When One teaches, Two learn.
One of the best things you can do if you’re just starting out training or if you’re looking for a way to integrate your martial arts with self defense is to learn or improve your clinch. There are some distinct advantages to learning the clinch first, before sparring with strikes or when first learning grappling.
Training the clinch teaches you about balance, space, and pressure. It teaches you to use leverage, timing, and precision. And most important of all, working on the clinch gets you comfortable with working at a very uncomfortable range. If a smaller person can use position and leverage to make himself “heavier” or harder to deal with, that person can use his strikes, weapons, or make decisions during a fight about what to do next while operating confidently in a range that most people ignore. Most fight training consists of either striking or grappling with the idea that you can only devote significant attention to one or the other. Starting with the clinch forces you to learn range and position that allows you to expand outward into effective striking and grappling easier than if you were to start with either one individually. If you’re serious about learning to fight, you’ll have to learn all ranges and the best place to start is in the clinch. A guy with a good clinch can learn to strike fairly easily and a guy with a good clinch can be taught takedowns and groundfighting much easier since the context is already ingrained.
For self defense purposes, fights are won and lost in the clinch. If you are attacked and you successfully defend the ambush, you will be in a clinch situation. Nobody attacks another individual and then runs away after a single successful defense by the person being attacked. A clinch fight should be assumed and prepared for. This is especially important if you carry weapons since attempting to access a weapon at the wrong time could lead to it being used on you. You will also recognize your opponent accessing a weapon earlier and you may be able to prevent your opponent’s access.
In this series of videos, I take you through a progression to get you started with some fundamental Greco-Roman wrestling techniques that should form the basis of your clinch. They can be learned and then used as a warmup for training session, as a starting point for stand-up sparring or for practicing entangled weapons access, or as a base for learning takedowns. Grab a partner and give these a shot.
We’re excited to offer a ground fighting class starting Monday at Defense Krav Maga. The class is open to everyone and will teach you basic position, submissions, and grappling strategy. We’ll use elements of wrestling, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, MMA, and Krav Maga to put together a simple, but brutally effective ground fighting program.
Contact us using the form below to schedule a trial Krav Maga class!
Krav Maga has finally arrived in Wichita Falls. We’re officially in our new location at 4030 Kemp Blvd. This week, class will run on Wednesday at 5:30 pm and starting next week, the schedule will be as follows:
Krav Maga – Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 5:30 pm
Precision Striking – Tuesday and Thursday at 6:30 pm
In Precision Striking class, you’ll work on the art and skill of punch, knee, and kick combinations from boxing and Muay Thai. This will be a fast paced, 30 minute class where you’ll learn to hit, move, and defend.
Fill out the form below if you have questions or would like to set up a trial class.
Defending yourself requires that you are able to make an aggressive and violent counterattack. This is one of the ugly realities of self-defense and this is the truly hard part for nice, normal people living in the real world. Come train with us and we’ll teach you how to make an ugly face, hit hard, and go home safe.
Krav Maga classes run on Monday and Wednesday at 5:30 PM at Wichita Falls Athletic Club. Contact us below for more information. We look forward to seeing you!
Your Krav Maga class warmup sucks.
As a new instructor, sometimes the warmup is a crutch. You just passed your instructor training, but don’t REALLY know how to teach yet. The warmup, since that’s what you’ve been doing as an apprentice instructor, is what you’re good at so it’s time to show off a bit and make sure that everyone is “warm” before you get to the shaky business of teaching actual self defense.
There are a few problems with this:
Doing a super-long, crappy warmup is maybe excusable in the newest of instructors. If you want to be a better instructor and gain a deeper understanding of how to teach Krav Maga, take the time to evaluate how and why you run your classes the way that you do. Question everything.
There’s nothing that works better for getting strong than basic barbell training. Full range of motion lifts that load the entire skeleton are both efficient and effective in producing an adaptation that is beneficial for all aspects of human performance. Whatever it is you do, whether it’s Krav Maga, sports, martial arts, or just life, you need to be stronger to be better at it.
There are always a lot of questions on the squat. As a Starting Strength Coach, I teach the squat as described in Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training, by Mark Rippetoe. The proper grip is a thumbless grip, with straight wrists. The bar is placed under the traps, on top of the posterior deltoid, under the spine of the scapula. Keeping the chest up and elbows back wedges the bar in place. Don’t neglect setting up properly. Issues with tightness at the bottom of the squat can sometimes be traced to a loose upper back and a crappy grip or bar position.
Here’s a video I put together for Starting Strength. Comment below if you have any questions.
Anyone else tired of hearing the word tactical? Unfortunately, I have quite a few perfectly good t-shirts from days passed that have that cringe-worthy, non-sensical term all over them.
In the 10 years I’ve been teaching Krav Maga, I’ve used it on tag lines, websites, t-shirts, etc, etc, etc. It sounds neat, or at least it used to. I’ve also made a big deal out of training “tactical” people. Cops, military, security folks – those types. All self-defense instructors do to some extent. Either the system being taught is used by “Elite” forces around the world, or the instructor has personally trained Delta Force while a member of Seal Team Six operating under cover in the IDF.
Here’s the thing. You become a better instructor by teaching and coaching regular folks. Taking a completely normal person, with a normal job, who has never been in a fight and transforming that person’s ability and mindset in a few hours of a seminar or over a few months in regular classes takes serious skill. Doing this well is something most instructors can’t do.
It really does sounds cool when you tell someone that you trained a Secret Service Agent, or that **insert military unit here** uses your system, but what no one understands is that the police officers who choose to take your training and the guys who are in military units they make movies about, especially, ARE ALREADY FIGHTERS AND KILLERS. You may give them a handful of techniques that they’ve never seen before, but you’re kidding yourself if you think that you’re blowing the minds of guys who are specifically selected to solve problems and do a lot with a little.
Telling folks they’re training in a system that a tier one unit supposedly uses is also complete bullshit. It’s irrelevant because what applies to small unit tactics and may be mission specific doesn’t apply to Bill, the insurance agent. Bill doesn’t carry an M-4 to work and roll with 4-12 of his closest buddies. Bill is pre-diabetic, just started “working out” last year, has a bad shoulder, and showed up to your class because he’s getting bored with machines at the gym and wants to feel like a badass.
If you’re ever lucky enough to train someone who’s very experienced, you find that you’ll get the opportunity to push, and push really hard. Being able to keep the attention of 30 or 40 veteran police officers says something about you as an instructor, but those skills are honed through taking people who can barely walk proficiently and making them powerful, confident, and competent quickly. The only way to do that is to have a deep, fundamental understanding of absolute basics. Of what’s important and what’s a waste of time, and the experience to be able to give minimal instruction to produce maximum performance.
Lift. Fight. Win. 