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.

The Gates

As I get older I am into what has turned out to be a wonderful phase of my life. That is (drum roll)...being comfortable being within my own limitations.

Most of my life has been spent trying to live up to some virtually unattainable "other" side of myself that I thought was what people wanted to see.

Like a lot of middle class English kids, I grew up being told that certain clothes were for "best". That meant virtually no pleasure could be derived from wearing them as I had to stand still and try not to let air touch my "best" trousers or my "special" coat. I vividly recall the genocidcal rage my mother flew into when my younger brother came into the house in his bestest trousers....splattered with mud after being knocked down by a friend as a joke. This wasn't done with any malice but as my old dear had to have someone to blame, in order to vent her spleen, she blamed my bro' as he had "allowed it to happen".

But I digress.

I always used to envy the very few people I'd see, who appeared comfortable in their own skins. People who appeared happy with their lot and wore everything they put on with ease and a sense of feeling OK with the world. Not concerned with pettiness or shallow praise, they were "normal" in the most extreme sense of the word. Able to enjoy the gift of being alive and move through life treating emotions like the tides of the sea; natural and part of living.

I've spent most of my life trying to always get one better on myself. No matter what I did there was always that nagging belief that I should still try just one more notch higher at the very least.

In Krav Maga gradings I have summoned energy from rations I never knew I had hidden within me. For someone who is only reasonably fit, doing a 3.5 hour technique based exam, followed by 30 minutes of sparring, followed by whatever evil shit the examiners make you do at the very end (usually push ups, sit ups and burpees)...will sap your energy like bloatware on a smart phone. As if I was some Antarctic explorer, finding his way back to the food parcel I'd left two weeks before on the frozen ice drifts, rocked by blizzards I would struggle to carry on but carry on I would. The energy was found but anyone who's graded higher than a P2 in Krav will know the pure pain of this experience.***

Yet, even though I gave my all, as I struggled out of my soaking wet, torn T-shirt and guzzled Lucozade there was that whiny voice in my head telling me that just maybe I could have done more. Either in the weeks beforehand at the gym, in order to boost my cardio, or on the day itself with some indefinable extra "stuff".

Photo by Bartosz, Krav Maga Midlands

Recently I have started talking to a lady friend of mine. It turns out we have similar feelings towards each other and have had for a long time, but neither let the other know until recently. Once we got past the astonished "I just wondered, did you ever? All the time?!!" stage we began chatting a lot about our lives and for once I decided to do an utterly unheard of and radical thing and simply not beef up or embellish anything.

I stated how much I thought about her and how much I wanted to see her every day but I didn't lie about my sexual proclivity or prowess. I contradicted her statement that I'd have "girls all over me" when on holiday with the news that because I'm usually drinking heavily, I'm not interested in banging everything that has a vagina and a passport saying "Female".

For once I wanted to actually be "real" about myself and not try and hit some higher note in the hope of making a better impression.

I also figured out why I bite my nails so badly. A dirty habit that I have been unable to stop...until recently. At school I did it due to the constant bullying and fear of abuse. Decades later...well, I was at a loss. The reality was that like many people I wasn't satisfied with who I was and was constantly trying to chip away at the "not quite good enough" version of me to find a shiny, better one underneath. Akin to a stonemason with a hammer and chisel, I was waiting for something better to emerge from the ugly, raw rock that stood facing the world.

The gates over my true facets and traits have been there for a very long time. There was the one that barred the way to my insecurities. Another that hid my fears over fighting (although I dismantled it a few years ago and then rebuilt it with a freshly oiled hinge and no lock). There was yet another that wondered if my fashion sense was just a bit shy of being cool enough to hang out in public.

Overall the gates existed for very good reasons. We are all to some extent, afraid of being hurt. By peers, by friends, by enemies, by those we love or admire. We move through life trying to avoid as much pain as possible while taking in the pleasures that we can.

What I have found over the last year or so is that to fully be immersed in pleasure, you have to leave the gates open. If you do then you will become happy with your life but may chance upon pain if it slips through the opening. The alternative is that you bar everything from entering your life, experiencing neither pleasure nor pain.

Live like someone left the gate open.

Nuff said.

