An Experiment in Exhaustion and Fighting

It started with a terrible night's sleep. When my one-year-old wasn't screaming for Mommy I was tossing and turning. Were it not for the fact that we've moved our clock so it can't be seen from the bed I'd probably have spent hours staring at the numbers tick away.

When morning came I was beyond exhausted.

After I made a breakfast of ham and eggs for the kids I put it on the table, retrieved a knife and fork and stood there staring at the ham.

I was thinking, I need to cut this. I put the knife in my left hand and went to cut and realized it felt awkward. What am I doing? What hand do I use to cut with?

When I figured out that monumental task I sat at the table sipping coffee my eyes fighting to stay open.

I'm so tired I can't function. I thought. And my luck this is when someone would decide to break in my front door.

That thought stopped me cold. What if someone broke into my home at that exact moment? How would I preform being so tired?

I decided I would find out.

Usually when we are that tired we make steps to conserve energy or renew it. We take a nap (or try to), limit our exertions and maybe look forward to an earlier bed time. These are things I would have done on any other day but I decided I was going to test myself. That night was Krav and for the past few weeks I've been going to the gym daily to lift weights.

I decided that I would forgo a nap, go about my day and workout as usual (no lowing weights or skipping out on certain exercises) and go to Krav and see how I performed.

It was a long hard day, my workout sucked. I dragged myself to Krav and flopped down on the mat.

"I guess you want me to take it easy on you now?" My instructor asked.

"Absolutely not! I want you to bring it!"

He shrugged and we went to it.

We've been working on advanced (or.. more advanced) hitting this month. Class starts out with about 10 minutes of continuous hitting work on dummies. We work jabs from both hands, jab and cross, hooks to the body and head, then he'll mix it up and have us throw a knee or elbow in there somewhere or work against striking pads while he moves around.

It's exhausting when you aren't already exhausted.

I could tell my strikes were not as hard as usual. I wondered if it wasn't because I just finished working my upper body in the weight room or because of my exhaustion. Probably both. Either way, I was not finding my force. I was also having to drop my arms more often.

I could not get "I'm so tired" to stop reverberating through my head.

After we were done with our warmup strikes we were paired up. Usually we switch partners throughout the night but not that night. My instructor stayed with me the entire night. We worked blocking strikes and striking back. We worked moving around the strike and coming inside of a strike to do a simultaneous defense and offense.

He didn't hold much back. He kept the pressure on me and kept it up.

An opening!

He had told me that he saw the video of the New Jersey home invasion that resulted in a woman being beaten in front of her daughter and he said when he saw it all he was thinking was that I would be beating the crap out of the guy. I was thinking he had way more faith in me than I have in myself.

I'm not sure if he was testing me or what but out of left field he decided to throw a large right hook very similar to what was thrown in the video. I blocked it with an elbow and punched him in the face, kneed him in the groin, pulled him down and kneed him in the face.

When he tried it again with the other hand the results were similar.

He would vary it from time to time but in general I was performing decently. I certainly can't say I would have gotten out without a black eye and other bruises. There were also times he would switch it up so fast I would stand there with a blank mind thinking, Damn! What the heck am I supposed to be doing here?!

I could tell that my reaction time and decision making were suffering. I am certainly not to the point where fighting is instinctual. There's a lot of thinking that goes on still and when those mental facilities are tired it definitely slows me down.  

Then he decided to up the stakes a little bit.

We haven't worked ground fighting in a while and we usually only go to the ground when a sparring match gets a little intense and goes to the ground.

He came at me swinging and when I tried to get away from him he grabbed me and set me up for a take down.

I started screaming, "No! No! I don't want to go to the ground."

I was yelling, "No! No! No!" all the way to the floor.

I was so exhausted I knew my ground fight would suck more than usual and that gave me just enough fight to throw my knees up and stop him from falling on top of me. I pulled my feet in, hooked them on his hips and kicked him off me.

I scampered up off the floor and laughed. I was so desperate to not ground fight I think I had my best ground fight yet.

We kept at it for the whole hour and when it was finally over I was ready to collapse.

I rewarded myself with a double bacon cheeseburger, a hot bath and an earlier bedtime. I slept like a rock.

