Krav Maga

I had grown up at West LA Krav Maga, but never taken it seriously and actually tried to learn it. They teach what I feel is survival skills in a fight, with highly aggressive tactics to survive and protect yourself or gain enough distance to escape. I have recently started a membership with Krav Maga Unleashed, a branch in Pasadena, CA. Their logo color is blue. I am a current member.

Website
Membership Comparison Here
Chief Instructor: Pietro Piumetti - 3rd Degree Black Belt

Highest Membership Tier Cost: $185 per month.
Lowest Membership Tier Cost: $105 per month.
Membership: Gold - Highest tier, Includes no-cost belt tests and Seminars.

Classes held at this location & training gear per class:
Fight Class: Mouth Guard, Shin/foot pads, Cup (Males), Boxing Gloves, Hand Wraps.
Ground Class: Mouth Guard, Cup (Males).
Striking Unleashed (Thai Pads Class): Mouth Guard, Boxing Gloves, Hand Wraps.
Cardio Unleashed (Heavy Bag): Boxing Gloves, Hand Wraps.
Krav Maga Beginners: Boxing Gloves, Hand Wraps (optional), Cup (Males).

Training Equipment Pricing/Where to find:
I found many options to choose from, this is what I ultimately decided on getting.
Mouth Guard x1: $13.99 - @Big5 Shock Dr Gel Max Color Red. Decent price and not too expensive.
Mouth Gaurd Case x1: $8.99 - @Amazon Case for mouth guard, so you don't lose it and have a place to store it.
Sports Cup w/Boxer Brief 2 pack: $24.99 - @Big5 2 pack large boxer briefs with cage cup insertion. Comfortable, like normal boxer briefs except a groin pocket for the cup insertion is present. NOT RECOMMENDED, the cup has no tension while inserted in the groin pocket. Since it is loose, it moves and needs adjusting.
Jock Strap 2 pack color black or white: $14.99 - @Big5 is recommended over the boxer brief because of the tension provided for the cup. While tension is provided for the cup, it is not going to move and that means it will stay in place during fighting.
Shin Guards set: $35.48 (-$15.91 coupon) - @Amazon 1 set/pack of padded shin guards come with 2 pads (1 for each leg). Typically slide on or with velcro straps. They provide protection to the top of the foot and shin, just below the knee.
MMA Gloves: $23.99 - @Amazon after doing a bit of research on MMA gloves, I concluded that the quality and price of these gloves didn't make sense. You could pay $24 on this or spend $60 from a popular brand and it feels like the same thing. I went with the more affordable glove, feels like the same thing the guys have at Krav Maga.
Boxing Gloves: $85 - KM Unleashed Pasadena shop. My old ones were heavier and better quality, not too happy with these Rev Gear gloves.

Total investment on gear $207.43 before tax.
**This is not including price for boxing gloves and hand wraps, which I already had.

Yellow - Completed 5-hour test and passed on 09.23.2023 (Krav Maga Unleashed Pasadena, Instructor Kevin)
Orange - TBD
Green - TBD
Blue - TBD
Brown - TBD

Each class = 1 Hour

2023 Experience Note. (Helpful to New Fighters)

I finally began to get more serious with Krav Maga around May and June, started taking 3-4 classes a week. Before I would be lucky to take 1 or 2 classes a week. My experience now is from taking the following classes more regularly.

• Krav Beginners

• Thai Pads

• Fight Class

• Ground Class

With the experience that I have gained so far, these are the things that I have began to learn and noticed improvements in. As I would also recommend them to other new fighters in general.

• Get comfortable in painful/uncomfortable positions.

• You will get bruises and injuries will occur, sickness does occur and you'll have to use your best judgement to come and train with any of the mentioned conditions or stay home.

• If you're sick, don't come until you are no longer contagious because you will spread your sickness.

• If your lightly injured, notify your partners to not aim for that injured area or just a warning beforehand.

