- Share This Post
- submit
- 7
-
Sparkle (0)
The arms of my female co-worker were covered in bruises. I was walking down the hall and stopped when I saw her holding them out, a proud look in her eyes as she moved her arms this way and that, displaying her wounds from multiple angles. The bruises studded her pale skin from wrist to elbow. Was it an unfortunate accident, or a drama-filled fistfight? Hardly. She’s been practicing krav maga.
What is krav maga? It borrows certain techniques from martial arts, but it’s not technically a martial art. It was originally developed in Israel as a self defense and military hand-to-hand combat system. (Is that too obscure? Watch this video on YouTube.)
After talking to my co-worker and hearing her enthusiasm, I decided to take an introductory class. The first thing we did was warm-up -- but don’t let that modest term fool you. The warm-up kicked my butt, but in a good way. I was literally dripping sweat all over the mat (along with everyone else, I might add). We started out by jogging forward, and then backward, around the room. We did push-ups, and burpees (which I’d seen but never attempted), and squats. (And let me tell you, I was rockin’ those squats. Most of the time I do squats with weights, so doing them with just my body weight was easy. When I get on one of those squat machines at the gym, I'm using weight-plates that add up to 140 pounds -- roughly my own body weight.)
I did have an embarrassing moment. I’m not used to jogging backward, so I was having a little trouble keeping up. I felt like I was going to fall, and it was awkward trying to run while holding my head at an angle so I could see behind me. The guy who was running in front of me wasn’t paying attention, and he ran right into me as we rounded a corner of the room -- his back collided with my chest, and his foot landed directly on top of one of mine, causing both of us to land in a heap on the mat. Luckily we were able to recover quickly and jump back up, rejoining the line of backwards runners.
After the warm-up we went over the correct way to stand in a fighting position, and practiced different punches and kicks. We worked in groups of two -- I was partnered with another female -- and we took turns holding hard, black punching bags while the other person beat the crap out of them.
We’d call out to our partner which punch they should throw (“jab” for a right-hand punch; “cross” for the left, and “combo” for one of each). While we were punching we were also moving around, and we had to shuffle our feet to stay in a fighting stance. Sometimes it was hard to remember to do everything at once: stand in the correct pose (or the instructor would come by and correct you), punch with the correct fist, don’t forget to twist your body with each punch (and make sure you’re holding your fist in such a way that you won’t injure yourself!). But it was fun and the time went by quickly.
We also practiced kicking. One person would bend forward and hold the punching bag a little lower than waist-height. The other person would kick straight up, with their shin hitting the bag on the way up. I was good at kicking. My lower body is pretty strong.
(This is completely unrelated, but just in case anyone's curious...yes, about 3/4 of the class consisted of males. I didn’t feel self-conscious -- I’ve gotten used to being around men when I lift weights at the gym -- but it was nice having all that eye candy whenever we stopped to rest.)
I didn’t have bruises on my arms once the class was over, but I did bust up a few of my knuckles from hitting the punching bag so hard with my bare fists. (The regular students came prepared with gloves or hand wraps.)
My worst injury was a knuckle on my right hand. The skin was completely torn away -- even though it looks a lot better now, it’s taking a while to heal (bending my fingers so much doesn’t help the healing process).
