Krav Maga Mind Training

Mind Training

Where is your mind when you are training? What are you thinking about you? What should you be thinking about?

I will tell you exactly what you should be thinking about, so pay close attention, Fare attenzione (Italian), Venimaniye (Russian) Sim lev (Hebrew),

These VIP guards in Kiev are training seriously in Krav Maga

Your mind should be nowhere in particular. Shut it off and lose yourself in the training.

Now I am not talking about technique learning, then of course you must be focused and pay close attention. I am referring to when you are working on your drills; your kicking, punching, full contact knife defense. I am talking about when you must drive yourself physically.

If you have a teacher, that is great. Just surrender to his/her control, be a robot, do as he says. If he says kick, you kick until your legs can move no more, if he says punch, you punch until your hands bleed and can no longer move. Man, I miss those days.

So what do I do these days, I will blast something like AC/DC singing "No mercy for the bad if they need it." Or "Evil walks behind you, evil sleeps beside you, evil talks arouse you, evil walks behind you."

Maybe I will hit myself in the head with a piece of wood and just go for it. Do push ups 'till you drop, sit ups till your stomach can't move, hit the heavy bag, drill with a partner, don't stop, don't think.

In short, be an animal. When I trained at the Oyama Kyokushin dojo in New York City that was pretty much the best compliment a guy could hope to hear. I remember the first time I heard, "You're an animal Moshe". I felt that now I was training with the big boys. Now I had earned some respect.

What are we actually doing? We are switching off the "normal" mechanism that dislikes pain and discomfort, we are turning off the switch that will say, "This hurts me, it is uncomfortable, I don't like this."

Itay Gil told me many years ago about this "switching off"; he was doing his third dan test and was doing the 100 man kumite. At a certain point the pain was unbearable and at that point he stopped feeling it. He longer felt any pain. The trick is to be able to have some control and shut this off when we need to; during hard training or life and death situations. "No pain" is a common saying in the martial arts world, no pain; we acknowledge and recognize no pain, we give it no credit.

If you want to break through with your training, whether it is martial arts or fitness, you must overcome this thresh hold of pain, you must give it no credence.

Remember Rocky, "The body says stop, but the spirit cries Never!"