Krav Maga Melbourne

Nomadic Kravver

Krav Maga Melbourne

9th November 2016

Lance Manley- P4

In August of 2016 I decided to sell my car, give up my flat and give my cat to the RSPCA. I’ve been to Greece to stay with my Dad and recently took a trip to Australia. I landed in Melbourne and did the tourist thing for a few days 

Treading the tarmacced roads beneath my blistered feet has proved fun yet occasionally repetitious. While there’s a lot of things to do in Melbourne, they are either located in the city or require a jaunt outside to places like St Kilda (beaches and sunrises) or Ferntree Gully (the 1000 steps walk).

I’ve been out of regular Krav training for a few months now. After I recovered from a knee operation in 2015 I slowly got back into things but the training proved sporadic and my fitness levels were way short of the nightmarish new “tests” that were being hurled at sweat drenched practitioners at the end of P2 to P5 exams internationally. 

Krav Maga Global, like Starbucks, have branches everywhere so after a quick gander on Facebook I found what I was looking for to give my week in the city a unique spin. 

Krav Maga Melbourne is a KMG affiliated club run by G5 instructor Ruairi Molloy who hails from Ireland. I spoke to him on the phone a couple of days before and he said I was welcome to join in and to come along to the advanced class on Wednesday evening. The venue is a dojo, purpose designed for the club with scenario rooms, a main training hall, and a large locker area containing equipment including sparring dummies.

I got to North Melbourne train station at about 5.30pm. Finding the address proved easy and the only sign the club was there was a laminated A4 sign on the roll gate informing visitors to use the side door. 

I met Ruairi who showed me into a rather scary scenario room that doubles as a male changing area. Perturbingly, the walls move backwards and forwards to enhance or reduce the allocated space. This reminded me in no small part of the finale of the fifth Saw movie, or (for the 1970s child within me), the garbage crushing scene of the original Star Wars.

Getting kitted up I chatted with Ruair for a while before the other students arrived. At the Melbourne club there are 4 instructors of varying levels. Ruairi himself holds KIC like I do and was trained by Nadav Shosan a few years back. While the advanced classes are small, Ruairi told me that there are more people in the regular group, that was going to happen immediately after our session.

Backpacking means that I have only my gum shield as anything remotely Kravvy (barring a T-shirt) and was surprised to find that Ruairi had spare groin guards in a box for the protectionless  practitioners like me. I got one on and we then were joined by two other students, one a male instructor and the other a female police officer doing Krav in her spare time.

A brief warm up and we got stuck into the techniques. I mainly worked with Ruairi who patiently showed me the moves and techniques for both single and double handed pistol threat disarms, covering front, sides and different heights. The stuff was from G3 and higher, but with repetition I managed to perform the grabs reasonably well, to praise from Ruairi. One thing I tend to do when twisting away (body defence) is “step” off the line when the correct form is to allow your body to ‘fall’ and then correct your stance. 

Once we’d done this for about half an hour me and the other two students then did a pressure drill on the stopwatch. I learned long ago to simply drop or throw a gun or knife away in training once I’ve taken it off a “bad guy” due to the rather unsettling urban myth of a cop trained in Krav in the USA who snatched a pistol from a guy in a car….and then handed it back to him instinctively as per his muscle memory from training. The bad guy apparently then shot him with it.

As we finished up the other students were coming in for the main class and I got a few photos with Ruairi and the guys, splashing out on a KMG Australia T-shirt for a souvenir. 

A good diversion from the normal sightseeing that I’d do while travelling and a lot of fun as well. Really great of Ruairi to accept me into the club like that and I hope to see him and his students again before I fly out of Oz next January…mainly because I left my KMG passport in the venue by mistake and flew to Sydney the next day before I could retrieve it.

KIC

In exactly one week I fly to Tel Aviv in Israel and from there will make my way to Haifa, home of Krav Maga Global's HQ.

For 5 days I will learn the intricacies of the Kids Instructor Course.