Now, before I get the scolding of concerned followers let me say that this is not something I will make a regular practice. I know that my body needs sleep and rest. I know that I need to take care of it. I know that it seems kind of stupid to purposely put yourself through that kind of experience. But I also know that you don't know your limitations until you push yourself there. I made a conscious decision to test the limitations of my ability to fight when fatigued and I learned some very valuable things about myself and my abilities (or lack thereof).

I expected some of the results, such as the weakness and lag in reaction time. But I hadn't anticipated the huge hit to my decision making abilities. There were a couple of times I had to completely disengage just to buy a few seconds to think. I was getting very frustrated with my inability to get a hold on what I was supposed to be doing. And getting hit in the head because of my inabilities was a harsh reminder of what was at stake.

I also didn't anticipate such a violent reaction to the potential of a ground fight. My strong aversion to being taken to the ground seemed to kick something into gear that was had previously been coasting. I was glad it found itself though because ground fighting our instructor really stinks. Not as bad as fighting my husband, but close.

It was a good experience and one that I think people should at least consider. Maybe you don't need to go out and exhaust yourself and get into a sparring match but doing so in a controlled environment is a good place to see where you need work and how you will respond.

And that's not considering the personality consequences of being exhausted. Many people get far more cranky or confrontational when tired. Their increased agitation can play into their responses and likelihood of getting into a confrontation. Other than losing patience and finding everything funny, my personality stays relatively the same when tired. So unless someone is offended that I'm laughing at them I don't think my exhaustion will spark any fights. 

I hope that as I continue to train I will have to put less and less thought into what I'm doing and more fighting instinct will take over for me. I also hope that I never have to legitimately fight someone when I'm exhausted because it really is not a pleasant experience. 

My Freeze: Boundaries

Over the last couple of days there's been a little spike in the conversation about "the freeze." This in part due to the questions that were born out of my post: Abuse, Abduction, Self Defense. Questions like, "Why didn't she call for help?" "Why didn't anyone help?"

Kathy Jackson over at Cornered Cat did a fantastic job covering the topic so I won't try to reinvent her words. Her blog, Fear And The Freeze Response is a must read. So, go.. read.

A Girl And Her Gun also talks about the aftermath of the freeze and how it can have an effect on self perception.

The sad fact of the matter is, many (dare I say, most) people don't even know that the freeze response exists. If they are aware of it they somehow think it will not happen to them. Or, they may have experienced it but in such a low-stress-level environment that consequences of the freeze were negligible or at most, embarrassing (freezing up at a business meeting). If they experience it on a tragic level it is in a non-violent environment: a car accident, natural disaster or major injury. In these environments it seems understandable that one would freeze. Often times there is nothing that could have been done even if there were no freeze so the freeze is rather inconsequential to how events unfolded.

People who do experience the freeze response when faced with violent crime, however, are suspect. If not outwardly questions as to why they froze they often find themselves looking inward and questioning their own sense of preparedness and worth. If they survive, the looming question can often be, "What was wrong with me? Why didn't I do something?"


I could watch surveillance videos of violent crimes almost all day. I have a strong stomach for it. I find analyzing them to be fascinating and as long as I can slow things down I can catch things that some people miss. It's a lot different than watching a movie where you are shown exactly what you are supposed to see and understand. In a surveillance video you are often questioning everything and discovering what you are supposed to see and what investigating what is important.

What can I learn about how the attack started? Where did the attack come from? Were there pre-attack indicators that were missed? When was the weapon presented (if at all)? Was there a freeze? How/when was the freeze broken? What for knowledge isn't in the video such as relationship between victim and attacker? How does that play into the dynamic?

One thing I have universally noted is that in almost every single video, if you know what you are looking for, is a freeze. A moment of disbelief, a moment of hesitation while the brain wraps itself around the reality of the situation, even moments of paralysis where victims or bystanders stand stock still throughout the entirety of the crime.

The freeze is there. It is hard wired in us. It can and will happen to you. It's nothing to be ashamed of or to question. It happens! It's time to stop beating ourselves up about it and learn to embrace it and/or minimize it when necessary.

I'm in the middle of reading Rory Miller's Facing Violence: Preparing for the Unexpected. In it he dedicates an entire chapter to the freeze and ways you can eliminate some types of freezes and minimize others and even tactically use other types. But he makes it very clear that you will never do away with the freeze 100%.

But, you may be like me and think, "Okay, I'll admit. The freeze will be there. How do I find out where my freeze is and how do I train it out of me or at least minimize it?" 