• If you are heavily injured, you may not be able to train at all. This is best avoided by communicating with your partners and practicing self-control. If you think it will harm your partner, don't do it. Practice by showing the movements, you don't always have to put force behind practice. If you notice your partner in abnormal pain, stop immediately. The goal of training is to show you know it and get repetitions in. The goal is NOT to give your partner a full-on head choke over and over for example. Just get into the choke and lightly repeat, you don't have to put hard pressure, you want the muscle memory to build by doing repetitions.

• You may or may not experience a blurred vision state while you are sparring/rolling. However, I know that other beginners did, including myself. We lose vision of what's really going on, kind of like a berserk mode. Similar to a deer standing still with oncoming traffic, although your body is still moving. This is dangerous when you are untrained. You need to always be aware of what you and your partner are doing to decrease the chance of injury. I would bet that many injuries are caused by beginners in this berserk state. The goal as you get more exposure and practice, your senses will not change and you can see and think clearly during the fight. Less and less time in this berserk state is the goal, I feel it's almost gone for me now. I've practiced since 10/2022 till now, 6/2023 and its just now phasing out of my sparring and rolling. I can see and think clearly, trying to prevent a strike or submission and doing my own strikes and submissions, with caution for my partner. Berserk mode is our enemy in training, since we don't want to injure our partners. You will see and experience a fight flow, as you get more exposure and time put in.

• Don't be too hard on yourself, martial arts is a lifelong learning topic. Unless you're a serious genius with photographic memory and the highest IQ... it will take time for the rest of us. It involves muscle memory, the accumulation of all your training time, choosing the right moves in an instant for the situational circumstance. It all comes down to just exposure time and how much you retain in the long run. Just like a body builder compared to a couch potato, the body builder has a million hours lifting weight, while the couch potato has very few if any at all. The only difference here is that martial arts doesn't have much physical growth. A lot of it is mental and toughening up your senses. I am currently doing weight training along with Krav to further develop my muscles and learn the martial art. It is however very good cardiovascular training, since sparring and rolling uses all your stamina, doing it more and more will increase your stamina level. You will find yourself out of breath a lot, don't worry... the stamina will also develop if your discouraged about that.

• While learning in the beginning, try to just survive against the more experienced fighters. Make it a goal to do more than survive and get them to worry about you. That is proof of your progress, from going to just surviving and then having them worry about what moves you'll put them through.

• Remember that your just starting, we are not aware of everything a senior fighter is. We need to develop our own style. We need to learn proper technique. We need to learn situational awareness. We have to learn it all. Spar and roll with as many people as you can. Try to be aware of everyone's styles, body types, use this to build upon yourself. Fighting someone taller is harder than someone your own size. However, there are ways to handle everything, our job is to learn what those ways are. Create your own fighting spirit!

• Only in a real fight for your life, should you put full pressure in your moves. Never full pressure in training on your partners.

• Learn to say TAP, sometimes your hands are held down and you will be unable to move them.

• Learn to say/do TAP when someone has you in a position and you can't get out of it. Trying to tough it out may seriously injure you, it's best to avoid since this is training. Just TAP and get another round in, the goal should be learning from our losses, just as much as our wins and we will have A LOT of losses in the beginning!

• When sparring, learn your opponent's distance. This includes their range of motion and reach with punches and kicks. It can also mean to observe for patterns, like people have told me I am wide open after a strike. As my opponent you can wait for me to strike and an open target. As a tip for myself, I need to recoil better or prepare to defend for a counter. I am currently not expecting a counter and it leaves me defenseless. I would consider this all in the topic of learning your opponent's distance.

2022 Starting Krav Maga

Granted I have a lot of exposure already, so it seems to be less difficult to learn. I still don't get it initially, I just need to get in the experience and do it more and more, to really hone the skills and techniques. I also have to learn the terminology for fighting, standing, ground and weapons. Note that there will also be days that I do multiple classes, so you'll see two classes on the same day here and there.

FORMAT

Class #

//2023

Class Title

Blog description.

For further Krav Maga blog updates, see the Adventures page.

Class 13

1/02/2023

Intro to Ground Fighting

First Krav class of the year 2023, we did a whole hour of rolling. No instruction, just free rolling and switching up partners every 6 minutes with a few minutes rest in between rounds. That was really fun and informative for me, I learned a lot from this.

