DAY ONE CFIC
Hello everyone,
So how did it come to be that I’m writing a blog? Well the text message conversation with Jon went like this:
Jon: Guess who’s going to writing a daily blog about the combat course?!
Me: Gandhi?
Jon: Daily blog sent to the Slade by 10pm each night! No excuses. No choice in the matter! Any questions?:)
So with that in mind I bravely volunteered to write a daily blog.
First off I’d like to thank the other instructors from the Institute for helping prepare for this course. Joe’s been working a lot on mine and Tibor’s fitness and striking and James, Paul and Rok regularly offered themselves as punchbags.
Secondly training on the Combat and Fighting Instructors Course is awesome. While all areas of Krav Maga are important I’ve always been more interested in the fighting skills side and I’ve always loved training with Eyal as he’s so packed full of knowledge and experience. This is basically exactly where I want to be.
Today went well. There are lots of new faces from all over Europe and everyone is up for some hard training. We started off the day with some time in the class room getting to know each other then talking about the theory behind different fighters and why they fight before moving down to the sports hall for some slow fighting. Two hours of slow fighting! Taking an in depth look at something I’ve been doing for almost 7 years was amazing. Eyal spoke about how to overcome the ego and fear which are the main problems for people when they try to slow fight. It’s not about winning or even fighting. It’s a mental training exercise to help people to learn to stay calm and make correct decisions. This is something I’ve known for a long time but didn’t really understand how to get people to do this.
After a short break for lunch (I drank a litre of tea and ate my weight in stir fry) we were back in the sports hall to work with striking. Working on the bags directly after eating created some odd smells in the hall but it moved us onto the next subject -Correct and correcting body structure for striking. Simply put it’s how to use the body to get the maximum mass behind a strike. Tibor and I were amazed at how powerful we were hitting – even my jab was knocking Tibor back a couple of feet. After a few hours of hitting pads and corrections we worked on how to set these new supercharged strikes up using different types of fakes. All of this was taught alongside how to teach these new behaviours leading to some exiting ideas for lesson plans in the future.
Anyway I’m tired and hurting and this is day one so I’m off to sleep (it’s 20:08 while I write this).
Tomorrow we get to wear our new suits – pictures to follow.

Hugs, Sam
Day two CFIC
Hello again,
So today I woke up and was hurting a lot. I’m used to training hard but not for so long on so little sleep. I also went through my G3 grading (again for fun) on Sunday with Spencer which doesn’t help. But hey it’s all part of becoming a man…
I have a new favourite person. Jovan Manojlovic (Expert 1) from Serbia is assisting Eyal on the course with the teaching fighting skills and some of the different tactics. He is a chilled out chatty guy that’s very nice to talk to which is great in an instructor. He tells you what to do but explains why – leaving everyone happy. This is enough to make me like someone, but it was his one-inch-punching someone 10 foot while calmly chatting to someone else which has me ranking him right up there.
This morning started off with recap. Lots of recap on slow fighting; working on defending only certain strikes or only certain limbs to test and train the brain before working on the fakes and building on them. Building a fake using multiple heavy strikes is something I’m definitely going to be showing people. Even if you know it’s going to happen and you think you can stop it, it’s inevitably going to hit.
The most amusing part of the day was a simulated gang fight done with two teams fighting each other. One of the teams had to strip to the waist so we could tell who was on what team. When your motivation is 7 sweaty, stinking guys your escape and evasion becomes amazingly fast. One highlight was Tibor’s armpit sweat flick attack. Good times.
After an actual hour off for lunch Eyal taught a lecture on aggression drills. It’s fascinating stuff. Tibor and I were working together on the practical, throwing each other around and slamming each other into the ground. The idea behind them is to be able to be an aggressor and be able to fight while also remaining calm and in control. After the aggression drills Eyal and Jovan continued the drill theme by making us work on determination drills. If you’ve trained with me you’ll recognise them. You know the ones where someone holds onto you and you’ve got to continue working. Well we did those and lots more, plus Eyal felt that we needed to learn this lesson well. I believe Dave managed to get a photo of me collapsed on the floor trying to pass out to escape the pain. If you’re odd like me you’d really enjoy this a lot.
After a few minutes to recover the bit we’d all been waiting for came. The Protec 360 suit. These things are full body suits of padding which offer protection but still allow you to move. After the aptitude test (putting the suit on) we started working on some light sparring to get accustom to the pros and cons of wearing the suits. Elbows and headbutts are something that we talk about in class but we normally don’t get a chance to work on them. Things change when you’ve got these bad boys on. Anyone for flying headbutt? Once we had worked out how to fight in the suits it was back to more drills, this time against a crowd of people. Now I don’t know if I said or did something wrong but I got stuck with the big people group. Most had at least 15kg on me and a lot more in strength so my charge at them normally terminated with a comical backwards bounce and then when the rolls were reversed me being the weakest link always got trampled.
Anyhow after a long drive home I’m going to chill out and get ready for tomorrow. I’ll let you all know how it goes.

Also as I’m a man of the people sort of person if you have any questions leave a comment on the Facebook link and I’ll do my best to answer.
Peace, Sam
