Digging deeper

When I started training Krav Maga I saw the training like building a house. I started with the foundation and slowly progressed in the levels while the techniques got more and more advanced. Always building upwards. Higher.

But somewhere down the line my perception changed.


A student asked me once: "When are we done with training these basic techniques"? The answer was of course: "Never".

Or put in other words (the ones of Tommy Blom, Krav Maga Expert 5 if I remember correctly): "An expert is just someone who is better at the basic than the others".

When we do Krav Maga testing, we of course test the newly learned skills for the level. But, more importantly we test to see the level of the previous techniques. They should now be stronger and better.
A typical expert test is around 8 hours. The first 3 hours is testing the Expert level skills. Then we move on to test the G level skills that was learned before and at the very end of the test the basic skills, the P level learned are tested. The idea is that even after this many hours of work an expert should be able to perform his basic skills flawlessly.
If students are failing expert level tests often it's not the Expert level stuff that is the issue - rather the basics.

So back to the analogy of the house...
When I took my KMG Krav Maga instructor certification, expert level Moran Laskov said the words: "Digging deeper" in relation to our training. He got them from Master Eyal Yanilov.
That way of thinking made a lot of sense to me. It’s not just adding stuff on top but making the foundation stronger.

Later my Kettlebell master and mentor Mark Reifkind said it in these words: "The wider the base, the taller the peaks".

So only once your base is strong enough to hold, you should add new skills or challenges.
This thinking goes through our training at Copenhagen Selfdefence. Be it self defence or kettlebell training or life in general.

Years later, I met Moran Laskov again in Israel. I asked him how he was doing. He said: "Digging deeper with the family". That put many things into perspective for me.

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