Nomadic Kravver- Back & White

I recently trained & graded with SGS Krav Maga in Sydney, Australia. Top notch club and had a great albeit sweaty time practicing Krav and revisiting P5 with them. The head of KMG Australia & New Zealand is a bloke named Adam White, an E3 instructor who has a day job as a high school sports teacher. SGS’s instructors had mentioned his name a few times and I assumed, with Australia being so utterly, mind bogglingly vast, that Adam resided somewhere like Darwin or Cairns.

After a trip to Broken Hill to visit the Mad Max 2 museum out there (yep, there’s a museum JUST for the second movie) I came back to the east coast to couch surf in the town of Newcastle and my host plus a couple of German guests staying same time as me, expressed an interest in learning some Krav Maga.

I looked up local clubs and…lo and behold, Adam White runs a club in Newcastle. I took a trip out there just to say Hi in between sightseeing (ever been to a place called Bogey Hole? It’s an experience) and he was in the middle of some renovation. Had a chat about a few things and arranged the next night to take the German couple along for the beginners’ class (my host bailed).

We got there and a guy named Tommy was on reception. The class seemed pretty popular, with about 20 people plus the guys I’d brought along, waiting to join in. Adam was patient in his introductions to the class. Most were on their very first lesson and he gave a brief history of what Krav is and how it came to be, mentioning the founder Imi Lichtenfeld and why Krav Maga is so effective. 

A few questions were asked about reasonable force and Adam pointed out that as most women are, by nature’s design, weaker physically than men, a woman who subdues an attacker violently would be allowed more leeway on the definition of ‘reasonable’ than a man using the same level of violence. 

They then moved into the warm up and Adam took breaks every so often to explain what was going on and usually back this up with an anecdote. I initially wondered how the lesson would go, with a lot of talking from Adam taking place. It turned out that the lesson was the right balance of instruction and verbal reassurance plus tuition, and made it clear that Adam knew exactly how long to speak, teach and let the students practice for.

When the students split into pairs there was one group of three so I volunteered to help out. The students were working with striking, kneeing and scanning. This meant hitting a strike shield and then simulating a groin strike before breaking off to ‘scan’ (check the area around you is clear of further threat.

When they then moved to miming actual knee strikes on each other, I grabbed the groin guard I’d packed just in case (hey, go prepared I say) and Adam saw it, saying to my partner “That is now a licence to kick him hard there!”

My partner was exhibiting a classic case of Nice Person Syndrome, i.e. it is NOT natural to boot someone in the crotch. I invited her to have a free shot and after a couple of attempts and a blustered “Sorry!” she finally got into it. I’ve been there myself and it takes a leap of faith to believe that the groin guard really will withstand a hefty kick.

We then moved to choke releases and I let my partner carry on instead of switching. Adam had demonstrated the necessity of sudden, explosive movement when escaping the front choke with the primary focus being release of the pressure on your neck.

At the end there were groups of three with one person standing still with their eyes closed and a partner with a strike shield moving around them. The third person would randomly ‘choke’ the central figure, who then had to do the release before deciding whether to attack or bail out, when they saw where the strike shield was. This was simulating an attack by more than one person.

I was flattered when Adam then invited me to walk around the mats, checking that the groups were doing their techniques correctly, along with him and Tommy.

At the end after a final summary of what they’d covered the group did the final bow and began to move out. The nervous faces had been replaced by a mixture of sweat and smiles. My friends said they’d enjoyed it and found the instruction useful, especially as they are backpacking around the world right now.

Great to meet the head of KMG Oz & NZ like this and I’m now looking forward to the seminars with Eyal Yanilov in Sydney on the 22nd January.

The Unbeatable Bully

Contains SPOILERS for the season 7 premiere of The Walking Dead. So shove off if you haven't seen it yet.

Watching the premiere of season 7 of my second favouritest TV show, The Walking Dead yesterday was NOT easy.

After having waited 6 whole months to find out exactly who it was that Negan battered to death with his barbed wire-covered baseball bat (affectionally monikored 'Lucille') the episode was emotionally draining, brilliantly acted and features THE best villain on a telly show EVER.

Negan cannot be bargained with, he shows mercy only when he wishes to and he is utterly and completely ruthless, barbaric, yet highly intelligent.

Watching him turn Rick Grimes from a defiant, equally ruthless badass into a quivering, crying wreck of a man was a masterpiece of acting from both Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Negan) and Andrew Lincoln (Rick).

Negan saw the defiance in Rick's eyes (not to mention the line "I'm gonna kill you. Not today, not tomorrow...but I'm gonna kill you!") after he had bashed Abraham and Glenn's skulls to offaly mush and this did not get a nod of respect. Instead Negan made it his mission to break Rick's spirit by throwing him into a herd of zombies and watching him fight his way through them and telling him to chop his own son Carl's arm off (as an alternative to Carl and all Rick's friends dying in front of him). Only when Rick broke down in tears, with the axe raised did Negan finally relent.

No pity. No remorse. No fear. No compassion.

Which brings me to this blog...

When I was growing up there were some bullies knocking about my village. The myth at the time was that if you bopped them hard on the nose then they would run away with their tails between their legs, crying and would almost certainly never bother you again. While this was USUALLY true there were exceptions. Some bullies couldn't be tamed and even if you did stand up to them, you had better do it fucking well and hard and not mess about. Schools of my era were run by lazy, cuntish, lackadaisical aresholes who believed all incidents of bullying to be "fighting" and would 99% of the time apply the maxim of "6 of 1, half a dozen of the other" rather than look for the root causes of a problem.

