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My latest book.

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Sequel to 2105's WALK IN PIECES.

After A While...

As I sit here, my hips aching and bruises in places that I didn’t know I even had places, there’s a temporary reprieve from the last 12 days.

I’ve just finished the final exam for the General Instructors Course, or GIC. This is run by Krav Maga Global and, if you pass it, means you become an instructor for the organisation and obtain at least a Graduate 1 grade (after all, you have to be at least a G1 to teach Practitioners 1 to 5). There are myths, rumours and even substantiated claims of some GIC candidates passing out with a G2 or even a G3 patch, some of which were not even a P5 when they went in.

My body is, to put it politely, completely f**ked. This was the second part of the training. In April up in the Gold Coast of Australia, I did part 1. That was the initial chunk, the first half. The reason that KMG no longer do the course Monday to Saturday with Sundays off, is that 24 days in a row is unsustainable for anyone except badasses who have just come out of the army or those who run ultramarathons for a hobby. 

After 10 weeks off, we then came back to Melbourne and began phase 2. Another 12 days. I have been pushed both physically and emotionally to my absolute frigging limits. I’ve felt like giving up, I’ve taken cocktails of painkillers, I’ve eaten like a pregnant Sumo wrestler and not put on an ounce in fat. Seven to eight hours a day of fighting training. Not just learning HOW to fight but learning how to teach OTHERS to fight….and also how not to.

Having to learn technical skills, then write down the technique, then have to teach it. It’s been beyond hard. This was a course I came into knowing it would be something to test my limits. I nearly didn’t come back for the second part, seriously considering “losing” my passport so I could get my non-refundable, return ticket from London to Melbourne refunded. 

As the days went by, in both phases, I gritted my teeth and marked off little points of victory.

Survived the first day. Whoopee!

Got through the first quarter (3rd day). Awesome!

Got to the end without being injured to the point of having to withdraw! Brilliant!

We also had homework to do almost daily. Lesson plans, theory revision and also a test on Krav that we were obliged to spend a great deal of time doing properly with a pass mark of 75%. I got 88% and momentarily felt immortal. 

Then we had the teaching test. I was assigned “Release from static choke from behind”. I had to teach this to six of my peers. I passed that test too and my hopes were high for the grading on the final day. 

There had been 15 of us but one person had to drop out due to injury. 14 candidates on test day. I shouted “Who else hasn’t got a partner?” and I got the huge Serbian guy. 

We started and it went on and on and on. After 4-ish hours we began sparring and my badass partner virtually handed me my ass. Seriously don’t think I’ve ever been roundhoused in the head in a standing position before. Determined to at the very least, stand my ground, I did exactly that, too tired and too inflexible in the back hips to try and retaliate in kind. As we tumbled to the floor my adrenalin kicked in and I could hear myself yelling “F**K YOU! YOU F**KING C**T!!” before he got me in a choke hold and I had to tap out.

The sparring and ground fighting finally came to a close and with my clothes sodden in sweat and my hair hanging so far over my face that I had about 30% visibility, I joined the other guys for the icing on the cake. 50 push ups, 60 sit ups, 70 squats and 20 brownies (imagine if a burpee decided to become a Satanist…THAT’S a brownie).

Staggering off the mats I gulped down literally about 2 litres of water and forced granola bars and glucose gel into my bruised stomach. The Serbian guy was next to me and I said “Don’t take the swearing personally, I don’t really think you’re a c**t”. 

He chuckled and said, wiping sweat from his forehead, “It’s OK, you needed the adrenalin rush”.

Now…about half an hour after the final test has ended, we are sat facing the examiner. Franklyn Hartkamp. Expert level 4 in KMG and a part of the Global Instructor Team. A nice guy, with a sense of humour but I have no illusions about any one of us being given the GIC unless we deserve it. 

He starts with my Serbian partner and after brief feedback tells him he passed and we all clap and smile at the guy, pleased for him yet still cacking it for ourselves. Franklyn then moves to another guy, feedback given, constructive criticism forthcoming and he too has passed. Then it’s the guy’s partner and yet another pass. As Franklyn moves around the candidates, he is giving the feedback to the partners who trained and fought together in the test. This sets off my internal alarm bells. I was bypassed after my Serbian roundhouser buddy. I think maybe I haven’t made it after all.

The feedback moves on and on, each person being told they’ve passed and all of us clapping and offering words of congratulations. Then finally someone has failed. The feedback is fair, the tone level and friendly but Franklyn says that some more time is needed before this person can retest. I see the crestfallen look in their eyes and the hurt and pain and realise that feeling is something I’m going to be getting soon. But I hold out hope that maybe….maybe not.

Finally everyone else has had their feedback. 13 passes, 1 fail. Franklyn says “Is there anybody else?” and I raise my hand.

He looks at me and after a slight pause says, “After a while I stopped writing”.

I know in that moment that it’s over.

