Ruck & Roll- Master Class 2017

NOMADIC KRAVVER

Eyal Yanilov, Master Class

January 22nd 2017- Sydney, Australia

Photo courtesy of Sven Midri.

I have been in Australia for just shy of 12 weeks and have to leave by February 2nd in order to keep my visa active (9 months in a year, but individual stays of  no longer than 3 months). Next on my agenda is a visit to New Zealand and I was going to book a flight out on the 19th of January. 

But then some rather splendid news happened. Eyal Yanilov, head of Krav Maga Global was going to be in Sydney on the 22nd January for not one but two seminars. Defending The Knife and 3rd Party Protection.

Not wanting to let such a golden opportunity pass by, I postponed leaving and booked both seminars.

I’ve met Eyal a few times before and to see him teach is a genuine privilege. He is regarded very highly by other instructors, and also the national directors of KMG. Both Jon Bullock (UK) and Adam White (Australia & New Zealand) had nothing but praise for Eyal and my instructor back in England, Bartosz Zukowski of Krav Maga Midlands used to refer to Eyal as “my master”.

The venue was Sydney University Sports & Aquatic Centre, just up the road from where I was staying with a friend. I set off early by bicycle to make certain I got there in plenty of time. A guy named Andy from SGS Krav Maga, who I had trained with during my time in Oz, was already there. As we sat and had a coffee, other practitioners began arriving. By about nine forty five the queue to register was going right back up the stairs and I had a quick chat with Sven Midri, an E2 instructor who owns the club Krav Maga Self Defence and was organising the seminars that day. He said there were about 75 people booked in, mainly from the Sydney clubs and surrounding area. 

Once Eyal arrived we got into a large huddle around him on the basketball court where Sven introduced him and said we were now learning from “your instructors’ instructor”. Eyal then gave us a quick talk on the way this seminar was going to go, with the emphasis on defending knife attacks and evasion. He stressed that one option in Krav Maga is always to flee if possible, something I’ve heard other instructors mention before. He then talked about how those who would resort to using knives will regard a potential victim as nothing more than a “walking wallet” and a process called “othering” will take place during such interactions. This basically means that they regard the person they are robbing or attacking as something ‘other’ than what they are and this objectification results in it being easier to treat them badly and/ or hurt them.

We then moved into a warm up, with some leg and arm movements requiring concentration and co-ordination (legs go in different patterns to the arms) and then we split into pairs for blocking movements. The first was an inside defence, using the forearm to block a knife thrust. The other was an outside or ‘scooping’ defence. We practiced these several times before Eyal stopped us to give us further words of advice. He pointed out that in the short time he had to teach us (just under two hours) he couldn’t show us to the level of even P1 or P2 but instead could “open the door a little” to allow us some experience. 

He then called up one of the local instructors to demonstrate on, and showed us keeping someone at a reasonable distance, using whatever means necessary (including an eye poke). He also said that in some situations it is better to apologise and try to resolve a situation through verbal skills. The scenario he chose to illustrate this was where he imagined that an aggressor had accused him of looking at his girlfriend and he apologised while walking away, yet keeping his hands up and his body at a position where striking would be possible if necessary. 

We moved to defending against knife attacks while lying on the ground with Eyal describing the feet and legs as ‘turrets’ to be used to kick or push an attacker away. This was fun to do, although the ‘getting up’ part requires concentration as you have to keep attacking, even while you raise yourself off the floor.

After this seminar wrapped up, the few who weren’t staying for part two then collected their certificates and left while the rest of us moved to the canteen for a break. 

At just after 1pm we shifted to another sports hall for the 3rd party seminar. Eyal again gave a brief introduction to what we were going to be doing and talked about how it is sometimes necessary to put yourself in the path of another person to defend them from harm. Another warm up to shake off our post-lunch lethargy, this time with someone hanging on to our shoulders while we had to keep moving, imagining that we were giving them a piggy back. and we got into the training. In groups of three, one person held a strike shield while another blocked the third person from attacking it. This was a lot of fun, albeit tiring and we all took turns in the various roles. Moving on to pre-emptive defence (i.e. you see the attack coming and block it before it happens) and then dealing with an attack that is actually occurring. We did this initially with strangle holds and then with knives. 

Something that Eyal pointed out was that it is very important to remove the person you are trying to protect, from the sight of the danger or threat. This could be something as simple as taking their arm and leading them away to grabbing them bodily to make them move. Having worked as a cop in England I can testify that in violent or aggressive situations a lot of people ‘contribute’ by simply yelling and screaming at one or all of the parties involved. So removing them from the scene can be the best of all options. 

