By Lance Manley, P4
I am currently reading a very informative book entitled The
Little Black Book of Violence by Lawrence Kane and Kris Wilder. It has the
subtitle "What Every Young Man Needs to Know About Fighting."
This book was lent to me by a fellow practitioner at Krav Maga Midlands.
While perusing it last night, something struck a chord that
is fundamental to the principles of Krav, but is sometimes oh so very easy to
overlook in favour of the "sexy" bits of what we do.
A preface by Rory Miller (a police sergeant in the US
when the book was published) states that he believe most people reading the
book will simply cherry pick the parts they like. He goes on to say, "I
don't think you can see past your own ego. I think that you will risk your own
life and piss away good information to protect your daydreams."
Something that has occurred to me a lot lately is how
violence is best stopped by anything other than violence.
I used to be a UK
police officer and the experience was soul destroying in its stupidity, lack of
basic common sense and political correctness over officer safety. We weren't
trained to fight, only to subdue through holding and baton strikes absolutely
COULD NOT be aimed at the head, regardless of what the Bad Guy might be coming
at you with at the time. We spent 6 weeks on Race & Diversity training, but
a measly 4 hours on use of baton and 1 hour on how to fire pepper spray (the
only weapons 95% of UK
cops carry on patrol).
Krav Maga to me is what the English police should be about.
It teaches you to avoid conflict. That "F**K OFF! STAY AWAY!" shouted
at the top of your lungs is the best method to try first, if you have the
distance and time. Krav talks about avoidance, de-escalation and getting the
hell out of there if it can be achieved. It says violence is a secondary
alternative that is played only when less confrontational options won't work.
But as we know, Krav also teaches us to be as brutal as
possible, as quickly as possible with the minimum of effort and THEN get the
hell out of there.
It's how the English police should be. Common sense and a
lack of ego but able to be baddasses if the occasion demands it.
Problem is for me that it's very easy to get enticed by the
funky side of Krav. We've all seen sparring sessions at our clubs where two
good fighters go hammer and tongs on each other with grace and power. I
personally imagine being whoever is the victor.
Then there's the everyday interactions we see where we
wonder exactly what we would have done had someone called us a "c**t"
in traffic or pushed in front of us in a queue. I personally imagine them being
humiliated, maybe even working in an Educational Block like Krav Vader, to make
certain they keep their distance.
Problem is that my daydreams quite often cloud my judgment.
I don't like sparring cold bloodedly, although I'm not bad
at it when I actually have a go. I can assess threat reasonably well and I'm
not a coward. But all my badass fantasies, as I move further into Krav Maga and
up the grades (currently P4). I got a busted finger 6 weeks ago in training for
trying to block a stomp kick with my fingertips (I was tired, error in
judgment...that I'm still paying for). Having seen movies where people simply
pop dislocated joints back into place I never envisaged in a thousand years,
having to be on restricted duties at work for 9 weeks, repeated visits to the
fracture clinic and a special splint being made at Warwick hospital.
The least useful appendage on my entire body has affected my
ability to train and means my cardio is so out of practice that I get out of
breath running up the stairs.
Ego can be a killer. I've had it for most of my life and
always imagined it to be a friend, mistaking it for confidence. Ego isn't
confidence. Confidence is feeling that you are able to deal with what is in
front of you. Ego is feeling that you can not only do it but do it perfectly
and then have loads of women want to shag you because you're such an awesome
badass.
It has taken 30 minutes of Yoga a day for over 2 months
before I've become supple enough to kick higher than the belly button level of
an opponent. My lack of flexibility was something I worked around until I
became a teaching assistant at a Kiddy Krav class, and was having rings run
round me by 6 year old girls (not to mention wincing as my back strained every
time I bent down to pick something up during the class). I now have flexibility
again, like I did in my 20s. But it's through adherence to a regime of
stretching instructed by someone who knows more than me on the subject.
I see rude or threatening people in public a lot and 10
years ago I'd have jumped in to tell them to leave Mrs A or Mr B alone and be
on their way. On some weird level I used to take all obnoxious behaviour as
being somehow directed at me, if I was around when it happened. I think my
logic was, "You know I'm here and are still doing this in front of me.
Therefore you must think I'm a pansy who won't try and stop you."
Krav (plus a few other things) has helped me to mould and tailor my ego so I no longer feel that I'm a
superhero. When I'm drunk, all bets are off, but over this past year
particularly I've got involved in things that have made me realise my own
limitations and not to be ashamed of them but work with them.
Nick Maison and Jose Silva's Air Safety seminar was a
sobering experience and as close to a hijack on a plane as I ever want to get.
Forget being a hero, you are lucky if you can even see straight as the
"terrorists" shove you around, order you not to look at them and do
their best to disorientate you. Nick even said before we started, "If any
of you feel like taking on any of the hijackers then feel free...but we WILL
give you a kicking and then throw you off the plane"
Having met both Eyal Yanilov and Zeev Cohen they are both
softly spoken and humble men who appear without ego BUT are badasses. After the
second day of P Weekend in December I was in reception at Harlow Leisure Zone
when they both left for the evening. They did not stand out at all, did not
swagger and would have blended into any crowd.
Ego can be dangerous. It ties me into adolescent fantasies
about vanquishing the evil hordes and being the bully hunter I always wanted to
be. It's only be accepting the drab reality of my own limitations that I can
now build upon that and walk through life in a way that means I will assess
situations logically and with my mind, not my ego.
Egone.
