she had gone to the neighbouring beach and then swum round to join her mates....who had carried her foot brace in a bag for her. Already impressed by this I was even more inspired when she swam back round as we were leaving, rendezvoused with us at the top of the drive leading to both beaches, strapped on her brace and then clopped off down the road...at a pace slightly faster than my normal "On Holiday Stroll."

She snorted at the idea of taking a cab from the taverna 10 minutes further down the road and after we'd stopped there for lunch we walked back along a trail that required climbing fences, navigating goat paths and walking through olive groves. She didn't moan or complain once and when I asked if the brace didn't sweat a bit, she replied that it came with a sock but she'd stopped wearing it and that it now "chafed a bit" but didn't elaborate further.

On the final stretch of the walk home she asked where a good bar with dancing could be found and also a decent beach for snorkelling. She added that it should be relatively close to Plakias but only because her foot meant she was limited in range.

Meeting her today has made me realise that a LOT of what's holding me back is not actual injury or obstacles but my perception of them. While I'm not so bendy on my left side any more my main worry in training is what MIGHT happen due to the ACL being in tatters...not the fact that it actually is.

"In order to carry a positive action we must develop here a positive vision."

– Dalai Lama