If You Don't Like Krav Maga I'll Kick You in the Jibblies

Current music: "Candy" by Cameo

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Yeah, 24 hours later my outlook has greatly improved. THEBOY is on the mend, starting to bop around like his usual self, lecturing us constantly on the ins and outs of various games, comic books, and all sorts of other things that leave us wondering exactly what the hell he's talking about.

MOBB reports small, steady progress. She can't drive yet. She is supposed to start a new job Tuesday, and she's hopeful that by then she'll be well enough to.

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We watched Batman Begins tonight. How many years did they screw around with Batman movies before getting it right? More than 15 I think. Crazy.

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Did a Krav workout this morning with one of our very good, very aggressive students. I don't think I'm stretching it too far when I say, "He crazy." Very physical, but this ain't a knitting class now is it?

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It was, in fact, a strange combination of Batman and Krav Maga that started this whole martial arts-related thought that's been stuck in my craw.

If you enter Batman+Krav+Maga in Google, you get lots of results. Seems that someone, somewhere along the way wrote or purported that it's a component of his fighting style. An amusing idea, and I'd tell you more if I'd spent much time pursuing it.

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But while poking around in the search results last night, I found an old thread on a message board about Krav Maga. It started innocently enough: Someone asked if anyone was familiar with it, had maybe trained it.

And as always happens on such things, the tone of the responses gradually changed from "I hear good things about it" to "I'm not impressed with what I've seen" to "I've got a cousin who does Judo who whipped a Krav guy in sparring."

Sigh.

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I'm not training for sport. I'm not training to spar, not training to get into a cage and beat someone up for 15 minutes or submit them.

(We train a little ground, by the way. No submissions; we're not there to get anyone to tap. We're there to cause damage and get back up, as we are standup fighters.)

I'm not training to face another martial artist. I'm training to deal with some thug in a parking lot who wants my wallet, or some punk-ass bitch in a bar who thought swinging at me was a good idea.

What we learn is explosive and brief. We've been told that if one of our encounters lasts more than about eight seconds we've done something terribly wrong.

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Next month I'll have been training for a year. When I began I was fit from jogging, but knew nothing about proper striking mechanics. I had to get instruction from the ground up on becoming a fighter.

If I'd done nothing but spend a year doing heavy bag work 3-5 times a week, don't you think I'd have gained something even from that?

In that time I've done bag work and more. I've been trained on:

*Long, medium, and short-range strikes
*Jabs, crosses, hooks, uppercuts, liver shots
*Knees
*Multiple kicks, including front kicks, side kicks, back kicks, round house kicks, a kick with a built-in fake, and this bitchin' thing without a name I'm dying to try on Whit
*Elbows from seven angles
*360 degree defenses against strikes
*Inside defenses against strikes
*Groin strikes, eye gouges, cavaliers, carotid strikes
*Takedowns
*Multiple front, side, and rear choke defenses
*Escaping from an attacker who has the full mount
*Escaping from a bear hug
*Joint locks
*Getting out of the guard and back to the feet
*Diverting a kick to my head from a ground position
*Defending against a standing attacker from my back
*Defenses against weapons, including handguns from multiple angles, sticks/bats, and knives

(I HATE knife work; at this point my plan against a knife remains "shriek and run")

I'm probably forgetting to mention a few.

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I am an injury-prone 38-year-old man. I was not blessed with grace or strength.

I am not Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris. Or Whit. I'm a man who has occasionally managed to get into a pinch. I've always managed to get out too, though I don't think I'd be wise to rely on luck and smarts the rest of my life. I will still go with smarts first, but how smart would I be not to have a good backup plan?

We've often been told that if we end up on the ground with a true ground fighter, we're screwed. Fine. Last March as I spat expletives at some teenager in a parking lot, I didn't figure he'd want to scrap on the asphalt.

Not knocking ground at all, btw. I'll take all I can get. If my school brings in a BJJ teacher (as has been discussed), I'll be there.

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I hope this doesn't all come off as a startling lack of humility. I'm just saying that I am learning to defend myself and my family using techniques based on instinctive reactions and gross motor skills. None of this is meant to make me capable of licking any sonofabitch in the room. It's meant for self-preservation.

I simply get a bit frustrated at the martial art bashing that's part of the student culture, you know?

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I love Judo, btw. It didn't work out for me, but part of me still yearns to try it again someday, maybe in a different environment. I love watching Karo Parisyan send someone ass over teakettle to the floor.

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I welcome comments, dissenting opinions and "yo mama" jokes.