Krav Maga New Year’s resolutions

For a lot of us the New Year brings with it a renewed sense of energy, vision, hope and of course RESOLUTIONS.

Other then testing, Krav Maga has no real benchmarks for personal performance.  But even testing itself is not a true assessment of your abilities.  “Your patch or belt will not fight for you”.  It is up to you to set your own goals and push to achieve them.  It is our job as instructors to guide you towards setting and achieving your goals.  It is also our job to structure the training and the testing such that you can gauge your progress and develop as a Krav Maga practitioner.  When we teach, we break each technique into smaller steps and checkpoints, it is then your job to work methodically to “cross off” each point as you complete it to your satisfaction.

For example, let’s take a 360 defense against an overhead stab.  The technique and its execution has a number of fine points that can act as internal benchmarks for your progression.  In the beginning your goal may simply be to carry out the appropriate block, without worrying about the counterattack and other nuances.  Once that is mastered you can begin to focus on the finer details of the block, the hand position, weight distribution, etc.  Then comes the counterattack.  Is it simultaneous?  Is your elbow down?  Are you generating enough power and not compromising the defense?  Each of these points is a separate goal that can be reached at your own schedule.  Then comes the follow up combatives.  Are they fluid? Do they hit meaningful targets? Did you scan after completion?  Now can you do just as well when blocking with the other hand?  The bottom line is, each time you practice you should strive to improve each nuance of the technique.  Remember, a 360 defense executed by a Krav Maga practitioner with a year of training should look significantly better than that of a person with a week of training under his/her belt.

Good luck with your training!

Happy New Year!