This has been something I've desperately wanted to do for about 18 months.

Since January of 2015 I've assisted at my local kiddy Krav club, Junior Safe Krav Maga. Headed up by Russell Brotherston, one of the instructors from Krav Maga Midlands, this was initially a daunting and knackering task every Monday. Nothing has more zest for life than a 6 year old child. They can run rings around all adults bar Olympic athletes with their indefatigable desire to expend as much energy as possible. I've worked with kids for over 20 years in various roles but above all I find teaching children Krav Maga immensely rewarding. The kids are predominantly girls (a flip from what we call Big Krav to them, where the ratio is about 1 woman to every 10 blokes) and helping them develop the self confidence to "walk in peace" (or even skip merrily) is a massively satisfying thing to do. The little girl from THIS STORY is now one of the most confident in the class, throwing roundhouse kicks with full force and getting stuck into everything we do.

I've always wanted to back up the experience and knowledge I've gained in a year & a half, with formal certification. The last KIC in the UK ran while I was off sick after a knee operation and the only one happening soon that I could attend, was in Israel. Without GIC under my belt I was obliged to get a recommendation from not only Russell but also Jon Bullock, the head of KMG UK. I spent 20 minutes drafting an email to Jon, outlining my reasons for wanting to attend KIC and citing my extensive experience plus my recently acquired Paediatric First Aid certificate. True to form Jon signed off on it with the pithy reply "No worries at all, good luck".

After applying to Israel and getting accepted onto the course I was informed that my certificate will be an Assistant Instructor Diploma, automatically upgrading to a full Kids Instructor should I ever take GIC in the future. Once the euphoria had abated slightly I set about doing the more laborious stuff. A flight, accommodation and sussing transport routes. The flight was easy but accommodation proved trickier. I eventually got a studio apartment via the wonderful Airbnb website (like Couchsurfing but you pay). I also booked a "chill out day" before flying home, meaning I can hire a car and take a look around Israel (or at least the bits nearest to Haifa).

And the trainer will probably be Zeev Cohen.

One more thing to pretend to not be worried about.

I'm nervous as hell but thrilled to bits to be a part of this.

* Check out my latest book, WALK IN PIECES: DIARY OF A KRAV MAGA PRACTITIONER. Available on Amazon.

Like an Advent Calendar

Since September of last year I've been slowly recovering from a knee operation. The op was relatively simple and was keyhole surgery to repair a flapping ACL in the left leg. After a fairly surreal stay in hospital following the procedure (unrestricted access to social media mixed with loads of sedatives do NOT go well together), I limped home and got into the process of rehabilitation.

For the first 3 weeks the leg was swollen to buggery and I could barely bend it. The op had involved drilling or cutting into various places on the knee, shoving cameras in there, and then not only restitching the tattered ligament but also scraping a load of gristle out of there.

Not nice.

I was on painkillers that made my piss go orange and had to inject my belly every day for 10 days so my blood didn't coagulate. Morphine helped me sleep and I would hobble around on crutches for my requisite 15 minutes stroll per day.

Gradually the pain eased and slowly, very slowly the leg began to calm down, the knee became more stable again and finally at nearly four months down the line, I feel that all that pain was a wise investment as I can feel more flexibility and strength in the foundations of that knee.

The thing is...

For the last four+ months I've sat on my arse, getting love handles and watching lots of television. I've recently begun yoga in order to regain my flexibility but one thing that has become woefully apparent is my lack of core stability. Basically I've become unfit.

In March of last year I took and failed the P5 test. With a score of 66% and feedback from examiner Nadav Shosan that I would do better the next time, I looked forward to a retesting in the following October exams. Then the hospital got in touch to finally offer me the knee operation and that was that.

The March 2016 gradings are about two months away but I won't be able to attend. I haven't trained in months, my cardio is shot to hell and I would need at least a month just to get back on top of not only fitness but also revision of techniques.

