Krav Maga Weapon Defenses. David Kahn

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СКАЧАТЬ capabilities by injecting adrenaline into the blood stream. Although fear helps you to survive by quickening your heart rate and sending more oxygenated blood to your muscles, you must harness your fear and remain levelheaded. You must control involuntary body responses, such as quivering legs, to execute the correct self-defense reactions. You will need both physical and mental training to learn how to harness this fear-induced adrenaline surge.

      Mental and physical conditioning allows you to harness your adrenaline and channel it into action. Mental confidence and toughness, in particular, provides a decisive advantage in a violent encounter. When you feel confident, you believe that your training will carry the day regardless of an opponent’s possession of a weapon. Confidence, however, must not lead to overconfidence. Do not underestimate the opponent, especially, when he has the mechanical advantage of a weapon. And, always expect the unexpected. Mental conditioning will help build your confidence, preventing the panic that can lead to freezing or poor decision making. Mental conditioning will also allow you to deescalate or walk away (always the best solution if possible) from a potentially a violent situation.

      With proper training, you will learn how to use fear and other negative emotions to your advantage. You will harness the energy and power from your body’s fight or flight response rather than freezing under pressure. If you merely read through this book but do not actually train against impact weapons, edged weapons, and firearm threats on a regular basis, physical trauma coupled with fright and shock will most likely negate rational thought, paralyzing you into inaction. When in danger, the brain searches its memory bank for a response. In a violent encounter, if an opponent takes an unanticipated or unrecognized action, the brain cannot find a practiced response resulting in decision paralysis. Denial is the most common obstacle to taking appropriate action. Often, with an untrained mind and body, it is difficult to process or accept that someone else intends you serious bodily harm. An assailant may know this and achieve his purpose accordingly.

      Krav maga’s goal is to make a trainee proficient in defending himself or herself against any manner of attack in the shortest possible training period. As krav maga is based on our most primitive and natural instincts, a few core defensive movements harnessing gross motor skills can be learned, retained, and applied to overcome numerous deadly force threats while under duress. For example, the same defensive movement can defend against a hook punch, an overhand, forward slash, or a hook stab to the throat or head. This training principle is crucial: good defensive tactics training should rely on a few instinctive and adaptable core techniques.

      In krav maga, you will learn a few elementary techniques that you can perform instinctively and apply to a wide variety of situations. You will learn how to protect your vital points and organs. Equally important, you will know how to debilitate an opponent by striking his or her vital anatomy. If the situation requires, krav maga will teach you how to maximize the damage you can inflict by striking, kneeing, kicking, chopping, gouging, choking, dislocating joints, breaking bones, and taking your opponent down to the ground.

      You need not master hundreds of self-defense techniques to become a kravist or competent krav maga fighter capable of defeating an armed attack or threat. Non-violent conflict resolution is always your best solution. In krav maga, we prepare for any type and number of attacks and threats. While there are no set solutions for ending an armed confrontation, there are preferred methods using retzev or “continuous combat motion” to prevail. When defending against weapons, retzev is modified (“modified weapons retzev”) because the nearside arm often controls the attacker’s weapon or weapon arm. Combined with simultaneous defense and attack, retzev is a seamless, decisive, and overwhelming counterattack forming the backbone of the Israeli fighting system. Retzev can be understood using combined upper- and lower-body combatives, locks, chokes, throws, takedowns, and weapons interchangeably without pause.

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      The human body can withstand a high degree of physical punishment. Certain attacks can be lethal, but even when severely injured, the body can perform nearly miraculous feats. Adrenaline is a powerful energizer and allows the body to momentarily insulate itself against pain. The body’s resilience works for both victim and assailant. Note that an assailant under the influence of drugs acquires yet another layer of pain insulation and artificially increased strength.

      Keep in mind, however, that the level of force you use to defend yourself should be commensurate with the threat. Developed as a military fighting discipline, krav maga employs lethal force techniques. When faced with a deadly force encounter, you may, in turn, need to employ lethal counterforce. Forging an awareness of your own personal weapons (hands, forearms, elbows, knees, shins, feet, and head) and an opponent’s vulnerabilities is essential to fight strategy and tactics, especially when he is armed and you are not. As noted, the human body is amazingly resilient, even when subjected to tremendous physical abuse. Pain may stop some attackers, but other individuals have enormous pain thresholds, especially those taking narcotics.

Krav Maga Tactics

      Once engaged against an assailant, the key to all krav maga weapons defenses is a deflection-redirection of the weapon combined with a simultaneous body defense and an overwhelming counterattack. This methodology is designed to stop the attack at its inception, or at the earliest possible stage. Closing the distance gap between the assailant and defender is sometimes referred to as “bursting.” The opposite of bursting forward is a bursting retreat to escape or create distance until the correct time to close the gap presents itself. Counterattacks usually target the assailant’s soft tissue including his groin, throat, eyes, and knees. Weapon defenses take into specific account the assailant’s physiological reaction to counterstrikes such as a knee or kick to the groin that will lurch the body forward or a thumb gouge to the eye that will jolt the head back exposing the groin for further strikes.

      Footwork and body positioning, whether standing or prone, allow you to simultaneously defend and attack, leading to seamless combative transitions essential to retzev. Good balance is a must with your weight properly positioned on the balls of your feet to react; not on your heels. Balance within any stance is essential to redirect your energy and momentum. A good stance, either from the left outlet position or even from a passive stance, allows you to press directly into the ground for superior traction and mobility. Accordingly, if you have good balance and mobility, you can burst in to close on the assailant. The key to evasion is moving out of the “line of fire” or the path of an opponent’s offensive combatives. Clearly, positioning yourself where you can counterattack your opponent more easily than he can attack you is most advantageous.

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      Essential to a successful defense is precise fight timing: using the correct tactic at the correct time. Fight timing is best thought of as the fusion of instinct with simultaneous decision-making to either preempt the attack, move off the line of attack/fire, deflect-redirect, control the weapon and strike, or to retreat from harm’s way. In other words, fight timing is harnessing instinctive body movements while seizing or creating opportunities to defend both efficiently and intelligently.

      Defined yet another way, fight timing is your ability to capitalize on a window of opportunity offered by your opponent or to create your own opportunity to end the confrontation, using whatever tactics come instinctively to you. Timing can be improved and honed with realistic training—always krav maga’s objective. While speed is not timing, speed certainly can add a decisive advantage when the defender is faster than the assailant. As the subsequent chapters emphasize, krav maga relies on economy of motion to eliminate wasted movement, which, in turn, improves speed.

      Footwork and body positioning, whether standing or prone, allow you to simultaneously defend and attack, providing for the seamless combative transitions essential to retzev. The key to evasion is moving out of the “line of fire” or the path of an assailant’s weapon. Clearly, controlling the weapon and positioning yourself where you can СКАЧАТЬ