Defense Against Punches While Mounted

Being on your back with someone straddling you (mounted) and throwing punches at you is the second worst position you can be in. The worst position is to be face down, while being mounted, and someone’s throwing punches at you. Generally, anytime someone has your back (rear mount) it’s a worst-case scenario for you and a best-case scenario for them.

In Wednesday night’s class, we did a drill... I’ll call it the “Sleeping Beauty Drill.” In this drill, we were on our backs with our eyes closed and our arms spread eagle. My training partner was mounted on me. He awakened me by slapping me in the face and punching me in the torso. My job was to defend against the punches and then trap and roll (sweep) him.

As a Krav Maga practitioner... a Kravist... we don’t want to be on the ground if we can help it, but [blank] happens. So... as our lead instructor always says, “Let’s fix it.”

The following are a couple of techniques that can be used to reduce the punches being thrown and to get the attacker off you.

A very basic technique is to use Krav Maga's inside and outside defenses against the punches. In addition to that, as a punch is thrown, buck your hips straight up. This will force the attacker forward, making him lose his balance, and will probably make him base himself out on the ground with his hands. A variation to this is to buck up and drive a knee into the attacker's butt to force him forward onto his hands.

Once the attacker is on his hands, reach out and trap one of his arms above his elbow. You can reach either over (trapping from the inside out) or under (trapping from the outside in). Simultaneously, using your leg, trap the attacker’s leg that is on the same side as the trapped arm.

Next, buck your hips upward toward your head. At the end of this motion, roll your hips over toward the trapped side. Drive over with your feet to end up on top. When you’re on top, deliver punches and elbows to the face and groin as you get away from the attacker.

In another technique, start out the same way by using inside and outside defenses against the punches. However, this time grab one of the attacker’s wrists with both hands. You can use the grabbed arm to block punches from the attacker’s other arm.

Next, pull the grabbed arm across the attacker’s body while at the same time you use your leg to trap the attacker’s leg that is on the same side of the grabbed wrist. A variation to this is to grab both wrists and pull them across his body.

Now, buck your hips upward toward your head. At the end of this motion, roll your hips over toward the trapped side. Drive over with your feet to end up on top. When you’re on top, deliver punches and elbows to the face and groin as you get away from the attacker.

Tip: To effectively buck your attacker off you, make sure your hips are under him. A good ground fighter will ride your chest high in order to make your bridging or bucking ineffectual. To thwart him from riding high, jam your elbows into his knees to prevent him from sliding up. If he’s already slid up, jam your elbows into his knees and shimmy yourself up until your hips are underneath of him again.

Get out of this predicament as fast as possible. In the street, there will be no referee to stop the fight because you’re taking too many punches to the head and can’t defend yourself anymore.

Rolling Tips

Here are a few tips when rolling (wrestling, grappling).

Being Heavy

When you’re on top of your opponent, you should make yourself as heavy as possible.

Why be heavy?

1. It makes it harder for him to escape.
2. It makes it harder for him to breathe, which means he’ll get tired faster.
3. You’ll be connected to him in such a way that you’ll feel everything he’s attempting to do.
4. He might make a mistake trying to get your bodyweight off him, which may create submission opportunities.

How do you become heavy?

Keep your hips below his center of gravity. For example, if your opponent is lying flat on his back, dissect the distance between the top of his chest and the ground and find the halfway point. That halfway point is his center of gravity. You must keep your hips below that center of gravity.

Make sure your energy is going straight through him and not on an angle. This will make you as heavy as humanly possible.

Hips

Your opponent - on his feet - whether he’s striking , attempting a take down or when he’s on the ground, gets all his power from his hips. Therefore, you want to control his hips.

Comfort

You want to keep your opponent in an unnatural position. You don’t want him to be in a comfortable, relaxed or natural state. If he’s comfortable, relaxed or in natural state, he can harness all of his energy and strength to counter your moves.

The bottom line is... make your opponent carry your weight at all times, keep his hips under control and make him as uncomfortable as possible.

Chokes, Scarf Hold and Arm Bar Night

Wednesday night we warmed up in our groundfighting class with shrimping, tumbling and ground positional changes.

We then practiced our 360 degree outside defenses and our inside defenses against punches. That was followed by lying on our backs and having our training partner mount us and attack us with punches. We were required to make the appropriate defenses from that position.

Next, we practiced three different ways to escape from an opponent’s full guard.

Continuing in the first hour, we practiced trap and roll techniques against the full mount. We were allowed to execute the technique à la Krav Maga style or any other grappling style that we knew. We switched training partners a few times and then we moved on to the continuous trap and roll drill.

We were required to wear our protective headgear for the continuous trap and roll drill. In this drill, you had to lie on your back. Then one by one, a different training partner would get on top of you and attack you. You had to defend against his attacks, sweep him, and then get up. You continued with this drill until you defended against each training partner in the class.

In the second hour of the class, we played a game called Sharks and Penguins. If you were designated as a shark, you could only use your legs and not your hands to engage an opponent. The use of your hands was only to maneuver yourself on the mat.

If you were designated as a penguin, you maneuvered around on the mat with your knees and could only use your hands to engage an opponent.

