On Tuesday 25th February I interviewed Russell, one of the instructors at Krav Maga Midlands. He has some very eye opening revelations about the attitude of Management in mental health care towards self defence.
So, who are
you?
I’m Russell
Brotherston, I’m 34 years old and I’m a G4 level Krav Maga Midlands instructor
and have been for the last two years. I also live in Stratford-upon-Avon.
What did you
do before you became a Krav Maga instructor?
I did a few
things. I worked for a charity for about 11 years. Mainly working around
nursing homes doing recovery. It wasn’t elderly it was anyone who was 18 to 65.
Specialising mainly in schizophrenia, bi-polar, manic depressive…that sort of
thing. So there was a lot of unpredictable behaviour. Also did community
support for the same charity in and around Coventry. That was going to visit
adults but also keeping my eyes peeled for if I thought there was any child
abuse going on. Levels of assessment involved there. I also did some work on the
acute wards in hospitals.
What does
that involve?
The acute
wards are mainly centred around people who are going on or coming off
medication so their behaviour is very unpredictable. Sometimes people who have
mental health problems but they haven’t been assessed yet. So for example
people who’ve been arrested who are dangerous and they don’t know where to put
them so they put them on an acute ward.
What
attracted you to Krav Maga as a practitioner in the first place?
Well, I’d
done lots of martial arts before. I’d done Judo, Muay-Thai, Kickboxing and
European Kickboxing. I also do some normal boxing as well. All of those seemed
very rule orientated. There wasn’t really any room for changing. The thing I
liked about Krav was that it was the first thing I’d seen where you could spar
with like 3 or 4 guys at the same time. You don’t do that in any other fighting
sport. The most I’ve heard is in Jiu Jitsu going against two people. I also
liked the fact that there was no specific rules so there’s room to develop your
own style. Not everyone has the same strengths and weaknesses. I’d see videos
on the internet and there’d be people doing different defences for the exact
same problem. I was thinking “are these different schools?” but then you’d see
them on the exact same promotional video for the exact same club. So they were
allowing them flexibility. And of course, the one that everyone likes. You get
to do groin strikes.
Did you feel
you needed to learn Krav for your job?
Yeah,
because when I was working in the mental health sector they don’t want you to
do any proper self defence which is quite strange.
Did they
give you any self defence training?
We did
breakaway training which is done learning very dated techniques. The instructor
told me he’d been teaching the exact same thing for 30 years. He hadn’t got any
qualifications in self defence. He had one for doing Jiu Jitsu. But he didn’t
talk that much about “what if there’s a problem?” For example he was talking
about someone choking you from the front and he showed us a solution that WOULD
work…provided the attacker attacked you in a very specific way. He didn’t make
that clear or anything so when he got me to choke him and I held him in a way
that wasn’t good for the technique he was like, “No, no. Put your arms like
this!”
But I didn’t
get any breakaway training until about 6 years into the job when me and another
member of staff were assaulted by patients on the same day, but at different
centres. That’s what prompted it. Came out of nowhere. That’s what happens in
the mental health world. I had to react in a calm way which the job hadn’t
prepared me for. They’d prepared me more in the hospital but only marginally.
Do you feel
the training they gave you was for insurance and health and safety compliance
rather than keeping you safe?
Yeah,
completely. I’d been there 11 years and I did one breakaway training course for
one day, that with the lunch break probably lasted about 6 hours, half of which
was the instructor talking. A Q&A session about how people get stressed and
you can calm them down by talking. We probably did about two and a half hours
of physical work and I never broke a sweat the whole time. It was rubbish to be
honest.
I saw the
advert for Krav Maga Midlands when I had to take someone to the police station,
the flyer was up in the reception. That was about 2 years before I became
an instructor. I went to loads of lessons, asked Bartosz for lots of tips and
had my punchbag in my garage where I practiced for about 6 days a week for at
least an hour, hour and a half, just going through strikes.