My consultant surgeon for the operation specifically told me that I can GO BACK TO TRAINING AT KRAV MAGA in the Spring but he then added that I ABSOLUTELY CANNOT GRADE AGAIN UNTIL OCTOBER. This means it will be 18 months between my original P5 and the retest.

Like a pre teen child looking at a Christmas advent calendar on December 2nd, I want to open all the windows, get all the chocolate and get straight back in there again. However December 3rd through to December 15th's windows need to be opened gradually, slowly and with patience. 16th will be going back to training. 17th will be beginning revision of my techniques from P1 back to P5. 18th will be joining the sparring classes...and so on.

Keeping patience at a time like this is infuriatingly hard but I know that I cannot just undo the pain and convalescence of the past few months by being impatient.

I'll get all the chocolate eventually. Just one day at a time.

Foregone

On Saturday 21st March 2015 I took my P5 examination but I didn't pass it.

After a gruelling test, as me and the other nine P5 candidates sat on the floor around examiner Nadav Shosan while the sweat dried on our sodden T-shirts and we sipped water from partially crushed plastic bottles, the atmosphere was tense. He briefly broke down exactly what we'd done wrong as a group and then moved on to individual feedback and scores.

I was last up (there is a yin and a yang to being the last one in the line up. During the exam, you get to see what everyone else is doing but you also have to wait a while to know your result). He looked at me and said flatly. "You need to retest everything. The spirit is there, the heart is there...but not the technique."

As previous postings on this blog have shown, I had spent time preparing both physically and mentally for the grading and was determined to take the news, either good or bad, with dignity and a positive attitude.

Nadav elaborated that I needed to work on self defence and weapons again. I replied "Do I want to know my score?" and after totting up the individual marks he said "You got 66%".

The minimum pass is 70%. I smiled and said "I'll be back in October" which got a pat on the back from my grading partner and a round of applause from the other P5 candidates.

I felt I had prepared well. I'd spent as much time as I could in front of the TV watching the P5 DVD and practicing the moves. I'd been to the revision sessions at my club and had abstained from alcohol for a week before the testing. I'd gone to bed early with a healthy, carb-heavy meal the night before and had done yoga and a cardio based regime at the gym for 5 weeks prior.

The test itself was a mixture of P4 and P5 stuff. My problem was that I'd not revised any of my P4 material and hadn't really touched it since October of last year. I knew I was making mistakes when tested on the moves but hoped the other areas would pull me through.

The sparring was the usual gruel fest. 7 rounds of 2 minutes, slightly different scenarios each time. By round 5 I had spat my gum shield out at least twice as I was struggling to breathe. After that we had 10 rounds of 4 vs 1, with two turns as the defender and 8 as an attacker holding a stick, a knife or a strike shield.

Unlike my P4 exam where I had sat waiting for my results with certain petulance about not coming back if I failed, I was pleased that this time my genuine mindset was one of acceptance and a desire to return at a later date and pass. I didn't feel bitter, or sad or angry. I was disappointed and felt the pangs as I watched the other guys get their certificates and patches.

But overall...thanks to a mixture of hard work; reading articles on both how to approach gradings and how to deal with fear; determination to give it my all and acceptance of whichever result I was to receive.

This time the work I did, unlike on the previous 4 gradings, didn't get me the new patch. What it did do however was help me to evolve. To accept feedback from the examiner at face value. To believe that my score was fair. To know that I could come back in 6 short months and try again. Above all....to take the experience as one of learning and improvement of my skills.

Nadav told me privately afterwards that I my P5 stuff was OK but the P4 stuff had let me down. He also gave me a massive ego boost when he said I'd got 8 out of 10 for my fighting...even though this is the one area I thought I was weakest on. Fact he had mentioned twice how much I had my hands down during the bouts meant that the high score was for how I approached the fights, not my skills as a fighter.

This was overall a disappointment but I regard it as something that has helped me to accept and to learn, and for that the experience was invaluable.