I am reminded how much I have to learn, because I don't really know what I'm doing yet. I have gone through a few classes to learn some techniques, yet when I free roll it's still not being remembered as options for things to try. I have no muscle memory of anything yet, since it is still so early in my martial arts career as well. I mostly feel at home with stand up fighting, so I'm wondering how I will do with a fight class and sparring. I have always struggled remembering techniques in ground fighting. It will be nice to see my progress as I take this class every Monday.

Anyway, I experienced rolling with a guy over 6 feet tall and smaller guys under my height of 5"9. Taller guys are really difficult in that it takes less effort for them to strangle you haha, distorting your body in some form is just a smaller movement for them. On top of that if they are really strong it adds a lot of dangers. Rolling with men shorter than me, I was able to feel a little advantage in that sense. Although since I still am not really retaining techniques yet, I was just trying to survive with either sizes of rolling partners. I lost all my matches except one haha. He was intimidated by me or something and I guess that gave me the upper hand. All session I would just try to survive by getting away or out of positions people would put me in. Since I couldn't think of what to do when I had a good position, I often got stuck a lot on what to do next. It was a very interesting and great experience for sure.

Just like anything in life, I'm sure with more experience, more will be learned and my lack of experience really shows when rolling. All the other guys think im this great fighter and then I go and roll with them haha. They see how new I am and then proceed to teach me what being strangled is like haha. Regardless, I had fun and gave it my best to try and get familiar with rolling in general.

I got bruises everywhere and one guy scratched me pretty deep, doesn't matter to me but that seems to be common in rolling. Your skin also gets stretched from being handled roughly, this is something you build tolerance for, I'm sure. As a lot of the time, certain positions i've felt in my little time of rolling you're in... the skin will tighten or the hold pinches you and thus creates those gnarly bruises. Very cool, this is another reason I joined so that I can toughen up physically and mentally. This is great, really enjoying my time here. Lastly, your stamina gets drained really quickly, wow! I was pretty damn out of it by the end of just 1 hour. I was the only one who didn't really want breaks, I found a partner immediately and I don't do much cardio at all right now besides punching bag. Putting all your strength into trying to man handle your partner for minutes at a time, it makes sense why martial artists develop such cool 8 pack abdominals and so forth. If you did this normally every week, I can see getting really strong like that and they already say I'm strong. So, once I learn some technique I will be really well off.

Excited for the results to come.

Class 12

12/19/2022

Intro to Ground Fighting

This class, I did my first arm bar!

We went over more technique and new positioning... that eventually led to an arm bar. Taking what we did last week and into consideration, we continued on that.

(Using left side transition for practice)

The transition starts from holding the opponent from behind, like a bear hug. Originally putting your left hand under their left arm, so the first part of the transition is raising your arm up (pointing the elbow out). Second is to get your right hand free (if being held) and place it on their head. By placing your hand or forearm on their head it forces them to tilt their head to their right shoulder. Once these two techniques are in unison, you can then begin the transition.

You have their left arm raised, their head tilted to the right shoulder and now at the same time; push them down onto their back and swing your body over to the left side. As you swing your body to the left side, now clutching their left bicep with yours. You swing your body to their left side and kick up both legs onto their chest. Your left leg rests just below their breast, the right leg rests along both of their collar bones.

As you clinch onto them, tightening their left arm into your bicep and grabbing their wrist with your right hand. You squeeze your legs together as tight as you can, then at the same time you flex at the hip and bring their arm down. The tighter the clinch, the less movement going down you need to make a painful arm bar. In practice with 2 other guys, we all got to try it and share what we feel is happening. I noticed the closer your butt is to their armpit, the better your arm bar will cause pain sooner or with less movement. As we were learning it, we all would bring the arm all the way down (haha) and it still wasn't painful enough for them to tap out. That was when the instructor stopped to demonstrate again. Then used me for the first time in demonstration. That was cool. After all these demonstrations, observations and practice... it felt like the most important thing is to stay on your opponent, as if you're sitting on their shoulder.

It brings back what the instructor is trying to get us to learn as beginners. For ground fighting it's about staying as close and tight as possible to your opponent. That saying definitely is proving to be the key to each technique being successful or not.