Some freezes you may never find until the time comes. Some freezes you may be able to find in training. Sometimes those freezes are nothing more than a training issue. You're in a shoot out and your firearm jams. Because you've never practiced clearance drills you stand there staring at a non functioning gun because you haven't trained yourself what to do in that scenario. Establishing a trained and regular response (tap, rack, bang) to that particular scenario (an jammed gun) can eliminate that freeze.

But other freezes are not so easy to identify.

Just recently I discovered a big one in myself and if you want to see if, watch this video:

 

Watch between :04 and :11 seconds in the video. There is a threatening presence. He has cornered me. He is within my striking distance. At one point he even threatens me by saying, "I'm not letting you leave." And I still don't act. I'm stuck in a frozen loop of repeating the same command that he's clearly demonstrated he's not going to obey.

You would think I learned my lesson. This video was taken almost three years ago. I can't make the same mistake twice, can I?

Enter last week:

Due to weather we had a very small turn out in Krav class and it was just my husband, myself and our instructor. Because it was just the three of us our instructor let us decide what we wanted to work on and my husband volunteered some of my issues. Such as my freeze.

It can be easy to know you need to attack when you are being attacked, but the fact of the matter is that is far too late in many scenarios--including the scenario above. Recognizing this, our instructor set up my husband as my attacker and started working some drills to get me to attack him when he got within striking distance.

And then he messed everything up.

After resetting the scenario my instructor walked up to me and asked if I had any ID. I looked at him, confused. Why did he need my ID? I've been in his class for months. He knows who I am.

"Hey, let me see your ID!" he said and it hit me that this might be a set up to distract me from an attack from the side by my husband.

While trying to keep my husband in my peripheral my instructor got closer. I began to feel myself getting overwhelmed by his closeness and demanded he get away from me, EXACTLY as I did in the video from almost three years ago.

He got closer and closer and eventually my husband did rush in and attack me and I fought him off as I'd been taught. But once the scenario ended both my instructor and my husband pointed out that I let my instructor break the boundary we'd been working on all night and get FAR too close and I failed to act as I'd been trained. The newness of the attack with the change in attacker and him presenting with a seemingly innocuous question completely froze my trained response until I could identify a clear threat: my husband rushing me out of the corner of my eye.

We reset the scenario a few more times and I no longer froze, having recognized my error and trained past it.... at least for that day and in that environment.

Boundaries are my freeze. I need to set clearer boundaries that I do not allow people to cross.

Does that mean I'm going to hit anyone who gets within three feet of me? No, but my intuition told me something was off about that scenario and I wasted time questioning myself and trying to figure it out instead of acting on my training. And, again, I gave him a command to get away from me and instead of complying he continued to move in. As before, I froze myself in a loop of wasted commands. Such an act should have been an immediate trigger that told me it was time to act. Instead, I froze, just like I did three years ago.

Greg Ellifritz (incidentally, the man I was fighting in the linked video) wrote a very nice, short article about boundaries. Rory Miller also talks about boundaries (though he uses a different word) that should be triggers for you to act. If this happens, I respond with this! You won't think of everything, of course, but it can and will help minimize some of those moments of freeze.

Set boundaries!

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.

Fighting To The Gun

These last few months have been a flurry of learning and experiences for me. Shortly after completing my Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) training, my husband and I enrolled in Krav Maga, an Israeli version of down and dirty self defense training. While going through that program our instructor learned we were firearms instructors and got his first ever private firearms lesson from me.

Our experiences are almost exactly opposite one another. He is a career martial artists who has dedicated decades of his life to hand-to-hand combat yet he knows next to nothing about firearms. He wants to get his concealed carry permit and so he wants to learn about guns but his mindset has not adapted to the gun yet. When given self defense scenarios he brilliantly comes up with unarmed responses and when given the option of a firearm it's an awkward afterthought he has to be reminded of.

I, on the other hand, have come from a very different background of ideals and training. I've spent almost seven years learning about guns. I have little doubt that I would be a formidable opponent with a firearm. But I have to get to the firearm first. As our Krav instructor amuses himself with his near inability to remember a gun as an option, I frustrate myself with my lack of options if a gun is not available.

He doesn't know how lucky he is and how irritated I am.

In my blog titled Gun Centric Much?? I talked about the carry community's dirty little secret and that is that the gun is way over pushed as a solution to every self defense problem. Just today I got a comment that said, "... my plan has always been not to FIGHT if I can just SHOOT!"

