From Basic Needs to Perfection

According to Abraham Maslow, in his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation”, the second level in his pyramid (see here) is Safety. A person needs security and shelter.

When one lives in a society such as ours, one of the major needs is the ability to defend oneself (Self defense), as well as one’s family, community, property and when needed – even the country. The reason for the attacks may be various, from terrorism and political conflicts to criminal, sexual or domestic matters.

People, who come to train with KMG-Krav Maga Global, usually do this for the basic need of safety, self-defense, personal protection and security. In addition they gain self-confidence, and the ability to better deal with stress.

A byproduct of the Krav Maga training is naturally the improvement of personal fitness. Students and club members fulfill their goals by training with us. They gain improved mental strength, focus, courage, and self confidence, along with technical and tactical abilities.

A practitioner who has trained in Krav MaGa for few years has achieved the majority, if not all, the goals he or she initially set out to achieve. So why should they stay? Why continue to exert one-self and sweat? Here come the next steps in the pyramid: Belonging and Self-esteem. We all wish to belong to elite groups. We want to be alongside people who are like us and better than us. We want to walk in the footsteps of those who originally were in our place once, but have since progressed and excelled to higher levels. We want to belong to such special groups of people that have achieved higher mental capacities, top technical and tactical skills and physical capabilities. They gained it all through training, discipline and an instructor or mentor who taught, directed and guided them.

At KMG-Krav Maga Global you can distinctly see that the higher levels have achieved the highest expertise. They have more knowledge and they perform techniques, deal with problems, and control themselves and others more proficiently. The beginning trainee also wishes to excel, to have better abilities and gain high expertise, to be like the experts at KMG- Krav Maga Global. We want to be perfect. For this we need to conquer our ego and our fears, our frustration and anger, and calm our flickering, untamed mind.  With mental and physical drills and techniques, we train to block out the internal dialogues and chatter. The constant thinking about the past, the future and the horror scenarios in our head that elevate the level of stress are subdued. Only then we can “win the fights” – and most of those fights are not physical at all, nor are they even with other people.

In Hebrew there is a saying: “Who is the hero (brave man)? The one who conquers his own nature (desires)“. In Chinese, Hinduism and Buddhism there are similar saying – something along the lines of: ”The one who conquers many cities and wins many battles is not the hero. The hero is the one that conquers himself“.

Why and when to be perfect? Krav MaGa is about life and death. When we encounter a violent confrontation we need to do our utmost to survive and emerge victorious from the conflict. This can be achieved with or without fighting, using aggressive and distracting physical actions. In reality any situation is almost always a new one – never identical to something we did in the past. Because of this, we need to rely on our knowledge and experience, knowing that they come up with the best solutions. Experience by itself is not enough (it is like the police officer who arrives after the car was stolen; or like preparing for the previous war). Knowledge alone is not enough either. It is theory, and we deal with people, with mental states and not with bio-mechanics. To gain all the abilities and skills we need to train and do things with both intention and attention at all times. We need to try and be perfect in our actions, our activities, our attacks, our defenses, our releases, our mental focus, etc’.  In “the street” – who knows what will happen, but the training session is “our here and now”. It is the time and opportunity to do our best to be perfect. It will pay off in the long run. But no stress, while we try to be perfect in all our actions, there is no need to become frustrated or disappointed when we are unsuccessful. In fact, in most cases we won’t succeed.

I remember Imi, always correcting his students. In the beginning the corrections were all about bigger issues, larger movements, more critical stages in the techniques. As time went on, the corrections focused more on the minor issues, to turn the leg few degrees more or to grab with the thumb too. It became the fine tuning that a musician does on his guitar after he’s already done the major tuning. We must understand that, as in everything, moderation is the key. Without many hours of training perfection will never come. It takes a lifetime to master something.

So don’t give up, but don’t give yourself hard time (emotionally) either. Just hang in there, train more, doing so as your time and responsibilities in this busy world permit. Between study, work and family, when you have a free moment, use it to train and improve. This can be in Krav MaGa, or in anything else that you choose to master.

By Eyal Yanilov