At the end of class, a big dude let me practice the arm bar on him with full force of trying to stop me. It was so fun; it was a struggle, but I eventually got it. Fun!

I went to the other gym to end the night on the punching bag, was great.

Class 11

12/14/2022

Krav Beginners

This class was a variety of moves, warming up with shadow boxing, V Sit-ups, planks.

Our first technique was a combo with hammer fist, elbow and knees. We did some 360-defense blocking with our arms, this really hits the nerves in the forearms haha. You pretty much switch when you've endured enough pain. Fun times. I laugh a lot when its playful pain like this. We also did a groin kick combo with hammer fist and elbows. The pad holder would circle us and call out our strike to perform. Another thing we went over was pushing our opponents' hands down and immediately going for an eye gouge, that was interesting. The last thing I remember (finally writing this on the 17th) is trying to punch our partners on the forehead. As we try to punch them, we direct our arm and point our hand out to slide along their punch and ultimately redirecting it. This would redirect the punch away from our face and body, possibly giving us a chance to grab their arm and give some groin/knee kicks or eye gouge. I felt that flexing your hand and thinking of kung-fu is what this technique reminded me of. We had a lot of various techniques in this class, very fun. We ended the class with either the combos on the pads or striking and redirecting, one of those or both.

I went to my other gym and hit the bag to end the night. Was good!

Class 10

12/12/2022

Ground Fighting

I was very humbled in this class. The substitute instructor taught a great class. I was getting the technique down pretty well, it seemed to stick, I just can't recall the terminology to describe the technique. =( .. It was basically starting from laying on your side, the top person is on their knees trying to mount you. We are laying on our right hip, right leg through their legs and locked with our left heel. As we are side laying and while our leg is locked behind them, we bring our left heel onto the inside of their right heel. We then push their leg outwards with our left heel, it creates space that we can use to transition, from bottom to top mount. It was really cool, I remember the first class he tried to teach this and it was totally new and didnt retain at all. This is the second time I saw it and it stuck much better. With more guidance, help from my partner and instructor I was able to learn the steps of this technique pretty smooth. I had trouble with the end result though, it was to use your body to roll into a choke on them. I still have trouble using unnecessary strength, when you should be using your body to roll into it.

I was able to finally get a glimpse of that feeling, being able to "roll" with your partner and not try to muscle a technique. For a glimpse, at the end of the class I was able to feel that. It was thanks to the instructor, he kept trying to guide me into the correct steps. Over and over, even though he was frustrated with me not really getting it. Until maybe after the 6th time I "mostly" got it. After top mounting from the technique, you get a choke hold and then lean back into a roll. It won't work if you try to muscle it and when I felt the "roll" finally, it was really awesome and effortless. I just leaned back, trying to listen to the instructor's guidance on every step until I got it. On about that 6th try I got the choke in and leaned back, into a roll and onto my back. The end result is having your opponent in a nice choke hold, with them on top of you and them not really having any more options at that point.

After the class was over, the instructor was free rolling. I had no idea what I was doing. I was really humbled here, it made me feel how much I have to learn. My mind also goes blank, since I am not familiar with ground fighting, I'm not sure what to do. All I can do is just try to muscle him off me, but he knows how to "roll" and uses technique so it's very easy for him to get me in a submission. I tap out once and we go again. I really fight to get him off me, I just can't and it's really helpless haha. This is the humbling feeling and after he pinned me again, we stopped there for the night. I told him it would be really nice If I knew the terminology, I wonder if I came off kind of intimidating because I lost. I didn't mean to appear like I was spiteful for losing so bad, haha. I know that I have much to learn, I am thankful to have that chance to potentially learn in the moment. He said to that's what google is for, so I thought of making a list of ground fighting terminology. I still need to do that. I will end this blog here, I'll have to learn the terminology and all the grabs, holds, chokes, everything I can ya know. I can see why martial arts is a lifelong lesson. There is so much muscle memory and I hope that since I've learned so many things, learning this becomes another fast process... since I am good at learning new things. It seems to be coming at a nice pace, I just have to retain it and still be able to perform what I'm learning in a real fight. Let's do this!