At the end we tried a drill where the person with the strike shield then had to point it at one of the other two, while the third person would then join in by ‘attacking the attacker’. 

Photo courtesy of Sven Midri

At around 3pm we wrapped things up, with Eyal giving us a final summary of what we’d covered and saying that he hoped we’d found the day useful and that we took the skills we’d covered with us into training and daily life.

After the certificates of attendance were awarded we moved off and I managed to get a few words with Eyal.

He said:

“ It went very well. I gave all the things I wanted to give, in a short time. Four hours together, two and two. I managed to give an overall view of some of the sections of the system.There was a lot of people here, we are getting bigger in Australia, improving ourselves. In the beginning, at the seminars we had very small numbers of people attending. Especially England where I met you, it was very much like this. Giving seminars to five or ten people. Know we have about 100 instructors there so things have changed. Over 60 countries now have Krav Maga with KMG.”

I also managed to get a few words with Sven who said:

“It was pretty good of Eyal to come up here today as he’s right in the middle of a Combat Fighters instructors course in Melbourne. We managed to snatch him up for the day. Today went good. The timing’s always difficult due to admin and people lining up. If you’re not 15 minutes early you’re late. We had over 75 people. We run this when we’re lucky enough to have him. Which is why it’s imperative that we get our students and instructors out here. Like I said in the introduction. He’s the instructor of everyone else’s instructors. You have to make it. He likes coming here but it’s a long way.”

A good day and a privilege to not only train in Sydney but also catch Eyal before I left. 

SGS Krav Maga, Sydney.

NOMADIC KRAVVER

SGS Krav Maga, Sydney

Lance Manley- P4

Monday 21^st November

Second city on my tour of Australia was Sydney and after a week staying in a youth hostel when I really, REALLY shouldn’t have, I looked up an old friend who said she had a spare room and I was welcome to stay as long as I wanted to, including house sitting for her over Xmas while she visited her sis in Thailand.

Nice.

There are quite a few Krav Maga clubs in Sydney and a whole load are affiliated to KMG, the parent company I’m membered to. I found one called SGS in a place called Hurstville run by a G3 instructor named Steven Kratsas and he invited me to come and train with him the following Monday.

The club was slightly different to others I’ve trained in, mainly because the lessons are 2 hours long. The other difference was that they train 3 days a week on Monday & Wednesday evenings as well as 9 to 11 on Sunday mornings.

When I got there there were a lot of young students there and one surprise was that the majority were female. Steve told me later that a lot of them were their due to their parents suggesting it and many were still in High school, with some as young as 15.

The club itself is on a small industrial estate, at the back of a residential district. The Warm Up involved running two laps around the block then coming back for some serious stretching. Apart from Steven there are other instructors, two of which were training that day. Margarita and Charlie recently took the GIC and Charlie led the lesson for some of the time.

The main work out was focused on grading material, as the club were looking forward to a P level testing on December 11^th. My lack of regular training revealed itself when I was attempting to do an arm/leg roundhouse block (the one where you put your elbow on your knee) and I felt like the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz when he seized up due to lack of lubrication.

After the main stint we then moved outside for a new twist on a theme. The main area is full of lovely, hard, concrete walls and Steven got us to pretend to be using a cashpoint or ATM when someone came up behind us and attempted to fling us face first into the wall. The reaction to this is to fling your hands up, elbows bent and let your forehead smack into the back of your hands. The delicious part was the follow up where you then do a 180 on their ass, and smack THEIR face into the wall. Me and my partner were next to two Asian girls who appeared to be really going for it, even though they obviously friends in “real life”.

Afterwards we did a drill I’d not practiced before where we all had to lie in a circle, on our backs and raise and lower our straightened legs (without letting them touch the floor) to the music playing over the PA which had the lyrics “up and down” scattered throughout. This was painful in the extreme and harked back to what I call Tourette’s Corner from gradings (everyone’s knackered and sweaty and they STILL make you do 50+ push ups/ sit ups/ burpees meaning there is a lot of swearing and grunting).

I was aching afterwards but, while limping back to Hurstville train station, it felt good to have practiced new stuff in a new club in a new country.

Sunday 27^th November

I got up at the unholy hour of 6.20am to get to training, as the class was going to kick off at 9. While public transport in Sydney is fab (the joys of a ‘pay as you go’ Opal travel card) SGS is still a hike from where I was staying and I arrived at 8.45 to find a couple of other tired looking students waiting for the door to open. This time the instructor was a new guy I’d not seen before named Yanni. The attendance was smaller but we got stuck into some serious revision and kick based training. It turned out that Steven had broken his toe the previous Monday while blocking a roundhouse kick so was still involved but a little more subdued than normal.

