As Krav Maga practitioners know, a not inconsiderable time in group training sessions are spent either working holding striking pads or engaged in movement without necessarily conducting a technique or striking.
Sometimes, these activities can appear to be dead time, or just pursuits where you’re supporting others, but not your own development.
This is a gross misconception. They are anything but.
These occasions are prime opportunities to work on essential aspects of your self defence skills. If you’re serious about your Krav Maga training, you should aim to optimise the time you spend in a training session to always be practicing. This is possible with some practical thinking - and since you’ve already invested time, effort and money into the training session, making optimal use of all of this is probably both desirable and sensible, don’t you think?
What are some of the not-always-obvious opportunities you can be training when you think you’re not?
If during your warm-up you are working on cardiovascular movement, stretching flexibility and joint lubrications, why not include other elements of Krav Maga into it?
Can you change the running around the dojo with movement exercises in pairs where you work on staying on striking distance, dong combinations and blocks, adding in moving with different feet stances? What about supplementing edged weapon training by working on prevention techniques or blocks, using knives? Maybe do movement exercises in a confined area to work on situational awareness, observing the environment and navigating other people?
The stretching part can include dynamic stretching where your partner moves and presents hands as targets where your stretched legs will reach, working on distance, fighting stance movement, coordination, reaction and flexibility, multiple strikes, all at the same time. Adds additional value to always doing it stationary on the floor, right?
The joint lubrication part can mostly be done whilst complementing your feet stance movement. Any movement of head/neck and arms whilst done in coordination with footwork adds the realistic complexity of bringing together upper and lower body movement as in a real confrontation, which is often very dynamic. Again, done in a smaller restricted area will add in situational awareness and navigation into the exercise, as students move around each other.
Simply holding the striking pad for your partner bring a wealth of training opportunities. You can observe your partner and build up pictures of what an attack looks like. Check these out and imprint them on your mind. Every blow of a kick on a pad held tightly to you conditions you and teaches you to exhale on impact, preventing being winded. Staying in a solid leg stance embeds this lower body position on your mind, and when you’re moved backwards by the strike, you repeat again and again how to recover balance after being struck. If the striking is done whilst moving, you again have the perfect opportunity to work on your footwork whilst holding the pad.
Use the time you’re working as a partner to someone else to train your mind. Just like athletes before a major competition, get in the zone by visualising what you will do when its your turn to execute whatever it is you’re working on.
If it‘s a striking technique or combination, see it inside your head, feel it in your limbs and prepare to let your body relax for where its your turn to work on it. Notice your breathing. Think about how you’ll breathe relaxed and then staying focused but at-ease when you practice, helping your speed and explosion on strikes.
If you’re the ‘attacker’ in a technique being defended by your training partner, notice the responses they do. Realise that the ‘attacker’ could be you actually defending as a self defence practitioner. What will you do if this happens to you? What counter-measures would you apply? Focus on what’s your reactions should be. Even better if the scenario allowed you to apply these, as violence is rarely static; people fight back - so you always have to be ready to change and improvise your plan. Techniques are never a sequence of A, B, C, D and E and then stop, job done. The training - and your thinking as you work it through - should reflect this.
Even the most mundane of tasks, holding something whilst being hit or kicked, or being the ‘punchbag’ yourself, has immense practice for you, and you should invest focus and thinking into it.
Make your training hours count. It can double the value you get from your session.
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