I went to my other gym after this and hit the bag, was a good session.

Class's 8 & 9 2022

I wasnt able to write these days down and I can't comment on them anymore =/ , had an interesting month in November/Beginning December.

This seems to be working for me in many areas of fitness throughout my life, so I have been used to doing this a long time. It seems to be coming natural with Krav Maga movements as well.

Next, we did control on a person while holding their arm and leveraging at the shoulder/neck area. Starting with knee drills in the mirror and working towards our partners. The instructor mentioned "frame" a lot, so when I got home I read about framing in martial-arts. This was my first exposer to the term and now I understand that it's just like how it sounds. A frame is a strong barrier holding a picture right, so a frame in martial arts is essentially creating a barrier between you and the attacker or holding and controlling the attacker. This was a lot of fun, the second addition to learning this was using the momentum of your attacker against them. The attacker would push forward on us and we can pivot our body to take that momentum and get them off balance.. potentially to the ground or a better position for us to attack or even get away. I got this on video.

Once we finished going over the knee's and framing drills, we went over low kicks with the heel. These were performed on the punching bags. We did it with a slight angle, imagining that your kicking the inside/outside of your attackers knee or shin. Standing in fight stance, kicking with the back leg. Trying to kick with the forward leg had little to no momentum, so it makes sense why it is the back leg. I enjoyed this kick when it was a solid impact on the bag. Note that if you kicked awkwardly, you could potentially break a toe in the right angle. I remember last week someone actually hurt a toe, this was probably a similar kicking motion. Another fun night. Thanks again to Darren for showing me the techniques and being patient with the new guy.

I hit the bag for some boxing cardio, went over some moves from the previous night as well. Great night.

Class 5

10/26/2022

Krav Maga Beginners
Training Partner: Darren
Instructor: Kevin

Before class, I asked an instructor how to properly wrap my hands. There is some kind of X pattern that is used, I don't get it yet and will ask about it again next time.
Today we started with Elbows to a target standing right in front of you or to the side of you. We ended class with a double hand choke break.

I really enjoy my partner Darren, he practices with good force. As some partners you have to really tone it down and you don't get a good feeling of actually performing the technique to save your live so to speak. Immediately Darren shows his experience with technique, he is very thin with slim build. His punches and kicks have so much power behind them. He was the partner I had that injured my nose on 10/11 in striking class. I want to thank Darren for being a great training partner and showing me how to hold the pads and going over technique with me. Its also fun to go with a high percentage of our force during practicing.

Tonight we held the pads on our chest, long ways up to down. We are standing almost side by side, the objective is to raise your attacking arm like putting a seat belt on. Once your have you arm fully extended, bring it back with as much force as you can for an elbow or hammer fist. It was noted to look at our target first and at the same time put both our hands up in fighting position. After that you can potentially block an attack with one arm and reach up for that seat belt to strike with the other and in which case you can keep attacking or shove them away and escape.

The choke holds were with two hands on us, Darren and I applied good force. Naturally if your going very light in choke training, you don't develop that sense of urgency to remove their grip on your neck. I appreciate Darren and applying good choking force to help me, wanting to react quicker so I lesson the time I'm actually being choked. Starting with face to face choking with two hands around the neck. We would then rotate to the attacker choking from the side and we would have to execute one hand straight up in the air, with the opposite leg stepping backward. So, with the arm up and one foot back.. you can now rotate at the hips, breaking the choke and then lowering your arm to lock control of one or both arms. Opening up a chance to strike on them or push them away for escape. Both of our necks were red from the choking, that was the amount of force being applied. It was great training and I felt confident in my first lesson that I can get out of that choke hold.

I ended the night on some punching bag work. I tried practicing the side elbows and hammer fist, mixed in with my boxing mash up. Fun night.

Class 4

10/13/2022

Krav Maga Beginners

Front facing kick and jumping front facing kick. I still need to learn terminology haha. This is how I can explain so far. We also did forearm defense or side defense?

