The Hindu :: Contact Combat

Thanks to a Krav Maga session, PRINCE FREDERICK discovers that even the strongest have chinks in their armour

Fight when you have to Krav Maga session in progress

“The best way to deal with a conflict is to avoid it.” A philosopher’s recipe for a peaceful world? No, a lesson Krav Maga instructor Sree Ram wants his students to learn, first of all. “Why fight when you don’t have to?” Not Ram’s opinion, but a Krav Maga tenet.

Confined to Israel for long as a military tool, this contact combat slowly spread to other countries. In many of them, it is now taught to civilians as a system of self-defence. Krav Maga has borrowed from traditional martial arts. In a Krav Maga session, you will recognise the locks of Aikido, the grappling of Judo, the punches of boxing and many more.

But one quality makes it radically different from all of them. In his very first class, a student can bring the instructor down to his knees. And, that is what I do when Sree Ram tries to stab me with a makeshift knife (my pen). I lock his stabbing hand at the wrist and push it down, twisting the wrist. With a black belt in karate, Sree Ram is no weakling. But even the strongest have their soft points and Krav Maga shows how to exploit them. A few defence moves are based on situations where only a woman can be the victim. To see how they work, I pretend to be a woman experiencing these situations. Krav Maga training is intense and can qualify as both aerobic and anaerobic workouts. For, students repeatedly practise the moves to gain ‘muscle memory’ – or the body instinctively getting into the right position to repulse an attack.

Bottomline: As results can be seen from day one, Krav Maga can get addictive. Sree Ram holds classes every Sunday at Bala Vidya Mandir School, 4th Main Road, Gandhi Nagar, Adyar and Royal Health Works, 5, Taramani Link Road, Velachery. For details, call 93400 06600 or log on to kravmagachennai.com

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