I wish all of you could read my former instructor’s note on Krav Maga, the Israeli self-defense technique I studied with her.  She is Sue Garstki, of Krav Maga Illinois.

A bit of background for those of you, and I know you’re out there, ahem, Li, who don’t know about Krav Maga, it means “contact combat” in Hebrew and is the self-defense taught in the IDF.  There are several basic principles in Krav Maga, including giving no quarter based on the pretense that your attacker wants to kill you.  The other basics are using any available object as a weapon, do as much damage as quickly as possible, change from defending yourself to attacking your opponent (sometimes at the same time), and be aware of all your surroundings.

I distinctly remember a training exercise with her where we were in our dojo and she dimmed the lights to the same level as what would be in a romantic restaurant or nightclub, turned up the music to an unpleasantly loud volume, and asked us to spar lightly with our partner.  Now, amidst all this chaos, while you were trying to defend yourself from the blows your partner is trying to land, she would walk around the dojo and at random points, pull out a “gun” (not a real one, a training one).  Basically, she was trying to simulate being in a real life situation where you may be in a dark, loud club and “busy” (talking, dancing, boxing with someone!) and someone pulls a gun.  Will you notice?  What do you do?  Where’s your quickest exit point?

It’s a lot harder than it sounds.  As a result, I find myself counting exits a lot!

Ok, back to the history of Krav Maga and why I titled my post “Mr. Miyagi to an entire nation”.  Krav was started by Imi Lichtenfeld in a Jewish ghetto in the 1930s.  He was literally defending this ghetto from the Anti-Semitics in Slovakia.  He then taught the same techniques to what would now be considered the IDF starting in the 1940s.  He trained a guy named Darren Levine, his successor and the one responsible for bringing Krav Maga to the U.S.  I credit Sue, my instructor, for the “Mr. Miyagi” quote because I couldn’t have said it better myself.  Today, principles of Krav Maga are incorporated in self-defense courses for women (those four-hour type seminars).  They are taught in other militaries.  Krav in itself embodies techniques from jiu-jitsu amongst other traditional martial arts.  I like to describe the movements learned as your natural reflexes on steroids because most of the time, you are simply combining a natural reflex (like moving back, or trying to deflect a punch) with an offensive attack.

Oh, and there are no belts in Krav Maga.  There are no formal katas or anything to memorize.  Training with Sue was a battery of hardcore cardio, strength training, and basically getting the s*** kicked out of me.