Contusions of Krav #3

Enter Ground Fighting.

I am not a ground fighter. Which stinks because a vast majority of fights end up on the ground. Depending on which statistic you believe, between 60% and 90% of fights end up there. I know that's a wide percentage but the truth of the matter is it's over half of the street fights. So, if you aren't learning ground fighting then there is a pretty big gap in your hand to hand defensive training. And when you are me, weigh less than 100 lbs and are small on the small scale, getting me to the ground is almost laughable in its ease (at least that's what the other students in Krav tell me).

Of course, the goal of self defense is not to turn into some Brazilian Jujitsu ground fighter, get on the ground and submit someone out. Real life ground fighting kind of sucks. You usually have hard surfaces, not cushy mats to protect things like knees, backs and heads. There are usually things to run into like walls, tables, chairs, cars, curbs and other people. There are things to roll onto or in, such as water puddles, broken bottles, you get the point. So the goal of self-defense related ground fighting is to get off the ground as soon as possible and/or do a lot of damage in order to make that escape possible. Then you just want to get the heck out of there.

Since we are compartmentalizing things in Krav we are starting our ground fighting already on the ground. Apparently in the next week or two we are going to start on our feet and work in a combination of everything we've learned to date such as striking, kicks, take-downs and ground fighting.

But it's very clear I need more work on my ground fighting.

I have a tendency to abandon all technique and go a little crazy when I feel something isn't working. Panic? Yes, please!

I'll be honest here. Ground fighting scares the crap out of me. I'm tiny and a goodly sized individual (male or female) could do a significant amount of damage by merely applying full body weight into sitting on me, never mind actually attempting to harm me.

Yesterday we were practicing a technique of escaping from someone on top of you. Playing the attacker I was on top of young man who proceeded to twist and slam me on the ground on my side. The impact knocked the wind out of the right side of my body and had he been more aggressive in attacking I would be in a very bad way fighting against both the pain in my body and the feeling of suffocating.

Then our instructor played attacker and worked with me as the victim for a time. Try though I may, I could not get him off me. Though I attempted to protect my head from his blows while I tried to buy time to think I still got a pretty good hit to my eye. Even if I could land some good blows of my own, I simply couldn't get enough distance to either get up or enough damage to get the attack to stop.

I was trying to have a little more control last night and not let myself escalate. Because when I escalate, people end up bleeding. Not necessarily a bad thing when in the fray, but not so good in training. Last time I fought my husband he was bleeding in a few places.


Unlike other class members my husband does not cut me much slack... AT ALL. When I fight him things escalate fast and if there were any kid gloves to begin with they get torn off pretty quick.

Our last fight ended with claw marks in his arm and chest a nice imprint of my teeth in his forearm and a few kicks to his head, a bloody nose and a pulled muscle in my shoulder that is still giving me fits. He won when he was choking me and my face was turning blue. He tells me I should have tapped out but I wasn't done fighting. I was left shaking for a good half hour afterward from the adrenaline dump and pissed off that I couldn't get him off of me despite the damage I did.

I gave it next to everything I had and I still ended up almost chocked out.


I'm told my potential is in my ability to escalate quickly with an excess of ferocity. I guess if we can combine that with more refined technique and perhaps some strength training I might gain some confidence in my ground fighting.


For now I'm going to continue to pray I never get taken to the ground in a fight which would be a statistical anomaly.