Krav Maga

If I were the president of the United States my first order of business would be to start a mandatory self-defense policy at age 12. In the beginning, people would probably oppose this idea and want to rebel against it. But the long term the results would be astounding. Imagine the statistical anomaly that would happen if every kid learned self-defense techniques and concepts at the early age of 12. Did you know that 1 in 3 females are estimated to be attacked or molested in some way? Mostly this occurs between the ages of 12-17. That is terrible and shocking thing to consider. What do you think the number would be if every child had the self-confidence, knowledge, and understanding of self-defense, and knew how to stand up for themselves? I think that the statistics would change dramatically.Next, let’s talk about predators and prey. Most attacks on adults (and kids) are premeditated. Attackers scope out the “kill” and plan their attack. They look for the odd person out of the herd. The person that is timid, shy, and weak. The person who doesn’t make eye contact and who would never know they are coming. The person who wouldn’t put up a good fight. Is this you? Training in self-defense fighting not only teaches you how to carry yourself but it gives you confidence that you would never get from anything else. Knowing that you CAN fight back and have options would make you walk a little different, wouldn’t you say? Knowing that you can fight 3 people at once, defend knife stabs, gun threats and tackles will undoubtedly make stand taller. You would make more eye contact, abolish your timidness and gain massive mental and physical strength.In Israel, every citizen, man or woman, must serve in the army. Something interesting shows when we compare their crime rates and statistics with ours.The crime rate in Tel Aviv, Israel (the Los Angeles/Orange County of Israel) is 33.56% when in Los Angeles it’s 51.96%. And Israel scores a higher safety scale of 66.44 when LA gets a 48.04 in safety.Interesting? Every woman and man has had fight training to some extent and can fight back. This makes the attacker’s odds a little lower. Just knowing that anyone who gets attacked knows how to fight back automatically decreases the crime rate. In fact, most of the crime happens to tourists. Why? Because THEY DON’T TRAIN.So yes, I believe if we were able to get every person into some sort of self-defense training, we would dramatically decrease child molestation and adult crimes in the USA. It could be as easy as making it part of the PE class requirements in middle school and it has the potential to help many young people gain the skills they need to stay safe, right through to adulthood.

Krav Maga XD in Costa Mesa's Joey Karam is podcasting on the subject of Mental Training.Title: Mental Training and Negative Visualization- Shortening Reaction Time—Episode 001Date- May 24, 2015You may not have the time every day to physically train, but you do have the time every day to mentally train. It is essential to master the way we think and prepare for attacks. If we are not mentally prepared, it is going to be difficult to perform well when beingattacked no matter your level of physical skills.HOW do we mentally train?We call it shortening freeze time. The Stoics called it Negative Visualization.It is a very good drill to perform because it allows you to anticipate mentally the steps you need to be successful in ANY given situation. You can use itin physical training, in your work life, in your relationships….Freeze Time-the time you are literally “frozen” in a situation without knowing what to do.Basically, what you are doing is taking any given situation and imagining it from absolute worst- case scenario to absolute best-case scenario outcomes.The more that you visualize and mentally prepare yourself, the better composed you will be when you encounter the actual situation.Example Drill:Imagine you are in a doctor’s office and are the farthest person from the exit. There are people between you and the exit. A knife-wielding crazy personcomes in off the street and is going to attack and kill everyone.Through several steps, your worst-case scenario starts with the criminal killing everyone, including yourself.In each successive reiteration, you imagine then that you fight him but he still kills you, then you fight him and he runs away but kills everyone else,then you fight him and keep him from killing 2 people but you’re still injured, then you fight him and you save everyone but you’re still injured, then youfight him as soon as he walks in, save everyone and you’re on the news as a hero. This last one is your best-case scenario.You can break this down further into tinier and tinier steps and really drill down to mentally prepare yourself for every step you would need to take toresult in the best case outcome.Recommended Frequency:As often as you can. You can do this silently in your head at any time, such as in the grocery store line, while waiting on hold, while walking yourdogs, etc.Recommended Reading:A Guide to the Good Life-The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (Wm. B. Irvine)Recommended Reading in this show: A Guide to the Good Life-The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (Wm. B. Irvine)People Mentioned in the show: Eyal Yanilov