The trainer seems like quite a peaceful trouble avoiding sort.

Keysi is not a martial art and neither is Krav Maga. They are both martial but neither are arts. They are self-defence systems.

Commando Krav Maga's moto is 'Negotiate for peace, but prepare for war'

The philosophies of both are very similar to that of the Sun Tzu. Here is the opening passage of the Sun Tzu:

SUN TZU SAID:
The military is a great matter of the state.
It is the ground of death and life,
The Tao of survival or extinction.
One cannot but examine it.

Basically he is saying whoever you are conflict will find you, and if you don't prepare for it you die by your own action.

I'm a peaceful guy. I don't think I've ever been in a real fight since turning adult. None of that will count for shit when trouble comes knocking and won't be subdued. I'm skilled at negotiating for peace, I'm un-skilled at preparing for war.


Peace,

kowalski

Its true martial arts are underpinned by various philosophies and attitudes to life and thats all good. But the majority of people who go to a gym/martial arts class are there to learn how to fight in a round about way. Defending oneself is also fighting.

Violence is a part of life, always has been always will be. Im not saying thats right or wrong, it just is.

Am loving the cartoons K, you've out done yourself!!

There is only thing this thread is missing now - the first rule of fight club is...

Back in my uni days www.mnftiu.cc was my favourite site. Check out the My New FILING Technique is Unstopable. Lots of filing related comedy, basically clip-art office workers swearing at each other in the funniest possible way.

Piss myself at this, it looks like a fun game.
... don't invite Jade Goody.


Peace,

kowalski

Depend how you defend yourself. If you smash someone in the face defending yourself you could still get nicked for it, depending on the situation (was it necessary?) and of course the amount of damage you did. There are other ways, which involve minimal effort and don't look anything like fighting. Of course this completely depends on the situation. If a heavy set guy is trying to beat your head into the pavement, then sure you need to start swinging back, but when you have these skills it can be all too tempting after you've had a few to give that cheeky little chav kid that just shoulder barged you a hammer fist to the neck, which could be lethal! That's why a good martial arts club will teach you to how to control that demon, rather than just let it loose. In my opinion anyway.

how did it go?

Feck!

Just typed a massive write up, then my shit crashed before posting it. I'm off for a beer and a sauna. I'll write it all out again later.

Suffice to say I fucking loved it, it totally lived up to my expectations.


Peace,

kowalski

I've seen some Krav Maga videos, looks awesome (do a you tube search). Classes are getting more expensive though due to it's popularity. There's a cheap Krav Maga class in Prestwich, in the Maccabi Sports Centre. With Keysi being more central in Manchester, I may look that up first.

Yeh, I'm up for kicking the shit out of a few heads.

We should start our own fight club.

I loved it.

We (Tom and I) were about 10 minutes late getting there because we got lost even though it turned out to be on the same street Tom used to live on. When we walked in the guys had already started and what they were doing looked really odd, nothing like any other fighting style I have seen.

The trainer started out by showing us the basic position of Keysi; the Pensidor (aka thinking man). Basically gripping the back of your skull with both hands, one on top of the other, so that your forearms cover the top and sides of your skull and your shoulders and upper arms cover the face and jaw.

It is your natural reaction when attacked to adopt the Pensidor. As the instructor explained it; Imagine I throw a pad at the back of your head (so you don't see it coming), as it bounces off you your natural reaction is to throw your arms up over your head and crouch slightly. Keysi acknowledges this, and instead of trying to teach you to overcome this natural reaction and adopt an alternative stance, shows you how to go with it to put yourself into a position where you are both well defended, and ready and able to unleash your attack.

Another interesting effect of using the Pensidor is that it kinda looks like you are cowering. This may lead your attackers to believe that you are an unworthy foe, underestimating you momentarily which, as you are in fact doing the very opposite of cowering, could give you a momentary advantage.

We were put against a wall where we were attacked by being pushed and grabbed in the chest then hit with a pad in the head, using the Pensidor to defend against it. It is surprising how hard a blow you can take with pretty much zero effect when in this position.

