A large matted space is a great training environment. It’s safe and allows you the room to comfortably practice techniques in a productive fashion. However it’s a deliberately artificial environment, and one that doesn’t reflect reality. This is why Krav Maga training has to be taken to other locations, so that an element/degree of reality can be brought into your practice – these “environments” don’t have to exactly replicate the ones you may find yourself in but should emphasize certain environmental factors that are universal to all e.g. unstable and uneven terrain etc. These environments should also challenge some of the key martial arts skills that will be put to the test in a real life confrontation, such as your sense of balance and stability coupled with your movement skills; if you ever have to physically deal with somebody on a moving train etc. these skills will be seriously challenged. What you are able to comfortably do on the mats may be a million times harder to accomplish in reality.

The beach is one of the most challenging natural environments we have at our disposal. Sand is one of the hardest surfaces to train on in terms of balance, stability and power generation. In the studio, the mat surface gives a solid platform from which to launch kicks and punches, sand however shifts and moves, necessitating readjustments and added exertions – to increase power you don’t always need to increase the resistance and strength of what your striking into, you can also do it by changing the platform from which you launch your strikes.

Many people confuse environmental training, with just doing the same Krav Maga class you’d do in your studio in a different place – I see this often in YouTube clips, where what is billed as environmental training is a normal mat class, just in a different location. The point of training in an environment is to use it. Water can be used to provide both resistance and increase emotional stress. If you practice a front kick in water, and get the surface height just right, you can increase the acceleration of the last two phases of the kick significantly. Perform the same exercise when the water is choppy and you’ll also develop your core stability, and supporting leg muscles into the bargain.

Using the water to practice side-headlock or guillotine defenses is a great way to heighten stress levels. The shock of having a choke or lock applied when under water, especially if your head is pulled under as part of the attack, adds to the urgency of the need to escape, and teaches you a great deal about overcoming the natural panic that such attacks in reality induce. Having two problems to solve i.e. the choke and the water, is a great way to learn to accept that everything has to be dealt with in turn, and that trying to do everything at once gets you nowhere fast. These are not things to practice on your own but in a group, with someone experienced teaching/leading the session.

Summer is around the corner and another season of beach training beckons.