That statement, quite frankly, is terrifying. 

First, I'm going to touch a bit on legalities. Not every self defense situation out there warrants the use of a firearm or deadly/lethal force in general. Nor should anyone's goal be to use lethal force when they have a less-than-lethal option available to them. As Rory Miller put it in Facing Violence: Preparing for the Unexpected the basic formula is this:

"You may use the minimum level of force that you reasonably believe is necessary to safely resolve the situation." 

If you want a further breakdown of what that means I strongly encourage you to pick up the book and read it for yourself. It's very enlightening and essential information for anyone who wants to understand the legalities of using lethal force.

In a nutshell, however, if you are going to have a lethal means of self defense on your person then you should understand when you can and cannot use it.

But, let's get past that. Let's say you are perfectly justified in using lethal force. In fact, you MUST use lethal force to defend yourself.

You've just been assaulted. A man twice your size with three times your strength has just attacked you. He's fighting to get his hands around your neck (or worse, he already has them there) and he's growling that he's going to kill you. 

Well, if polled, a vast majority of people would respond to this scenario with a hearty, "I'd shoot him!"

That sounds pretty simple, doesn't it?

But as your reach your hand back toward your gun your attacker recognizes the gesture, reaches down and grabs your gun hand, stopping your draw. He also begins to pull up his shirt and you see he also has a gun.. and he's reaching for it.

Now what?

"I'd shoot him!" doesn't seem to be so simple any more, does it?

What many people who carry guns fail to realize is that, in many cases, the hardest part of using a firearm in self defense is actually getting to the gun. 

I can feel the eye-rolling through the screen. 

"I carry my gun on my body in an easy-to-access location. It's in an open top holster with no retention device. I practice my draw stroke daily. I have a less-than-a-second draw. I ever wear tactical clothing with weighted corners so that it can be brushed aside easier. I never button my cover garment....."

Those are good things. And they mitigate some other problems with getting to your gun. But they no amount of ease of access is going to help you free your gun hand from your attacker's if that just happens to be the way the fight starts.

I once asked the members of a gun forum I moderate what they would do if their first indication of danger was that their gun hand was grabbed by an attacker.

I was shocked when a good number of members flat out said, "I don't know."

Most attacks happen at very close distances. Many of them within five feet and if anyone tells you they don't let strangers get that close to them they are lying or delusional. In many cases, the first indication of danger is a surprise attack, a sucker punch, a grab, a push. Yes, sometimes there is an interview stage where a potential attacker will ask for the time or money or a cigarette, but, again if escalation occurs you may well find yourself in a physical fight just to get to your gun. Then you still have to make effective shots, potentially while still in a physical struggle.

On Monday we did a bit of this in Krav. It was/is not easy to do. I have two bruised knees, a sore foot, scrapped ankle, bruised back and scratches on the front and back of both of my upper arms. I also have a nasty three-day-old headache from said head being bounced off the mat (Thank God there WAS a mat!).

There are three scenarios we worked.

1. Getting to the gun.
2. Keeping the gun when your attacker discovers you have one.
3. Keeping your gun and defending against an attackers gun.

Depending on the scenario, getting the gun can be hard enough.

Someone grabs your gun hand, you may have a smorgasbord or options depending on your training and the situation. Whether you punch him in the nose, kick him in the groin I don't care as long as it gets you free to get to your gun if it needs to escalate to that. It might not need to go there, but at least you have that option now.

The number one, absolute best way to keep your gun is to keep it in its holster. Correction: Keep it in its QUALITY holster. The little nylon one-size-fits-most piece of junk you bought for $5 on the sale rack that has two tears in the plastic that holds the firearm to your belt is NOT a quality holster. Now, I certainly understand that not everyone can carry in a quality belt holster. Some outfits and carry needs demand an array of holster options that may be less-than-ideal. However, whenever possible, I would hope (and assume) that you are carrying in the best holster you could find for your lifestyle and needs. And, dare I say, if your cell phone has a better holster than your gun than you may need to rethink some priorities.

Now, here is the problem with keeping that firearm in the holster. If the holster does not have an active retention device (and even if it does (depending on how much you trust that retention device)) it's going to take one of your hands. Which means that you are going to be fighting with one hand tied behind your back. Protect your head the best you know how (and if you don't know how I suggest you learn how) and get mean. Go nuts. Do whatever you can. If someone is trying to get your gun the likely outcome if they succeed is not going to be them smiling fondly and saying, "HA HA! I got it."