After this Jason (the trainer) demonstrated using Keysi to deal with 3 attackers. This was really interesting to watch especially as there was no pre-agreed attack, the guys just came at him and he did his thing. I've never seen this before. As Jaz remarked when I was discussing it with him that evening, normally at a class you are told 'Grab my right shoulder' and if you accidentally grab their left shoulder, they'll say 'No my right shoulder' and 'Not like that like this' etc. and then show you what to do if you are attacked in exactly that fashion. Not very helpful if someone attacks you in a slightly different way, you can't exactly tell your assailant in a real situation that they are attacking you in the wrong way. Also, learning this way means you need to learn a different move to deal with every possibility and be able to instantly pick the right one for the specific situation you find yourself in. (You should all be able to see the parallels between Keysi and natural, authentic game, and most other fighting styles and structured, routine game. Of course this is not a new way of thinking, this philosophy first found its way into the minds of fighters thanks to Bruce Lee and Jeet Kune Do, being influenced, as he was, by Taoist philosophies including Sun Tzu's Art of War.)

After this he also demonstrated being attacked by three people and using the boxing style to defend himself and again using Wing Chun. This was to show the weaknesses of these styles in a realistic multiple attacker situation. With the Wing Chun he was able to handle and defend against two of the attackers but left himself wide open for potentially devestating attacks from the third. He was clearly proficient and respectful of both styles, his Wing Chun shit was very impressive, and was careful not to talk down the strengths of those other styles too.

We were then shown how to do a basic attack (hammer fist) and approach whilst in the Pensidor. A lot of the philosophy is about switching the predator and prey roles. You have been ambushed by multiple assailants, they start out as the predators. The aggression in Keysi is used to flip the situation on its head so the hunter becomes the hunted. Jason related this to his military training and how they are taught to respond to an ambush situation by charging their ambushers thus destroying their plans and wrestling back the advantage. In the attack and approach the aim is to charge your opponents and get right up in their shit, this flips the situation so you are now the predator. It also takes away the distance that most fighting styles require to be effective (and certainly the big haymaker style most 'hard nuts' employ), it ruffles your opponent causing confusion, and cuts off many angles of attack from any other assailants because their allies body is in the way.

Despite being told repeatedly to take all aspects of the training seriously Tom lazily flopped forward when the instructor was demonstrating how the style flows continuously forward from all positions and took a light shot to the chin, which was fucking hillarious as he tried to 'man it off'.

I also understand that, pumped up on his newly acquired powers, Tom went home and, like any self-respecting Northerner should, gave his girl a good beating.

At the end of the class one student was asking the trainer about a situation he'd been in that week where he had shouted some abuse at a couple of guys in a skip who then attacked him and his friends. He was coming from an angle where he felt he should have done more. Jason was unimpressed and used a great military style example. The instructor is a pretty intelligent guy and works in the hospital as an anaesthesiologist so sees plenty of young guys come in on a Friday and Saturday night who either become organ donors, paralysed, basket cases or otherwise premanently disabled and has no desire to fight unnecessarily. He said that this little space around him was the Republic of Jason and he has no designs to invade anyone else's country; he has sufficient resources so doesn't need to pilage others' countries, he only wants peaceful relations with them. However, if they invade the Republic of Jason it is a different situation altogether. And, said that the student had basically been a dick for shouting at the guys and that anything that happened after that point was a total irrelevancy. I liked this analogy and attitude.

Overall, it completely lived up to my expectations and I'll definitely be returning. The group was small and hopefully it wont get too busy as the size means you get a lot of individual attention from the instructor. Jason wants each of his students to feel at least a small incremental improvement in confidence and feelings of capability after each session and I certainly felt that after this first class.


Peace,

kowalski

My hobby is boxing. It's always done the job on the few occasions that things have got out of hand but I do all I can to avoid getting into fights because I don't want a police record and I'm more or less guaranteed to break my hands which puts me out of training.

I don't think people need to worry about which discipline to pick because usually the person with the most training and sparring will be the better fighter no matter the discipline. If I had to pick though I'd say Muay Thai would be one of the best things to learn for street fighting as you've got clinching, elbows, and knees for close range, punches and knees for mid range, and the jab and kicks for long range (low kicks I guess as you can hardly do high kicks in jeans etc).

That said I think the best strikers in the world are boxers and if you asked me who I'd least like to get into a fight with then it would be a decent boxer. I don't really need to worry about that though because I've found in general that the discipline and strength of character needed to get good at a fighting sport means that most good fighters are very decent people.