Re: Favorite drills
My favorite drills have been the real-life scenario self-defense drills. I love them all. The chaotic ones where I may end up being the bad guy against a big guy who doesn’t know how to partner with a woman are scary but I go ahead and strangle them anyway because I’m much more motivated to keep my guard up when it’s a partner I don’t know anything about. I also love it when we ramp up the intensity by cussing each other out. It hurts my feelings when my partner laughs at my cussing (apparently I’m not scary!) but hearing all the yelling in the room gets the adrenaline going.
One that we did in Level 2 back before I took time off (I’m back in level 1 now) was in a hallway. We took turns being “it” and everyone else in class walked toward them and either pulled a knife (plastic of course) or asked them for the time one by one.
Some of the stuff we did in a women’s class was totally awesome. We set up cha.irs as a bus or airplane and defended from a seated position. We defended against attackers on stairs (ascending and descending). We did some sexual assault scenarios. Most of us were in Level 2, but it was amazing how many techniques we learned in Level 1 applied to scenarios that on the surface seemed completely divorced from the “regular” classroom routines. It gave me a lot of confidence not just in what I could do, but what krav could do for me.
I got kind of tired of all the boxing stuff in Level 2 and I wasn’t interested in fight class, either, which was our only alternative until the women’s class came along. The sporting aspect of KM is waaaaay behind the play-acting good guy vs. bad guy stuff in keeping me motivated.
I live and work in dangerous places. One of my coworkers (a security guard!) got her nose broken by a customer, and another one got beat up by three people. Another one (another security guard) is on permanent disability thanks to a well-placed punch to his eye. My neighborhood is safe by comparison, but there was an armed robbery & attempted rape in the parking lot of my complex last summer. All those things got me back to krav after taking time off, and I really live for creative self-defense drills even more now.