And lastly, keep your eyes open and look for tell-tale signs that the attacker is going for a weapon of his own. Reaching to the hip or under a shirt are two big ones. They are universal signs announcing, "I have a gun."

So, here you are. You have one hand on your gun, trying to keep it in the holster because some guy is grabbing for it. You have your head buried in his chest and you're trying to defend it from his blows while also staying on your feet and trying to get him off of you. And you see him reach for his waistband. 

I wish I had an easy solution to this one. It's a crappy situation for sure. If the scenario doesn't open your eyes to the understanding that you might need a little more training than a day or two at the range than I don't know what will.

On Monday, my favored response seemed to be attempting to get to his gun before he could.

When you grab a gun from someone else's waistband it's likely going to come out of the holster like this:

Use it. Your pinky can just as effectively shoot a gun as your trigger finger can (I hope). You will have to fight the urge to just drive the muzzle into his flesh and pull the trigger. Why? Because you're going to push the slide out of battery and it won't fire. If it doesn't fire after that, oh well. At least you have a nice bludgeoning tool. Start bludgeoning.

But let's say he gets the gun first? I'll have to get back to you on that one because it just plain sucks. The gun-nut in me wants to say, "How well do you know your guns?" A wheel gun with a stopped up cylinder cannot fire. Grab that cylinder and hold on tight. Any semi-auto with a slide out of battery cannot fire. A gun also cannot fire to the side. Get "inside the gun" (meaning behind the muzzle vs in front of it) and try to stay there while you commence the fight of your life. It seemed to work okay for me on Monday but I can't say I got away without ever getting shot. Which is why I have Option C: Medical Supplies!!

Lastly, get used to firing from unnatural positions. On Monday, I "fired" twice from the ground (thank goodness for the training I've had that kept my legs and knees out of the way of my muzzle) , multiple times with my attackers gun held in my off hand upside down (as in the picture above), point blank. I believe that only once did I get a two-handed shooting grip and that was because I was able to get my attacker off of me, get some suitable distance and draw on him while he was still on the ground.

I found it interesting to watch our Krav instructor work. He's much more likely to take a gun away and beat the attacker with it than use it because he's still incorporating firearms into his mindset. Others were also reluctant to shoot because they were either unfamiliar with guns or perhaps even intimidated by them. My sparring partner was more than a little trigger happy, however, and would shoot me whenever he got the chance. My husband and I were also quick to pull the trigger given the opportunity (for better or worse). Our only real advantage was our willingness to fire from unconventional shooting positions whereas I saw others actually taking the time to try to transfer firearms to their dominant hands or turn them around to make a shot.

This post isn't so much about what to do in these situations (because I'm still learning that, too) but to make you aware that sometimes getting to the gun is a lot harder than you might imagine. And "I'd just shoot him" can mean a lot of exchanging blows before you even a gun out of a holster.

Learn to be ready to fight to your gun.

Krav Maga: Week 1

I decided a long time ago that if I were to ever get into any kind of a hand-to-hand defensive training program, Krav Maga would be it.

I don't remember how I first learned about Krav but it immediately appealed to me.

I've heard it described in many different ways but the gist of Krav is dirty, effective, street fighting. There is not a lot of fancy moves or strikes. It's not for sport or for show or points. Krav is about kicking someone's behind quickly and effectively so that you can get away.

At the same time I don't want to say that Krav is 100% about defense either. Whereas that is what you would use it for, Krav is very much into the "the best defense is a good offense" kind of a thing.

Now, I do not come from a martial arts background. I have nothing to compare this training to other than the few one-time-only self defense classes I may have attended throughout my lifetime (mostly within the last four years). In which case it makes sense that I would go ahead and compare what I'm seeing to those and what I like and/or don't like.

1) I love that I get to go back.
In one time self defense classes, you go for an hour, maybe a couple hours, maybe even a couple of days and that is it. You are thrown a ton of information in a very short period of time and given a matter of minutes to try to perfect the move before you have to move on. While good stuff does stick with you it's understandable that a lot of it is lost.

When you are enrolled in a structured program, however, the pace is a lot slower. You get one, maybe two or three moves that you work on throughout the class. You have much more time to work with your sparring partners and work on the skill and even chances to see variations and modify. If/when you forget something, you will very likely be presented with it again in an upcoming class so you are refreshed and reminded and get to work it out all over again.

