Nomadic Kravver
Practitioner Level Gradings
SGS Krav Maga, Sydney, Australia
Sunday 11th December 2016
The Number of the Beast
After some pretty
intense pre-test revision on Wednesay 7th, on the morning of the
grading I got to the venue at about 8.40am.
Steven Kratsas,
the chief instructor, had warned us that we needed to be there by 9 o’clock as
he intended to kick off at nine twenty AND that we were to be responsible for
doing our own warm ups.
Couple of laps
around the courtyard then some stretching and at about 9.15 we made our way
down into the “basement”.
Now…when told we’d
be grading in a basement (or what crafty British estate agents call the “lower
ground floor”) I had imagined a big storage area.
Turns out it was
an underground car park with mats jigsawed together between the bays, some of
which had cars parked in them.
Awesome!
Steven explained
that part of the reason was due to the reduced light because most real life attacks
won’t take place in a brightly lit dojo. As I’d been a fan of the Mortal Kombat
game series back in the day, it was fairly surreal yet unique to be grading in
what looked like a meeting point for the Gulf Cartel in Breaking Bad or where
Sonya Blade might go in for a Fatality move on Sub-Zero.
Unlike the UK
where only P1 is graded ‘in house’, in Australia the Practitioner levels are
all tested at the students’ clubs. There were about 20 of us with the majority
being P1s and the candidates for each grade thinning until we got to me at the
far end, the only P5 student.
Steven split us up
into pairs with me and two guys, Andy & David in a group of three as there
was an odd number. Andy was going for P3 and David for P4. After the initial
Kida, we went over the P1 curriculum, from straight punches to knee defences
and then moved up to P2 and onwards. We handled nearly everything from levels 1
to 2 together and then the P1s went off with the instructor Yanni while Steven and
Jerome took the rest of us. We began the more technical stuff such as ground
releases, choke holds and wrist locks. Andy was a big bloke, while me and David
were roughly the same weight and height. This meant when it came to shifting
Andy off, I had to get the technique absolutely right as there was no way I
could move him with just brute force.
Jerome then lined
us all up and said he wanted to see a roll combination. Initially it was
“forward roll with another movement of your choice”. I opted for following with
a break fall but we had been warned that everyone’s favourite, the backwards
roll, would have to be demonstrated. At P5 you need to know all the required
tumbles and on my second go I did a forward> backward combo, which is very
fiddly to get right, especially as you can’t stand up between them, it’s all
about shifting your feet and twisting to accommodate the movement.
After this
we had break falls. I’m happy as a pig in clover with the normal or ‘soft’ forward
break fall but we covered all of them including ‘hard’ front and then sideways
and backwards. Satisfied with what we’d done, Jerome then moved us on to
grade-specific criteria. Me, David and Andy moved into the various knife attacks,
choke holds and bear hugs for P3 to 5.
The P1s finished
their grading earlier than us and after their closing Kida, most made their way
home. The extra space on the mats meant that we could spread out and we moved
into some higher P level attacks and defences. When I left the UK to go
backpacking last August I brought only my mouth guard. Last week I invested in
a groin guard and it was $25 very well spent.
After about 3
hours we then moved into the final phase of the grading.
Now…I’ve done
pressure drills, and stuff deliberately designed to invoke exhaustion in Krav
Maga. Gradings particularly, the examiners will push you to your physical
limits. On this day however, I was about to face a new level of exhaustion from
the depths of my adrenal reserves.
On my P4 exam in
2014 Nadav Shoshan was invigilating and got us to do 50 burpees, 50 sit ups and
50 push ups AFTER the grading itself plus thirty minutes of full on sparring. I
had been wrecked after this and my T-shirt resembled a used dish cloth.
This time we did
multiple attackers. For the P3 to P5 guys this meant one person hitting a
strike shield while three others came at him with a gun, knife or long stick.
Basic point of the exercise is that you won’t win but you HAVE to keep going
while trying to utilize the techniques of disarming that you have hopefully
tattooed into your muscle memory. I went first and the whole thing was
knackering. I could hear Jerome occasionally yelling “Lance there’s a gun, deal
with the gun!” and trying to keep my distance plus avoid getting caught in the
middle of the group.
We then moved through everyone else’s go before being told
to get shin guards, mouth guards and gloves on for the sparring.
Steven gave us 30
seconds to get ready and said that only the kit we had on at the end of that
time would we be allowed to wear on the mat. I managed to get all my gear on
but one guy only had a solitary glove while David hadn’t managed to tighten up
the Velcro on his shin guards and Jerome forbade him to do so during the
fighting. We then got into it and initially it wasn’t too bad but after a
couple of rounds I could feel the fatigue creeping back. On round 3, Steven
split me and the other higher levels up and got us to fight a couple of the
women from the P2 test. I got partnered with a ferocious Asian lady who had a
mean round house kick. Then I got David again for the final round who is very
agile and we ended up tussling on the floor.
I thought that was
the end of it but then we had the final joy of a standing drill. Two lines were
formed with the first person turning to face the second. Steven and Jerome announced that this was 15 seconds of continuous body punching, no strikes to
the head and no footwork. You had to stand still and just punch. I opened up
some remaining adrenaline that I didn’t know I had, (stored on a shelf at the
back of the summer house and long covered in dust), and we moved forward one at
a time to take our turn. The drill was hard and as I was the last in line I was
also going to be the last person to face everyone else. There was one fighter
who had a mean right hook and he caught me a right beaut’ in the guts. The pain
was intense and I dropped my left arm to cover it but Steven shouted “Lance,
you’ve got two arms. Hit with both”.
By this time I was completely beyond any
former perception of being exhausted. My hair had come out of its pony tail and
wearing 16oz gloves meant I couldn’t stop to put it back. What with the reduced
visibility in the car park anyway, plus 7 inches of hair dangling across my
face and my clothes sopping in sweat I felt like a scuba diver who’d just
kicked up too much silt from the ocean bed and was waiting for his vision to
clear.
When it got to my
go as the defender, the main thing that kept me upright was knowing this was
the final, final thing. Jerome was shouting encouragement and I managed to last
the whole course. Then, it was over and Steven advised us to get as much water
as we could inside us and then come back for a quick debrief and the final
Kida.
Me and two other
guys made our way upstairs to the outside tap and the sunlight that hit us was
like something from a Dracula movie. 4 hours of training in a subterranean
parking lot can do funny things to your eyes. I was wilting under the glare of
what can only be described as God’s Flashlight as I stuck my head under the
faucet and then glugged down about a litre of water before limping back
downstairs.
We lined up and
Steven said the instructors would compare notes and then get back to us in the
following week to let us know our result. We then gave the final bow and made
our way out.
This was the
hardest grading I’ve ever attended with the exhaustion levels pushed WAY beyond
what I am used to or expected. I spoke to Steven afterwards and when I said
“That was really horrible!” he replied that the intention is to deliberately
leave us that tired, so we are used to performing under stress and fatigue.
Later on a few of
us went for a celebratory meal at Burger Co in the mall across town. My body’s
desire for protein and carbs was about the norm for this type of thing and I
don’t think the food touched the sides on the way down.
A great experience in a unique setting, in another country and it was a privilege to grade with SGS Krav Maga.
A great experience in a unique setting, in another country and it was a privilege to grade with SGS Krav Maga.
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