There was still the idea though of showing some "backbone" and being able to face your issues without resorting to violence in retaliation BUT being able to calmly deal with the shit that life hurled at you.

Most adventure stories for children, from the Narnia Chronicles through to Harry Potter and the Hunger Games and even my own work The Tales of Alegria, focus on bullies and tyrants paying for what they have done. They either die, go to the dungeons or suffer fates worse than death. Bullies, so the legends go, can always be outwitted by loyalty, bravery, a clear head and above all being the "goodies".

Utter cobblers.

Most bullies don't like retaliation at all and will come down on you twice as hard if you return fire with anything other than 100% aggression. When I was a police officer I was bullied by my immediate superior, a little cunt named Sergeant Neil Drapper. When I stood up to him by reporting his behaviour to the police federation (cop's union) and also the Superintendent (deputy borough commander) the Sergeant simply went into bullying overdrive in his determination to bin me AND pay me back for making him feel uncomfortable in front of his own line managers.

Krav Maga has, over the years I've been doing it, taught me some very fundamental lessons on pride, ego and calculating losses. A friend of mine recently told me that she got into an elevator where three guys were stood in it, and after the doors closed one of them grabbed her ass. She said she was afraid to do anything in case he hit her or later stalked her. My advice was "next time just don't get in the elevator. Or if they get in later, get out before the doors close". Better to risk offending someone than be trapped in a confined space with them out of a sense of "I have the right to exist unmolested".

In situations where you have unknown variants, or are outnumbered, or you are drunk (yet sober enough to still rationalise) or the person/ people you are facing are bigger than you...it is not going to help the situation in the slightest to be belligerent and stubborn. 

In The Walking Dead last night, Negan made it quite clear before he bashed Abraham and Glenn's heads in that any and all defiance and rebelliousness over what was going to happen would result in further punishment. After killing Abraham and taunting his wailing ex girlfriend with the gore soaked bat, Daryl Dixon loses his shit, gets up off his knees and sucker punches Negan. To illustrate his point further, Negan then murders Glenn (a major character since season 1) and, unlike Abraham, lets Glenn suffer in agony before finishing him off. Then Rick promises to kill him (a threat we would have been disappointed NOT to hear from a badass, six season survivor of the zombie apocalypse like Rick Grimes), Negan simply makes him suffer a lot more, even giving him a Sophie's Choice; personally removing his own son's arm with an axe or suffering greater loss.

Bullies sometimes cannot be defeated and will thrive on watching people lose their cool. This superlative TV show made it quite clear that while Negan was aware that people felt angry, bitter or hysterical, they were absolutely NOT to act upon those emotions. He was boss and was going to prove it through inflicting pain until the resistance was gone.

A scene I cannot rewatch from the show Spartacus: Vengeance from a few years ago has, after the slave rebellion in ancient Rome, four gladiators recaptured. They are paraded at a party for local Roman elite, in shackles and on their knees. However they are still defiant, proudly glaring at their captors with contempt. This enrages one young Roman noble so badly that he asks if they can have "one now" rather than wait to watch them be publicly executed the next day. Every guest is a little drunk and the local magistrate agrees to "just one". The gladiator chosen spits out "fucking Roman dogs" as he is led away and boy does he suffer for that.

Restrained with ropes he is hung up in the centre of the room and the guests take turns cutting bits off him, while being cautioned to "not to cut too deep" in case the poor sod bleeds out and dies too early. The first person up cuts the guy's tongue out as a punishment for using foul language and insulting him. The guy dies in agony and all for his defiance in the face of capture. 

In the late 1980s I worked in the DeMontfort hotel in the shit hole that is Kenilworth, a small town in Warwickshire. I usually worked as a waiter but was drafted into a Hall Porter's role one day due to staffing shortages. A vile chef named Joe Wheeler used to bully the lower downs and had an extra beef with me due to the fact that I would answer back or even physically retaliate at his childish pokes, slaps and taunts. As I stood in the kitchen in my HP's jacket (with blingy epaulettes) I heard Joe shout "Are you joking?" and ignored him. He shouted it once more and then threw a flat, steel serving tray across the kitchen at me. It missed and I just picked it up and threw it back. The rage twisted across his face and he ran around the cabinets shouting "DON'T YOU THROW A TRAY BACK!!!"

Not "don't you throw a tray" but "don't you throw a tray...BACK!"

What Krav has made me realise is that in life there are situations where you CANNOT overcome the obstacle. Not all mountains are climbable all of the time. Everest guides will always turn back if the odds mean they are in too much danger to make it to the summit, dissapointing clients and themselves yet saving lives in the process. 

When faced with overwhelming odds there are times when swallowing your pride is enough to solve the situation. An Expert level 3 Krav instructor, once shared a story of queue jumping by a burly American tourist in London. When the instructor voiced objection the guy got in his face, threatening to thump him and he took the "least creative option" by looking away and appearing cowed, defusing the situation even though he could have beaten the guy down.

Sometimes nothing is more creative than something.

Occasionally bullies cannot be defeated and must only be avoided or complied with. Like taxes, no one likes them but unless you are creative or lack self preservation skills, you have to abide by the directive to pay them.

I like the fact that Krav always give you "soft options" or to put it bluntly "to do something by doing nothing".

Some situations are best left alone.

Nuff said.