Did your
hospital or the other organisations tell you not to use self defence tactics
but only to disengage from a violent situation?
Yeah, that’s
basically what you’re meant to do. That’s what breakaway training is. It only
works for if someone goes to grab you. It’s not for if someone tries to punch
you or kick you or stab you. There was one incident I heard of where a patient
grabbed a fire extinguisher and chased someone down the corridor. The real
element that happens is that people at work do what they need to do to get out
of a situation. I know a woman attacked by 5 or 6 patients at the same time in
the canteen. All she could do was hide under the table. Legally we’re not meant
to go in and do anything, but another guy ran in, grabbed her arms and dragged
her out. He was legally meant to leave her to be beaten up, that’s what they say
you should do. Which I find disgusting. That’s one of the reasons I got out of
it as I thought there was no way I was getting sued for defending myself.
When the guy
punched me they asked me if I wanted to press charges. Friends were saying I
should as he knew it was wrong. But from the standpoint of the company it’s
just a hazard of the job
On a more
cheerful note. You teach kids as young as 6 Krav Maga?
The stuff I
teach the kids in class is different. Kids don’t have that fear element. You
know with forward rolls you build up to it in height. Kids will ask me to put
the pad for them to jump over at about chest height. They take to it because
the only similar thing is something like Tae Kwon Do where you stand in a
formal line, it’s very uniformed and you’re put in with the adults. Kids don’t
like to learn like that. They like to run around and play so you put it in the
format of a game. For them it’s playing, building their co-ordination and motor
skills. Their parents watching from the side can see the self defence
connotations.
It’s
interesting with the hospitals and charities not wanting you go hands on, the
irony is that children, with all those rules around contact and DBS clearance
to work with them and we’re teaching the next generation a much more common
sense approach including kicking to the groin.
Exactly. I
talk to the parents first so they know that
it’s Krav, it’s a physical thing. I’m going to be playing rough and tumble
games with their kids picking their kids up, spinning them round. I’m going to
be wrestling like 3 or 4 at once, they’re going to be trying to pin me down
(laughs). It’s just part of the thing. You’ve got to teach them that if they’re
not running away or making a lot of noise. A bunch of 6 or 7 kids can quite happily
take out an adult if they’re punching and kicking. That’s what they do to me.
They don’t get the chance to do that anywhere else. The stuff they learn with
me is specifically for class or if something serious happens. The hard thing is
convincing them not to try the tactics on other kids.
In the kids’
classes they learn two responses to everything. Response against a child and another
to an adult. If a kid grabs them in a bear hug then they can’t really start kicking
them in the groin or elbowing them in the head. They do Rapping On The Barn
Door which is rapping the knuckles so they person lets go which won’t work on
an adult.
Which do you
prefer teaching? Adults or children?
(Laughs) It’s
a totally different thing. Well I can teach adults for a lot longer. Children’s
classes are tiring. It’s 6 of 1 and half a dozen of the other. Kids when they’re
in great mood can be so much fun, they really can engage. At the same time they
can get really wound up and get really hyper and get quite disobedient. So it’s
a question of keeping their attention so you stop and start, stop and start.
Ideally I’d like a child’s energy in an adult. Kids can go on for games for
ages. Adult games like 1 or 2 minutes, with kids it’s about 5. They run and run
until you tell them to stop.
Any advice
to anyone wanting to become a Krav Maga instructor?
Do like I
did. Train and train and train. Anything like sports, the basic things you know
just keep doing them, fast and slow again and again. A good idea is to get a
camera and film yourself so you can see what you’re doing. Another is to get together
with students you know, preferably of a higher level so you’re always training
with people with more knowledge than you. Like when I did basketball I played
with better people. Eventually I could compete with them but for a long time
they thrashed me (laughs).
What would
be your motto for life?
Do not be
too timid or squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment . The more
experiments you make, the better.
