One of the things I say a lot concerning Krav Maga/Martial Arts training is that there are no “advanced” techniques, there are simply the basics performed better, and perhaps most importantly, consistently. When I was competing in Judo most of my successes came from the mistakes that the other competitor made. Most of my fights looked like a disaster, that the other person was going to win, however I was often able to stay in a fight, until the other person got frustrated – believing rightly that they should have won it by now – and made a mistake. With Judo, this is something you feel e.g., their steps/movements which before were consistent and regular are suddenly exaggerated etc. I competed in the days when leg/pant grabs were still allowed, and one of the common throws I used was Morote-Gari (think of a double leg takedown in MMA). I would usually successfully land this when my opponent advanced and instead of moving consistently, brought their back leg too close to their front i.e., their movement was inconsistent. Maintaining consistency in a fight prevents, or reduces, mistakes from being made. It also sets up attacking opportunities e.g., if your hands are consistently in the same position when guarding your face, you will know straight away if they will be able to punch/strike an assailant, if they’re not, and sometimes their lower, higher, further out etc., then this will be a calculation you will have to make before throwing the strike, and in this moment the opportunity may go. However, developing consistency requires focus.  

                Although “knowing” techniques is part of how I bring people through the system I teach, a person’s actual development, in being able to properly fight, is about consistency e.g., if someone can only throw one good punch for every ten, after several years of training there’s an issue, and it’s not an educational one i.e., if a person can throw one good punch in ten, then they know how to throw a good punch, because they can achieve it, if not on a consistent basis. In most cases, from my experience, it’s because they lacked a focus in their training; consistency comes from focus. This is true of everything in life, and martial arts and Krav Maga training is no different. Simply going through the motions doesn’t develop consistency, rather it promotes and reinforces poor form, which becomes the consistent and predictable outcome.

It can be easy to “forget” what the purpose of a drill or training exercise is and lose focus but if we are going to progress as martial artists, fighters and Krav Maga practitioners, we need at times to question what it is that we are doing/training, and what outcome it is that we are looking to achieve e.g., often when people practice pad-work with focus mitts/hook-and-jab pads, they are content to land a punch on the mitt/target i.e., to make contact, however this misses one of the points of pad-work which is to train power when punching/striking. It is not enough to simply make contact with the pad, the punch/strike needs to go through it (one of the reasons I believe traditional board breaking is still relevant – if you don’t strike through the board, you are simply rapping your knuckles against it, which is more painful).

                When you look to develop consistency, you must first understand the purpose of what you are trying to achieve, whether it’s a drill, a training exercise and/or working with a partner. The job of the instructor/teacher is to explain the purpose of what you are trying to achieve and provide the practitioner with the knowledge to achieve that goal, however it is the job of the practitioner to maintain their focus in doing so in order to progress. I include myself in this. I still practice/train traditional Karate and it is easy to lose focus when practicing Kata – I start out focused and sometimes find my mind drifting to other things that are going on in my life, tasks I have to complete etc. When I find this happening, it is time to re-focus, because I know that consistency comes from focus, and if I’m to improve as a practitioner this is what is required. The old adage of, if something is worth doing it’s worth doing well comes to mind i.e., it is worth focusing on.

                An important issue in maintaining focus is that it’s difficult to do all the time, and for long periods of time, so the fact that losing it happens isn’t really the issue, and we should acknowledge that it will. Firstly, when we lose focus in our training, we should recognize that this happens, however when we find ourselves simply going through the motions, we should look to rectify this and re-focus e.g., forget about all the unfocused punches we might have thrown during the drill and start to focus on the one we are about to throw next etc. In our personal training outside of a class, we should recognize that we have a limited attention span, and one that is constantly getting eroded due to devices. This means that we shouldn’t plan to do a 30-minute heavy bag routine; I’ve seen too many well-intentioned people put on the gloves expecting to work for 30-minutes and after five they’ve run out of ideas/combinations, and their form has taken a nose-dive. To develop focus, which in turn creates consistency, we are better scheduling more frequent/shorter sessions than longer ones. I’m not saying long training sessions don’t have a purpose but they’re not good for training focus.