2) I love the small class.
This may change, but because Krav is very new to the area and there wasn't a lot of advertisement, the class only has four people in it right now, including myself. We all get a lot of attention and a lot of opportunity to work the moves. Of course a few more students would mean a little more diversity in sparring partners but I really hope it stays small. Definitely under ten students.

3) I love what I'm learning.
I'm not spending hours standing there and repeating a move over and over and over again. While I know that has benefit and has its place in training, 100% of the moves I make are against another person.

If we are shown a punch or a jab or a grab or a hook, we are immediately lined up against a sparring partner and told to try it out against them. While I do find myself phantom punching throughout the day (and laughing as my son tries to copy my mad moves) I love that I get to work with other people and not air or a dummy when in class.

I am, however, really liking the idea of a punching bag in my basement for non-class days.

As to what I don't like?

Well, the top of that list would be my lack of strength. I won't waste a lot of time wallowing in self pity and excuses. I need to make a change if I mean to be serious about this. Especially if I'm going to be putting so much money into it every month. Might as well get the most out of it by making the most out of me. While I understand that sometimes sheer determination, willpower and aggression can help you succeed, it doesn't hurt to also be strong enough to back yourself up, too. Lord knows I'll never be big enough.

Second on that list would be the lack of aggression by the guys towards me.

I've complained about this before. I go to male-dominated classes and I watch them kick the crap out of each other. Then we switch sparring partners and they treat me like I'm a crystal vase.

One of the guys in the class whimpers, "My mom is going to be so mad at me," every time he hits me.

But, the good thing about this is that we are going to be seeing each other twice a week for who knows how long and hopefully that means he (and the other guy in class) will get over it and get to the point where he's okay being more forceful with me. The instructor sure is and so is my husband. While the instructor tries not to pair me and my husband up I'm perfectly okay with it because my husband will actually fight me and that's what I want. Guys aren't doing me any favors by taking it easy on me. An attacker isn't going to pull his punches, I don't want my sparring partners to either. Okay, well, maybe just enough so I don't break anything.

As to what I've learned so far?

The sort of Krav Maga motto: Simultaneous defense and offense, drive 'em back and finish with a bang! Then disengage and look for the rest of them (cause we all know bad guys run in packs).

Something else that's being driven home is something I've known for a long time but can't seem to get: Getting in close.

Man, I hate, Hate, HATE getting in close to my attacker. Who doesn't? Right?

Someone starts showing aggression towards me the last place I was to be is at a distance where I can smell his breath and feel his sweat.

I hate it. I loathe it. I want to back away, turn away, run away. I will give almost anything to not get close to my aggressor. When intimidated I tend to immediately start thinking, "Don't hurt me," or "How can I get away?"

The problem is that it doesn't work very well. In fact, it's never worked for me.. at all. I get my butt handed to me every time I try to go completely on the defensive with a "get away" mindset.

Granted, getting away is exactly what you should do when you have a chance to get away, but when the game is on and you are in the encounter, the time for defensive posturing and crawling away is over. It's time to crank up the aggression, go big, get in his face and take the fight to him.

So what do we do in Krav? Well, of course we step in.

If there is a list of steps to take in any Krav Maga move book I think Step # 1 would always be, "Step in."

Okay, maybe not every move but darn near.

Someone's going to punch you? Step # 1: Step in!

Someone's trying to grab you? First, step in!

I spent the majority of the last class with both arms wrapped around my sparring partners, hanging from their necks or waists, using their own bodies to jokey for position and land good blows. I was in their faces, between their legs, under their arms, wiping the sweat of their brow from my neck. I hated it, but loved it because it's exactly what I need to get over my distance phobia that would likely get me killed if put to a real world test.

I'm also digging the simultaneous defense and attack thing.

Deflect a blow and punch him in the nose, or throat, or kick him in the groin or elbow him in the face.

LOVE IT!!

And from there it's game on. There are no rules in Krav.

LOVE IT!!

We've learned a couple of punches, jabs and moves to get out of grabs and a cool neck hold thing that's hard to explain. Not a whole lot of stuff but good stuff (I think).

This is good for me. It intimidates me, it makes me uncomfortable, it emphasizes my weaknesses, but it's what I need so I'll drag myself there next week and probably the week after that, too.