Oh... and the other thing you could do was double or triple team a shark or a penguin. Picture a school of sharks surrounding a poor little penguin. After a couple of minutes we reversed rolls.

Next, we reviewed some techniques that we learned prior to the holiday break.

Then we learned a couple of collar chokes. They seemed to be a version of the Kataha Jime Judo chokes. Pretty cool stuff. Essentially, you use one hand to strangle your opponent with the collar of his shirt and the other hand is placed behind the neck to control the head.

Next, we learned the Scarf Hold (Kesa Gatame in Judo) position. The position isn’t designed for locking in a host of different submissions, but the submissions the Scarf Hold does offer are highly effective, especially when applied on an opponent stunned from a brutal throw.

Then we learned how to apply an arm bar from the Scarf Hold position. It’s called a Near Side Arm Bar. It is so named because you attack the arm closest to your body.

The class ended with some free rolling which is always fun. It gives you a chance to try to apply, on a resisting opponent, what you’ve learned in the class.

Upcoming Ernie Kirk Seminar

On Saturday, January 24, 2009, Ernie Kirk will be conducting a 4-hour seminar at our training center. Ernie Kirk is a former Krav Maga World Wide regional director and is the owner and head instructor of Premier Martial Arts in Glen Mills, PA.

The seminar is from 9am to 1pm and will cover:

• Controlling range and distance
• Preemptive striking
• Action triggers
• Cheap shots
• Training for the REAL world

Scraping Off the Rust

The rust was showing Monday night after being away from Krav for two weeks. It’s funny how you can fall out of your groove in what would seem to be a short amount of time. With the holidays upon us and the fact that our training center was on hiatus for a period, the only thing that I kept up with was my cardio workout. I didn’t do any weight training during that period as well.

After our warm up, we started with some focus mitts punching drills.

One of the drills had your training partner call out a number. That number represented the amount of punches you had to throw. Next... without you defending... you had to absorb a midsection kick from your training partner. Once you absorbed the kick, you immediately had to burst back in and throw the same amount of punches initially called for. Then, you repeated the sequence, but with another punch count.

We ended the night with the customary stress drill. First, you burned yourself out with focus mitts combinations. Then, you had to deal with the attacks of a training partner wearing a High Gear training suit.

You had to stand in a passive stance with your eyes closed. Once you were attacked... with punches, grabs, kicks, chokes, etc.... you retaliated immediately with combatives. When someone is wearing the training suit, you can punch and kick them a lot harder than normal.

The class was a good start for scraping off the rust and getting back into the swing of things.

Israeli Martial Arts Gurus Duke It Out For Real

When grandmaster Haim Gidon, a top-ranking practitioner of the Israeli martial art of Krav Maga, entered a studio in New Jersey on a recent Monday, the 20-odd people in the room stopped pummeling each other and lined up like soldiers standing at attention.
Source: Forward

Misunderstanding Krav Maga

Often I will come across questions like the following on the Web:

• “Is Krav Maga good for MMA (Mixed Martial Arts)?”
• “I want to take up a martial art. Should I take Muay Thai, BJJ (Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu), Aikido or Krav Maga?”
• “Does Krav Maga have a good form of ground fighting?”

This is the classic comparing apples to oranges scenario. The philosophy and training for a Kravist is very different from the philosophy and training for a traditional martial artist or a sports-oriented martial artist.

Krav Maga is not a martial art. It has been described as a “defensive tactics system”—a tactical and logically sound approach to dealing with violent confrontations. Krav Maga addresses a wide variety of aggressive acts which include punches, kicks, chokes, bearhugs, headlocks, grabs, as well as defenses against multiple attackers and assailants armed with a firearm, edged weapon, or blunt object.

Traditional martial arts and sports-oriented martial arts have rules. There are no rules in a violent confrontation. During a violent confrontation, you must do anything and everything to defend your life or your loved ones.

If a BJJ practitioner is attacked and ends up on the ground... his world... he may see an opportunity to apply a triangle choke to an assailant’s neck. What he hasn’t trained for is the fact that while the assailant is in his triangle choke, the assailant pulls a knife out of a back pocket. The assailant is now able to stab the BJJ practitioner to death. The Kravist... not wanting to remain on the ground... would have forgone the choke and gotten up to escape the danger.

If a Muay Thai fighter is attacked and is on his feet... his world... he may be able to defend himself quite well in a fist fight, but he hasn’t trained for the assailant’s accomplice that has snuck up behind the Muay Thai fighter and has placed a handgun in his back. The Kravist... on the other hand... has trained for that scenario until its burned into muscle memory.

I enjoy watching MMA fighters, grapplers (BJJ, Wrestling, Judo, etc.) and strikers (Muay Thai, Boxing, Kickboxing, etc.) compete in their sports. I also enjoy watching traditional martial artists compete in kumite and perform their katas and forms. They are excellent athletes; they train hard and are great at what they do.

However, Kravists train to do what they do and that is to defend themselves or loved ones against armed and unarmed attackers. Traditional martial artists and sports-oriented martial artists train to do what they do and that is to defend themselves, in a controlled environment, against an opponent... real or imaginary... in a ring, cage or on a mat.

Krav Maga means contact combat not contact sports. The two worlds are at opposite extremes.