I had kind of guessed this would happen. I’ve been backpacking for the last 8 months and my training has been, to put it mildly, sporadic. While travelling in Australia and New Zealand I trained now and then. While in Greece with my father I would travel once a week-ish to a club 57 miles away  to train. I hadn’t done enough and deep down I knew that. I decided to go for it anyway though, determined not to be Schrodinger’s Pussy.

I feel calm, not upset or bitter like I imagined I might. Franklyn compliments me on my theory and teaching results and says that he’d like me to wait at least a year before trying again for the grading. You are allowed 3 fails of techniques on a GIC grading. I clearly hurtled past that number if he stopped taking notes or evaluating me. I thank him for his feedback and say that I accept 100% responsibility for failing. I also add that I’ll be back. Franklyn smiles and puts on a Schwarzenegger accent, repeating “I’ll be back!!”

We all then stand up and those who passed get their T-shirts, G1 patches and certificates. Excitedly they rip open the packaging and pull the shirts on. It reminds me of Christmas morning. I feel a little sad but resigned to the situation, knowing that this isn’t personal and with enough work I can come back, try again and pass.

Then the guys start posing for photos and me and the other failee are stood at the side. I have to turn away at this point, the disappointment and the realisation of what I’ve failed to achieve hitting me hard. 

I move to the changing room and a few minutes later a couple of guys join me, both saying they’re sorry and shaking my hand. I tell them I’m pleased for them and I mean it. I’ve trained with them for just shy of a month and they deserve what they’ve achieved.

After a few goodbyes I make my way back to my lodgings. My friends there initially refuse to believe I failed but cheer me up with hugs and reassurances about the future. 

I get a shower and change and then head back out for the final dinner with my fellow trainees. The mood is good, and although Franklyn couldn’t make it we send him some photos via WhatsApp and wolf down steak and ice cream in a great, riverside restaurant. The Serbian guy sits next to me and grinning, points to a cut on his lower lip. “You did that”, he says.

“Seriously? I actually landed one on you?”

He smiles again and replies “Yes, you fought well”.

After a few hours I say my final goodbyes to the guys and go home. I sleep until about 12pm the next day and the day after I’m on a plane home. 13 hours to Abu Dhabi, 7 hour stopover then a further 7 hours to London. 

Hubba! Hubba!

My body aches all over, my hips feel like they are at least 20 degrees out of alignment. My appetite is still raging and now I have about a 30 hour journey ahead of me to get home. 

I took GIC and I failed it. Of the initial 15, one guy had to stop due to injury. Me and one other failed the final test.

Was it worth it?

Of course it was!

Schrodinger's Pussy

Yesterday, as a struggled to cope with a rather horrid case of jet lag achieved by flying from London to Melbourne, my host was talking to me and some other guests about his ability to “read” people. He was hailed as being spot on in his assessments by the people present so I asked him if he could give me one sentence about me that didn’t come from something I’d already told him.

After a few seconds he said:

“I think you’re scared”.

I nodded in agreement and replied that I had indeed been scared for about the last week, specifically about coming back to Australia to finish GIC part 2 for Krav Maga.

After a pause he then added, “I don’t mean just that, I mean about everything.”

I asked him to elaborate and he said that I live my life like Schrodinger’s Cat. When I required further clarification he told me:

“You are scared so, like Schrodinger’s cat, you don’t know what a situation will bring so you guess. But instead of finding out what the result would have been by opening the box you go with that guess as if it’s the final answer”.

And….he was right.

I’ve kind of known this for a long time but to have someone else see it is scary. I’ve lived most of my life scared of something or other and my paranoia and insecurity have reigned over huge chunks of my existence in the last few decades.

To put it in perspective.

In April of this year I successfully completed part 1 of the General Instructor’s Course for Krav Maga Global. This is the backbone of any and all Krav teaching for the organisation I belong to, with the exception of the KIC/ Kids Instructor Course, which I already hold.

Part 1 was very hard and I was physically and mentally drained by the end of it. We broke up for nearly 3 months before part 2 was to begin and in that time I was in England and Greece, keeping fit and trying to retain some Kravvyness and not just let all that awesome training fade away.

For the last week I’ve spent most of that time SERIOUSLY contemplating not coming back to complete part 2. I had a multitude of reasons to justify this feeling.

1. It’s expensive and I’m almost at the end of my savings now.

2. It’s a 28 hour journey door to door and my jet lag will undoubtedly be horrendous **

3. If I lose my passport my insurance will pay not only for that but also for the return flight of £682 that I can’t claim back or cancel through conventional means.

4. I can do GIC 2 anywhere in the world so if part 3 happens then I can use that money to take it somewhere like London or Rome which are slightly nearer than Melbourne.

I fretted and fussed and stressed and bit my nails over this for days, locking the cat in the box and was 90% certain I WASN’T going to go back when a friend in England said, “This is just self doubt”.

And she was 100% right.

I have spent most of my adult life locking the cat in the box with the canister of poisoned gas, but only guessing at to whether it was still alive or not. I didn’t want to be proved one way or the other and by just guessing as to the outcome of a situation, I could forever live in a blissful state of calm ignorance, unhampered by the nasty intrusion of reality.