Starting with pad holders and forward motion front kicks. Big block pads were used for this kick, held on the chest. Kickers aiming to plant the heel and foot into their partners chest. It was going great, until the second set. I don't usually kick, just punching and weight lifting for the last year+. (When this second set of kicks started, I noticed my groin muscles tense up and has been super tight for a few days now haha.) I have walking movement impairment from it. What this has taught me is that I never used my groin muscles in so long. I will have to strengthen my groin area after this heals and keep it stretched for kicking. I also asked the instructor after class about some stretches for the area and learned some.

Moving onto the next part was what I call "forearm defense". We switched to Thai pads for this. The pad holders would swing towards the head and fighters would block by raising their arms. The goal was to have fighters forearms hit the pads before contact. Pad holders were able to do fakes and we would get really into it, fun. Switching back and forth to get used to it.

The second kick was kind of a leap forward in your fighting stance. The goal was to kick with the forward kick at the end of the leap. I am right handed, so my fighting stance is left forward - right back. The leap makes me bring my knees up, right knee up and then left knee up to transition into a kick. This took a few sets before you got used to it, especially my first time. After warming up and getting the hang of it, it became easier to perform of course. Side note about me is that my body liked to rotate a little, which wasn't said by instructor to be a good or bad thing. Originally everyone is just front facing for this kick the whole time, that was just my experience.

Now the last exercise we did, made it my favorite class so far. We had 2-3 pad holders who would surround us. 1 Thai pad holder would throw punches at us to use forearm defense. Meanwhile big block pad holders would get around the Thai pad holder and we would have to kick/knee them away. Such a fun drill, I like this one a lot. We would rotate pad holding and being the fighter until class ended.

I stayed to hit the bag for a few minutes as extra cardio. Would have liked to stay longer but told not to =/

Class 3

10/11/2022

Striking Unleashed (Thai Pads Class)

First I had to learn how to correctly hold positions for the Thai pads. As the new guy, its hard to get the drill in while your learning to hold the pads. I even had my first partner pass me to another person haha. First partner was a slim female, I didn't have to hold the pads as strong. Second partner I didn't think of holding the pads stronger, it was a male and I ended up punching myself in the nose with the pad hand. haha. My nose hurt for a few days lol, seems to be hurting less as the days go by. No sign of damage but hurts to even wiggle my nose haha. I even tried to see if it was dislocated myself, its staying in place so its not dislocated. Just hurts haha. Fun!

This male partner was really cool, he went hard and I liked that. I was able to get decent with the pads and made him work first. At the switch point it was my turn to work and he also made me work. That was really fun, I am glad I picked up how to hold the pads in the first class. Still room for improvement of course, but its mostly there now. I want to be able to make my partner work confidently as they do for me. The whole class is just one combo that had more and more added to it. We went over a 10 hit combo with punches, kicks and weaving. One thing I forgot to mention was the warm up, we did some light exercise (jumping jacks) and started moving around with light combo's. We did a 100 punches and 100 knee's too, that was cool I got them both done with no break.

I did not have to hit the bag after, it was very nice cardio during class.

Class 2

10/10/2022

Intro to ground (I need to get a mouth guard and cup, they still let me take class)

We went over a series of performing leg locks, while on the ground. The series transitioned from laying on the ground, to leg lock, to getting the attacker on the ground and on top of them. I found out how much I need to stretch and gain flexibility. After getting warmed up, it was easier to perform. I feel a lot of little, very slight movements that perform all in motion together makes it smooth as butter. It also helps me visualize the technique in my head. The entire class was technique practice. Afterwards you could roll, but I have no knowledge so my partners agreed to just go over the technique more.

I hit the bag after class to get some cardio in.

Class 1

10/7/2022

Trial class Krav Maga Beginners (Normally in WLA location they called it "Level 1 or KM1". Here they call it "Krav Maga Beginners/Intermediate/Advanced".)

We went over getting out of choke holds, while standing and being mounted. Bringing your arms up and plucking if standing. If mounted on the ground, a nice hip thrust forward and rotation to left or right to knock up and work to get on top of the attacker. This was the entire class just working on technique while standing and being mounted on ground.

I hit the bag after class to get some cardio in.

For further Krav Maga blog updates, see the Adventures page.