Krav Maga Chaos Training
By Moshe Katz
Krav Maga Instructor

January 2010

Can You Function in Chaos?

I personally do not like stress. It really can stress me out. So when I plan my Krav Maga tours I have everything set down to the last detail; flights, aisle seat on each flight, airport pick ups, hotels, etc.

However there are things beyond my control; lost (misplaced) luggage, delayed or cancelled flights, hosts who forget to pick me up at the airport. All this and more happens.

During my recent North American tour I had a few of these challenging episodes. I recall being stranded at the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina, waiting seven hours for my flight. It was enough to throw one off kilter.

It tried to make the best use of my time; catch up on phone calls, write blogs, find some food. Finally having some quiet time, although potentially stressful, I began to think of how this applies to Krav Maga.

Most martial arts styles have a set game plan, call it One Steps, Forms or Kata, they train and are tested on a particular type of fighting. Even boxers, great fighters indeed, train to fight other boxers in a boxing type setting. They pretty much know what to expect.

When you watch you tube or martial arts DVD's everything looks great, of course it is all choreographed, scripted, and edited. When you try it at home it rarely comes out looking like the guy on the video; your partner resisted too much, or is built differently than the guy chosen as an attacker in the clip.

Reality, oh how cruel it can be. Do you remember the episode of "I Love Lucy" where her husband, Ricky Ricardo, together with Fred and Ethel, plan how to respond when she is ready to go to the hospital to give birth? They rehearse it and it goes like clock work. However, when the moment actually arrives all hell breaks lose and everything goes wrong, it is total chaos. (Great episode)

Well, there is a Krav Maga lesson there. When I was sitting in the airport and all my carefully made plans were falling apart, (my ride for 6 pm in New York would not be able to wait 7 hours, my dinner plans had to be cancelled, etc.) I thought of how my plans turned to chaos, and how this applies to real life training.

What if your well rehearsed wrist lock did not work? Or carefully placed punch had no effect? Your disarm failed because the guy was "too strong", and your throws did not work because he was "too fat"? in other words, what happens when all your plans turned to chaos?

That is how we must train. We must learn to train for the unexpected, we must not have a strict game plan but rather, like the Israel Defense Forces, we must know how to flow with any situation. We must learn to survive and thrive in chaos. That is IKI Krav Maga, accepting the reality of life, the reality of combat, and working on it from there. Stay safe my friends.

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