Injury Training Revisited
BY MOSHE KATZ 
CEO
ISRAELI KRAV INTERNATIONAL

August 31, 2026, MSY airport, Louisiana, USA

Yesterday at the seminar I was feeling some pain. After three weeks on the road, many seminars and two days of teaching and standing all day, the temptation of a chair was too much, so I sat for a few minutes and then came to make to supervise the students.  

As I sat, my thoughts went back to an earlier time in my life. I was not traveling the world teaching Krav Maga seminars, I was not even an instructor. When I trained at the Oyama Kyokushin dojo in Manhattan I gained the nickname of "The Animal", as I trained hard, never backed down from an attack, and never gave in. The same was true during my many years of training with Itay Gil at the Jerusalem dojo, full-contact fights with no backing down. 

But there was another thought. 

For the past few years I have suffered from a bad knee, at time the situation has been so bad I needed to use some help, these days I just need to be cautious, but the pain remains. For a long time the original source of this pain remained a mystery for me and for the doctors I had visited, that is until a chance occurrence where an old letter emerged. 

During my college years I was a leader in the Zionist organization known as Tagar, and I had written many articles. An old disciple contacted me, he recalled, all these many years later, an article I had written, and wanted a copy. This send me on a search through some old letters and files. I came across a copy of a letter I had written to my rabbi in 1992. I kept copies of some of those letters as a sort of diary, a documentation of my thoughts and experiences upon returning home to Israel after spending several years studying in New York. The letter brought back a forgotten memory. 

I saw the letter, which was dated sometime in 1992 and I was curious. I read and found a passage describing how after a bit of a break, to readjust to life in Israel, find an apartment and a job, I have joined a local karate club. I described how I was viewed as an outsider, since I had come from a different style of Karate, and instead of greeting me as a member, they chose to "prove" that their style is superior by having me fight their top fighters. 

Looking back I see how immature this was, and I certainly do not treat guests or new members in this way. While I am interested in seeing the differences in style I do not try to prove our style by beating the new prospective members in full-contact kumite fighting. 

I wrote in the letter, which brought to mind the events which now resurfaced in my memory, that I had fared well in the fights, but I had been kicked hard in the knee repeatedly. The letter describes my visit to the doctor and how this doctor told me that I had sustained a rather serious injury, had liquid in the knee and most probably suffered long-term injury, likely permanent. 

Wow, the mystery had been solved, the source of this injury was discovered. At the time I had dismissed this, as injuries were a regular part of my training, as I wrote earlier, other students would say, Moshe, you are an animal! I was young and healed quickly and never worried too much about pain. I was taught that in karate we must learn to "overcome the threshold of pain", (just one of many myths that later proved to be very wrong). As such the memory of this knee injury quickly faded, but the damage was done and would resurface as I grew older. 

These days I am limited by this injury; I can no longer walk to my favorite synagogue as it involves a long uphill walk. I have pain if I use the stairs or walk on an incline, and, sometimes at a seminar I feel the urge to take a break after standing and teaching for a few hours. and then I think back and I think to myself, what an idiot that instructor was, what idiots he had for students. I am quite certain they never think back to that day, for them it was just another day, but for me that was the day that my knee was permanently damaged and my life changed for the worse. And I am angry. 

I do not teach that way. I teach real self-defense and I make every effort to protect those who trust in my training. We are training to learn to protect ourselves, let us not do the bad guy's job for them, we are not here to cause permanent damage to others in training. That is simply stupid, arrogant and criminally irresponsible. 

I look bad at the day that my life changed, for the worse, and I vow not to do this to my students. We can train hard, we can train serious, we can train for the real world without being reckless. True, despite this an injury can take place, but we do everything we can to avoid it. We don't want someone looking back 25 years later and cursing us and the day they met us. We are teachers, educators, guides and role models. We must also be responsible. 

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Moshe Katz, 8th dan Black Belt, Israeli Krav Maga. Certified by Wingate Institute. Member Black Belt Hall of fame, USA and Europe.

Understand the Israeli Fighting Mentality - Israel a Nation of Warriors by Moshe Katz

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