It Takes a Bigger Man to Walk Away

The purpose of Krav Maga is self-preservation and defense of others.  It is the means to defend against most conceivable attacks one may face in the street.  And although we spend a lot of time training how to escape from worse case situations (being held at gun point, stabbed with a knife, pinned and choked against the ground, just to name a few), one element that is often overlooked is avoidance of conflict altogether.

It is obvious, staying away from conflict is the best way to avoid injury and to protect yourself and those close to you.  Of course, it is not always feasible to simply walk away from a confrontation.  In fact most attacks happen unexpectedly, without warning, and require immediate action and aggressive counterattacks to neutralize the attacker(s).  But there are occasional instances when fights may arise out of nothing, simply egos and pride getting in the way of common sense, escalating to extremely dangerous situations.  For example someone insults your girlfriend, boyfriend, aunt, mom, dad, etc., which in turn hurts your pride and you feel the urge to make things right by confronting the “aggressor” to teach them a lesson by showing them what you learned in your Krav Maga training.  And although you are pretty certain that you can “take this guy” without much problem, remember that the purpose of Krav Maga is defense, not to aimlessly hurt people, regardless of how badly you may want to teach this person a lesson.

So how do we walk away from situations like these without feeling like your pride has been crushed?  For me the answer is simple: my pride and ego cannot be effected if I feel like I have nothing to prove to those around me.  By routinely training Krav Maga I perfect my skills and prove to myself that I can handle most violent situations.  Once I am certain of my abilities, I don’t feel like I need to waste my time and energy proving myself to anyone else. I simply deescalate and walk away.  I think of it as if I am doing them a favor by not having to hurt them.  In fact ever since I started training Krav Maga, I had a handful of incidents that could have turned violent very fast.  But in every case I managed either to simply walk away, deescalate through the means of verbal commands, or use soft, non-damaging techniques to end the conflict.

It takes a bigger man/woman to walk away.  It also takes a bigger man/woman to know that you have the necessary skills to protect yourself and those around you.  And it even takes a bigger man/woman to know when to use these skills and when to restrain from doing so, even if deep inside you really wish you can teach these people a lesson or two about manners.  Imi Lichtenfeld created Krav Maga so “one may walk in peace”.  Knowing that you have an arsenal of tools to handle most violent confrontations gives you the peace of mind and the confidence to not be effected by needless provocations and allows you to be that bigger man.