How to Learn Self Defense

Out of everything I get asked about martial arts, I think, “How do you learn self defense,” and “How do you learn to fight,” are the two most common things people ask. To anyone looking to learn how to defend themselves, I want to first say, congratulations on the first step. Krav Maga can sometimes feel intimidating especially if you’re a survivor of any sort of violence. Even if you’ve never been accosted but want to take the necessary precautions to get safer, Krav Maga can seem overwhelming. You have the technical combatives of punching, kicking, knees, and elbows, then there are the aggression drills, fatigue drills, defensive tactics, and stress drills which will all test your mindset and may cause you to go into fight or flight mode, and finally there’s the potential emotional catharsis that comes with the mental hurdles you overcome each time you train. Deciding to learn how to defend yourself is a big step...

I often get asked why I do both MMA and Krav Maga and most of the time, people don’t really understand the difference. If you look at a lot of the combatives, strikes, defenses, etc, there’s a lot of similarities: Punches, kicks, knees, elbows, submissions and takedowns are all part of Krav Maga. Yet, they serve completely different purposes. Here’s the best explanation I can give:

MMA (Mixed Martial Arts)

Mixed martial arts is a sport. By nature, sports have confines, rules, regulations, and procedures. This is a controlled environment and because of that the athletes are still (relatively) safe. There is a referee, whose core job objective is to ensure a fight is stopped before too much or irreparable damage is caused to either party. You fight because you want to fight and if you fight professionally, you get paid to fight. When I would fight, I would sign a contract, I would know who I was fighting, what time we were fighting, at what weight and where we were...