As THIS STORY shows. My reluctance to not only open the box but to even acknowledge its presence made me a bit of a Schrodinger’s pussy. And with that story, the outcome, when I did finally open the box by getting back in touch with the woman involved….nearly 9 years later...was that the cat was not only alive but very pleased to hear from me again.

GIC 1 cured my fear of sparring, an irrational fear that I’ve had ever since I was 4 years old. I know what created this fear but I was unable to move past it until Rune Lind of KMG Global Team made me and the other 14 guys fight for what seemed forever*** on day 11 of a 12 day course.

I never considered myself a coward in the conventional sense of the word. I would stand my ground and even get a kicking to prove I wasn’t scared (retrospectively not a sensible or clever stance to take). However the things that REALLY mattered to me were the ones I shied away from and just guessed the outcome of. Never knowing if the gas had killed the cat or not.

I couldn’t tell the woman I loved (and still love) that I loved her, because I was afraid of the result of doing so. I locked the cat in the box and never opened it. Believing it was better to never find out than to discover that the cat had died. Once I finally opened it with trembling fingers 8+ years later the results were beyond what my dreams were made of. The cat was far from dead. The cat leapt out and wanted to play, bearing no grudges at its 8 years long isolation from my life.

When I told the woman from this story that it was better to never have known how she felt than to discover she hated me or had forgotten me she shook her head, smiled and went “You’re silly”.

Similarly with Krav Maga I have returned to a world that is going to be 12 more days of intense activity and even pain. However, pass or fail I now have the desire to shut the cat in the box only long enough to see whether it is alive or dead by the end of the experiment. If I pass I will feel like a king. If I fail I will be dissapointed but I will know that I flew back 10,500+ miles to do this and can retest at any time in the future.

It was only when I actually saw my checked baggage fuck off on the conveyor belt at Heathrow terminal 4 that I finally realised I was definitely going back for GIC 2. 7 hours to Adu Dhabi. 2 hour stopover. 12 hours to Melbourne.

When I got to Southern Cross station at 5.30am and it was 2 degrees centigrade I was laughing my head off. Amazed at my own audacity to treat a journey around the world like a trip to visit friends in the next town. I’d finally stopped being Schrodinger’s pussy.

The fears we don’t face become our limits.

Nuff said.

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

** It was.
*** Actually 25 minutues.

Getting Ready

So I’ve been away from Krav Maga General Instructors Course for nearly 3 months. We completed part 1 in April and a week later I flew back to England and from there to Crete.

In that time I have spent many hours keeping fit.

My cardio levels were piss poor during part 1, even though my general fitness was OK. The 12 day, 8 hours per day, gruel fest was something that taxed the limits of my stamina.

So for part 2 I’ve been doing some serious work.

In Crete I would go running, usually twice a day. In the morning I’d do the “long” run of about 3 miles and then get home, get a 3 or 4 egg omelette and a filter coffee after a quick shower.

Later I’d do the joy that is “Bring Sally Up” (leg raise version) and later still the utterly enjoyable and not at all horrid AC/DC “Thunderstruck” punch bag workout.

I’d also mix in some Yoga now and then and make certain that I ate shed loads of protein each day. Something I read in a Jack Reacher novel that turned out to be true, is that if you drink at least 5 litres of mineral water per day, you can basically do what the fuck you want.

So...pissing like a racehorse (my first, morning tinkle lasted a good couple of minutes each time) I spent a week getting my body flushed free of toxins and then had the joyous experience of being able to get shitfaced of an evening and then go running with little or no hangover the next morning.

I couldn’t get a punchbag in Crete (my father, who I was visiting, lives in a fishing village) so I improvised. I went to the local DIY shop and got a couple of rough sacks, filled them with old clothes and strung them from the beams on the balcony with some rope. Not the most sturdy of contraptions but it meant I could at least do technique work albeit not any heavy punching.

I found a cheap fitness tracker watch on Ebay and got that shipped over so I could monitor heart rate, calories burned and steps taken each day.

I would do inclinded push up on the benches along the sea front on my 2^nd daily run.

I got back in touch with Krav Maga Chania, the nearest club to Dad’s village and hired a 125cc motor scooter to travel out the 4 times on a Friday to train and teach with them. 

Dimitris the club owner was very welcoming, translating my lessons to Greek for his students and welcoming my input each time. The trip was 60 miles each way and I only did this on the same night once, where I crawled into bed at 11pm shivering and feeling very sorry for myself after 2 hours facing what looked like the time vortex from the intro credits of Doctor Who (darkness and motorbikes are not nice for a novice rider).

I practiced Krav Maga on the roof of Dad’s apartment (only space big enough, wasn’t just to pose) and made sure I did at least 2 sets of 40 push ups per day.

My appetite was huge and my energy levels were high.

I kept this pace, knowing that on 29^th June I fly back to Melbourne to complete the GIC.

I’m ready.

See you in a few days.