There was a lot of talk about the upcoming grading again with both Steven and Yanni stressing to the students the importance of getting things down correctly. Steven gave an example of how a bad technique may be ignored on P1; would be criticised on P2; would cost you points on P3 and 4…but could cost you your patch on a P5 (something I’ve experienced personally).

Monday 28^th November 2016

Having trained for 2 hours the day before, I wasn’t exactly skipping down the road the next day when I set off for the Monday night’s session. I’ve taken up Yoga recently and found a great video on YouTube specifically for the lower back and hips. A knee operation in September 2015 means that I am very stiff on my left side so I try to keep on top of my own mobility.

The club was busy again and there was probably about 25 guys in the room, including a lot of girls again. After the requisite laps around the industrial park and warm up, Steven got Margarita to lead the first part of the lesson and then we moved into the wonderful world of the pre-emptive strike.

Now, coming from a country like England where the laws on reasonable force are still grounded in the idea of a Victorian gentleman...pre-emptive strike, even in the UK, means that if you genuinely believe you are about to be attacked then you can hit first. We did some fun role plays where me and my partner had to do what Rory Miller calls “The Monkey Dance” and get in the other guy’s face, pushing the chest. Steven said to elicit a verbal response and THEN hit to the jaw. The idea is that your antagonist is a). Distracted and b). Their mouth is open meaning their jaw is relaxed and you are more likely to do damage to their face with a well placed sock in the chops (1960s, “Good to his mum”, London gangster Reggie Kray used to call this the “cigarette punch “ apparently). The alternative to this was to ask a question of your attacker, such as “What’s 91 + 13?” and a split second later throw a punch as they will again be momentarily distracted and engaging the “other” part of their brain to process what you said.

When we moved into groups of 3, I turned to the girl stood next to us and asked if she’d like to join. She looked a bit nervous and pointed out she was 15 and newbie but got stuck in to the scenarios no problem. Had to admire her gumption as I have had massive anxiety issues in the past with Krav and if I’d been in my second week training with two guys old enough to be my dad, I don’t think I’d have taken it as calmly as she did.

We moved outside and had to do “protecting 3^rd party” where someone is trying to hit a “friend” of ours while we try and prevent it. This was designed to make us realize that thumping interventionists is not a nice thing to do, no matter how irritating they may be. We then switched to trying to stop the person being attacked from hitting their attacker (as in “leave it mate, he’s not worth it!”).

Then we had the icing on the cake.

Steven had talked about a little thing named Waterboarding from KMG's Combat Mindset & Mental Conditioning seminar and asked for a show of hands for those who wanted to try it. Only time I’d heard this expression used before was in tales of Guantanamo bay. I volunteered along with about half of the group. We went outside while Margarita and Steven filled plastic buckets with water and Steven fetched some dry T-shirts out the stores. He told us that the T-shirt would be dipped in the bucket and then placed over our faces from behind and secured by the sleeves behind our necks by one partner. We had to blindly hit at a strike shield being held by the other person, and every so often Steven would walk up and pour a bottle of water over the T-shirt to simulate the feeling of drowning.

The other guy in our 3 took it really well and lasted the course and I (in just my shorts and shoes) got ready for my go. As a scuba diver I’m bothered too much about the wet, clammy sensation of fabric over my face. While uncomfortable it was still possible to breathe relatively easily. When Steven shouted “GO!” I began punching and after a few seconds felt the water being poured over my head.

Now…

Part of my brain was telling me that this was just a drill, that I was perfectly safe and that I wasn’t REALLY going to drown. However a much more primal part of my brain leapt up from its cave and shrieked like a wounded animal before bolting into the darkest recesses of the jungle. Within about 15 seconds I couldn’t take it any more and ripped off the T-shirt, gasping for breath. The guy behind me who’d been holding the shirt smiled and encouraged me to go back in. I pulled the hood back on and began punching again but pretty quickly Steven called time and we switched positions.

The girl we were with then had a go and lasted nearly the whole minute before stopping. Kudos again as she remained calm and overcame the panic reflex, despite this being her first go as well. As there was a group of four people, Steven then asked if anyone wanted another go while their 4^th guy took his turn and I went in again, this time lasting the whole minute, despite the primal animal within me still hiding in the jungle and wailing, albeit with slightly less volume than before.

Soaking wet we lined up for the final Kida and then made our way out.

Superb training and a great club and it’s been a privilege learning with SGS.