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*** Although this seems to fade the higher up you go. I saw the G4 and G5 candidates sparring a while back at G camp. Fitness levels well within endurable parameters (although one guy did have about 15 treacly flapjacks in a box by the side).

Cramping My Steel

Last night, for the first time in about 8 months I went back to Krav Maga.

In September I had a knee operation to repair a snapped ACL in my left leg. For 6 weeks I was hobbling around like Blind Pew, my knee feeling like it had sunburn and taking prescription painkillers.

After a couple of months I was able to get in the passenger side of a car without doing advanced Yoga and ongoing physiotherapy plus 3-monthly consultations with my 'specialist' at the hospital meant we could get an accurate time frame for convalescence.

Problem was that Mr Robertson (a surgeon so important that he had transcended the realms of Doctor and had no prefix to denote his status, merely the knowledge that he was walking godlike amongst lesser men) specifically said to me:

"Back in training in Spring 2016 we hope. But don't even THINK about grading again until at least October."

This kind of stung.

I mean, I know he'd spent 2 hours scraping gristle out of my knee cap and stitching back the flapping ends of my busted anterior crusciate ligament. I know he was a renowned specialist in knee surgery. And I knew that he was speaking the truth.

But....there was that other part of me that wanted so much to just go back to Krav.

I've stayed in touch with my club, blogging on gradings, seminars and popping in occasionally to say hi. They knew I wanted to come back but agreed with my doctor's advice that I should wait out my convalescence period until I was fit for duty again.

Guys who were taking P3 when I took my P4 (my last successful grading) were now P5s. Newbies I'd never met were P1 or P2. New faces were on the mats every time I showed up.

8 months is a long time to be spent laying on the sofa watching Breaking Bad and eating Jaffa Cakes. My fitness has dribbled away, my belly has started pushing against my jeans in an uncomfortable fashion and overall I have felt grumpy at my inaction and grounding.

Last week I visited the club and Bartosz, the Chief Instructor said to come back in on Tuesday 26th to see how I got on. Geared up and ready to go I got to the venue 20 minutes early and saw Bartosz pull up in his van. Upon seeing me he started chuckling to which I replied "You're not exactly boosting my confidence here!"

As we got into the training I realised just how hard this was going to be. My stamina was down, my cardio was almost non existent and it was only my determination that kept me going to the 10th push up or the 20th burpee. We then moved on to kicking and punching combos with a melon bag. My front kick was lacking, mainly due to it being my left. Upon seeing the lack of power, Bartosz told me to stick to punches only as the leg wasn't up to repeatedly kicking just yet. Moving on to stick defences I could again feel the lack of fitness and knew their were gaps in my knowledge and rust on what I thought I knew.

Before when I both trained and graded, I would find reserves of energy and use them to finish what I was doing. No matter how tired or sore I was, I was always able to draw from a well somewhere. Now, I found that that the wells had run dry. There is a difference between running on adrenalin and keeping on solely because you know that things can only get better next time and the times after that.

We finished the training with 20 push ups. Twist was that we formed a line and then got onto the floor, with our arms touching, meaning that it was a genuine "push up" each time and not a "push sideways". This was more tiring after the 90 minutes that had preceded it and worse (albeit for less time) than my last two gradings for P4 and P5.

I went to the supermarket on the way home and wondered why I was getting funny looks off the staff. Later I realised that I'd been so knackered I'd forgotten to take my groin guard off. Walking around in a posing pouch is one way to get attention.

Once I hit the sack I woke up about 20 minutes later to excruciating cramps in my inner thighs. The pain was unlike any other cramp I'd ever experienced and it took walking and down the stairs repeatedly to shift it. I returned to bed a short time later, treating my body like an unexploded bomb as any movement could trigger the cramp again. It was only the next day when I finally found out that this unpleasantness was caused by the high kicks I'd been doing (or any kicks above knee level tbh) that had overstrained the pudgy muscles that had only faced cycling and yoga in the 48 weeks since I last had a groin guard on.

Today it has been a case of feeling tired with a huge appetite spike. I am bruised. My inner thighs hurt from the cramping. I'm swearing every time I bend over and I'm walking like my trousers have too much starch in them.

Was it worth it?

Course it was.