The Correct Way To Study Techniques

One of my old instructors used to say, “Techniques can fail, concepts can’t.” I have found, especially in the Krav Maga world, that people get hung up about techniques e.g. they want to know the best and most effective technique to escape a side headlock, the appropriate technique to deal with a knife to the side of the throat etc, and whilst I admire this search for knowledge my concern is that people are really only gaining an encyclopedia of techniques that they hope they will be able to reference when having to deal with a real-life violent situation. They are becoming what I term “Dinner Party” Martial Artists. This is a term I coined after becoming tired and bored of untrained people at social gatherings and the like asking me how I would deal with somebody who has put me in a Full Nelson, A Rear Naked Choke or other hold, without considering or discussing how I’d come to find myself in such a situation, or what I might have to do after escaping it. They were simply looking to learn (or know) a technique to deal with that particular attack/threat without looking to gain an actual understanding about the nature of violence, and what is and isn’t possible when actually dealing with it.

Techniques are the blueprints; they represent the perfect plans of how to deal with a particular assault or threat. If the threat/attack contains certain variations then the Blueprint might not be a completely accurate reflection of what to do. However it will always contain the fundamental and core ideas which will be able to be used in some form or variation to deal with the attack. A rear strangle where the assailant is intending to take you to the ground is a somewhat different attack to one where an assailant is simply pulling you backwards. People on the street will attack you in ways that are not always found when practicing with other students in a studio or similar training environment; you may not always find yourself on the even and stable terrain that allows you to perform certain “choreographed” techniques in your dojo or school, and you may find yourself executing a particular part of a technique too late due to being surprised or caught off guard.

If you learn techniques simply to be able to perform them in an A followed by B, followed by C, followed by D fashion you will basically be learning a dance routine rather than equipping yourself with survival skills. If you can understand the concepts, principles and ideas that a particular technique contains you will be able to adapt your responses if the attack doesn’t follow the path you have prepared or trained for. Adaptability, along with evolution, is the foundation of survival. Being able to make changes in real time to what you have learnt in the studio, or out of a book, is a key self-defense skill. Believing you know what to do, is very different from being able to do it, and very different to being able to do it in a variety of terrains and against a variety of different attackers, both in size, attitude and the different ways they will all execute “the same” assault.

Techniques should be looked on as containing photographic sequences, or snapshots of different parts of a defense, which are taken at various moments of a response to a certain type of attack e.g. defense against a rear strangle, a side headlock , a guillotine choke etc. Each snapshot should demonstrate and contain an idea which is pertinent to surviving that (and other) assaults. If you can train these ideas and concepts, as well as and as part of the practice of the technique itself you are on the road to building an adaptable skill set which will allow you to not only effectively deal with the assaults you have seen before and practiced defending against but those you’ve never seen or experienced before. Adaptability leads to creativity. One of the most gratifying things as an instructor is to have a student come over and show me a “new” technique/solution they have “created” after responding to something their partner did after going off script. The technique they were practicing in one sense failed but because they continued working to concepts they succeeded.

Practicing Krav Maga as an art is essential, as this where the ideas and the skills that are manifestations of those ideas/concepts are built and developed e.g. proper movement, power striking etc. Krav Maga should also be practiced as a self-defense system: training that which can be achieved when a person is placed under duress and having to deal with real-life scenarios, as well as situational and environmental components. Both of these types of training largely focus on the practice and development of technique however Krav Maga should also be practiced from a creative perspective where these physical techniques are removed and a person is left with only the ideas, concepts and principles to work with – this is how the survival instinct that makes any technique work is trained.