Making It Work

When I completed the General Instructors Course (part 1) in April I had a week or so making my way 1000 miles south from Gold Coast to Melbourne before flying back to the UK. After a few days there I headed over to Crete where I now reside with my awesome Dad in his flat overlooking the beaches and village of Plakias. 

Now...

With GIC's that run in Europe, you usually get about 1 to 3 weeks between the first and second parts. In Australia, presumably because Oz is so flabbergastingly vast, you get a whopping THREE MONTHS between the two chunks of training. 

Of the 15 of us who took the 12 days from April 3rd to 15th under the tuition of E4 instructor Rune Lind, I am the only one to reside outside of Australasia.
To keep your skills and fitness sharp, you are advised to keep training regularly between 1 and 2, and to teach if at all possible, preferably at your own club under the supervision of your existing instructors.

I know that most if not all of the other guys are doing this, both those in Australia and those who came from New Zealand. 

Now...

I'm in a place which is 57 miles from the nearest KMG-affiliated club. While I have the DVDs for P4 and P5, I'm currently missing P1 to 3 and also G1.

I'm also living in a sun kissed paradise of sand, sea, surf and cold beers. so it would be very easy to simply kick back and spend my time drinking, eating and shagging.

However...

I went into GIC with a mindset of wanting to achieve something I've not achieved before. That was/ is to push beyond my pain barriers and get into a state of fitness that would leave me ready to do, as Rune put it "everyday tasks without problems".

My fitness for GIC 1 was just about enough. I was in a lot of pain throughout but carried on and joy of joys, my phobia of fighting was cured on day 11 of the course, after 42 years (stemming from THIS childhood incident).

But now in Europe in a lovey Cretan fishing village...what to do?

Regular training was out of the question due to the 114 mile round trip to get to Krav Maga Chania to train with Dimitris and his students. 

Nobody in Plakias is into Krav so I would need to practice on my own...meaning no one there to correct any mistakes I make. 

I had to think of ways around this.

So I did.

The closest thing to a sports shop in this village is the beach ball section at the local supermarket so a punch bag was out of the question. I took a trip to the local DIY store on the outskirts, and bought 2 rough sacks and a length of rope. Then I scrounged a load of old clothes from friends and out of my own luggage, two old pillows and stuffed hey presto! A makeshift punchbag**

Then I decided to get fit enough to come home from part 2 without limping onto the plane. I go running twice a day, morning and afternoon. I do the Moby "Bring Sally Up" leg raise thingy nearly every day. I do the "punch, punch, sprawl" that is AC/DC's 'Thunderstruck' workout on my homemade punchbag. I do yoga for my lower back once per day. 

My fitness, after 3.5 weeks of this regime, is now pretty good.

On the roof of the building I'm living in is a nice, big, flat space where I can roll out my yoga mat and practice the basic moves of Krav Maga.

But how to train and teach?

The first week I hired a car. A friend was meant to be sharing the cost but bailed at the 11th hour. Despite the rental being relatively cheap, it still cost me 55 Euros including the petrol, which isn't peanuts if you're living on savings. 

So the following week I took the bus. Not too brilliant either as it's 2 buses there and 2 buses back and I need to stay overnight due to training finishing at 10pm.

So...24 Euros for the transport, 14 for the hostel and about 5 for food. 43 Euros...better than the car but still not great.

Then I hit on the best option. A scooter hire place down the road rented me an older 125cc bike for 200 Euros for a month. That works out at 8 Euros a day and the petrol to travel the 114 miles is about 7. 

Awesome!

So now I can go and train Monday, Wednesday and Friday with the club and it will cost me 15 Euros per day.

A friend who is an existing instructor in the UK had recently posted me the DVDs for P1 to G1 so I can practice what I need to do before I get to Oz again. 
As the postal service here sucks, it will take a week but it means I will have the curriculum to practice with on the roof with my laptop and yoga mat.

My appetite has obviously spiked since I started working out and protein is high on that list. The beauty of having the scooter is that I can stop off at the only Lidl in 40 miles...halfway between here and Chania..and stock up on oodles of cheap tinned tuna and meatballs. 

I've also found a place where snails are hiding and despite the yuck factor, cooking them with rice is a great way to bulk up for free, even though you have to hang them in nets for a week to purge them of the toxic crap they've been munching on.***

Overall, I'm not as confident as if I was training with a club a mile or two down the road where the students spoke the same language as me. BUT....Dimitris from Krav Maga Chania is a great guy who lets me teach while he translates into Greek and gives me both feedback on my teaching AND private one-on-one lessons before the group arrives.

This feels good because I'm making a situation work that was initially hard to solve.

The future's bright. The future's solvable.

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

** I killed it the first time I used it. Had to revisit my knot tying training from Scouts way back in the early 1980s.

*** Last year I didn't purge them and I had the shits so bad the next day that I set the smoke alarms off in the taverna toilets.

Being Bendy

Tonight at Krav we were doing high kicks. They started off as groin kicks with a side swipe forward leg defence...and the progressed to "what if the person aims for your face or chin instead."

The block for the higher kick is with the forerarm, but the person throwing the kicks has to aim for the face. My opponent was about 6' 3" and I'm about 5' 10".

One thing I've realised as I've got older is that I am not as flexible as a high kick to the chin (especially on some of the giraffe sized blokes that attend the club) would demand.

Tonight was the first time I felt relatively confident attempting these kicks, without wondering if I'd get groin strain or throw my hips out of alignment.

The reason is that 6 weeks ago I started a Yoga class.

The teacher is a mild mannered Korean lady who has an aura of peace and tranquility and told me off for asking "is my arse meant to hurt this much?" when the correct terminology is apparently "bottom."

The first 4 lessons were very difficult and I glanced at my (predominantly female) neighbours with some envy as they comfortably assumed the Lotus position when I could barely manage to cross my legs without wincing.

The joyous moment occurred last week when my body finally gave slightly to the manipulations and positions I was putting it through. I was able to lean just a little bit further than I had before.

While Krav Maga and Yoga don't seem on the surface to be good flat mates, the great thing is that I can now kick with more confidence. I.e. without that little voice in my head telling me that I'm going to rupture some internal organs.

For the Combat side of Krav, flexibility is a must. Dodging, weaving and ducking under someone else's punches and kicks is hard, doubly so when you are retaliating. Being "loose" is a necessity and the freedom of movement I've so far not had, has finally started to work its way into my stubborn joints

For Practioners who don't bend so easily I recommend Yoga to help you get freed up and also to reduce the risk of coming home aching, bruised and possibly stiff as a board next morning.