Fall 2010 HEALTHWISE OTTAWA

For Safe-Keeping

By Kinneret Globerman

Imagine this: You’re at a bus stop, alone. A group of swaggering thugs move in for a swarm. Or imagine you’re a woman

jogging on a lone stretch of parkway and a guy jumps out from the bushes. What do you do?

If you want to be able to defend yourself in any situation — against multiple opponents with weapons or just one lone and dangerous individual brandishing a stick or worse — then you might want to take up Krav Maga.

Krav Maga, the official combat training of the Israeli Defence Forces, is a form of martial arts that is touted as being more practical than other forms. It has no rules or proper form or competitions. The focus is on problem-solving and learning to defend yourself in any given threatening situation. It doesn’t promote violence but, rather, prepares you for violent situations. Jennifer Lopez brought Krav Maga mainstream when she played an abused housewife who takes it up in the movie “Enough.”

Laurent Mougeot took it up because karate didn’t help him much in street fights. As a young boy growing up in the rough neighbourhood of Saint-Étienne in France, he nearly lost an eye in one episode. Discovering Krav Maga through one of his karate instructors was a revelation.

“Karate doesn’t take into consideration that people are fast, that people actually want to

kill you and injure you,” says the 39-year-old Krav Maga instructor. “Most martial arts are very complicated...like a choreography. We had defences against knife attacks that will only work against an 80-year-old man with Parkinson’s. I’ve heard of many people with black belts in karate getting beat up by the common thug.

“In Krav Maga, you build power, you build strength, but you also build reflexes. You learn to be more aware of your surroundings, because in a real situation you don’t have time to think.”

Visualization plays a big role in Krav Maga. In any given class, Mougeot might tell his students to close their eyes as he describes a scenario of danger, and on his command they open their eyes and explode. “Krav Maga is about going from passive to attack in an alpha second,” he explains. While its training makes for intense fitness workouts, its entire thrust is to help its students stay safe.

Mougeot’s admiration of Krav Maga has taken him down a challenging road. Even after he continued studying karate and other martial arts when he moved to Canada in 1992, Mougeot was still dissatisfied with their lack of practicality. Krav Maga, however, was not being offered in Canada, so Mougeot left karate and began teaching a form of martial arts loosely based on the Krav Maga instruction he had received in

Krav Maga:

HEALTHWISE OTTAWA Fall 2010 Fall 2010 HEALTHWISE OTTAWA

Student Roxana Istratescu gets the upper hand with instructor Laurent Mougeot.

She asserts that Krav Maga has improved her self-awareness and overall self-confidence (and not just strictly related to self-defence), not to mention her mental and physical endurance. And she also feels she’d be able to deal with any type of situation without freezing. Fear is incapacitating, and Krav Maga helps to overcome fear, no matter the threat, be it one man with a gun or twenty with sticks. For Istratescu, that’s the main reason she wants to be an instructor: “It’s by far the best system out there in terms of self-defence.” HWO

Is this just for people wanting to learn self-defence?

Krav Maga is excellent for overall fitness. Its high-energy classes provide cardio and strength-building training. Students will see results within the first couple of months.

How does it differ from other martial arts forms?

Krav Maga provides practical training in real scenarios and simulations. You learn to react quickly, while under duress and with heart pounding, to enable you to respond in a real and frightening situation without freezing up.

What can I expect in a class?

Alongside brand-new classmates or veterans, you’ll warm up with games and drills to review previously learned techniques, stretching, and strength-building exercises. Then, you’ll be presented with various scenarios and given some techniques with which to face them, followed by drills in which you use the techniques you’ve just learned.

Is there a uniform I’ll need to purchase?

Because it’s a real-life self-defence system, there is no uniform except for the official Krav Maga T-shirt that most instruction facilities require you to buy. Comfortable footwear and pants are highly recommended. Groin protection is mandatory for men.

Where can I find out more about Krav Maga instruction in Ottawa?

There are three legitimate Krav Maga federations operating in Canada, with two training affiliates offered here in Ottawa: the one Mougeot belongs to, the International Krav Maga Federation or IKMF; Krav Maga Worldwide or KMW, with Krav Maga classes offered locally at John Leroux's World Karate Fit Centre; and the Israeli Krav Maga Association or IKMA, with a presence in Toronto.

For Mougeot, check out http://www.kravmagaottawa.ca/.

John Leroux’s school can be found at http://www.karatefit.com/index.asp.

Krav Maga FAQsFrance. In 2005, he took the opportunity to

study it formally when Thierry Cimkauskas (then director of the International Krav Maga Federation for Canada) moved to Montreal. After a couple of very intense years of training (where only two out of the five people who enrolled graduated as certified instructors, Mougeot being one of them), Mougeot set up shop at the YMCA’s Nepean Branch, where his classes have almost doubled since the early spring.

Mougeot is now the national director of the IKMF in Canada, and is opening his own studio this fall where he’ll offer

Student Clovis Lavoie and instructor Laurent Mougeot demonstrate the martial art of Krav Maga.

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children’s classes and, down the road, classes for law enforcement and VIP protection professionals. He’s hoping that two of his male students, who headed down to the US this past summer for training, will pass their certification so that they can help teach some of the classes.

Clovis Lavoie, 28, is one of those students. Like Mougeot, Lavoie first trained in karate and has a second-degree black belt. The most difficult aspect for him in learning Krav Maga has been in maintaining his equilibrium during the visualization of Krav Maga scenarios that Mougeot describes to the students. “I get nervous, I freeze up, I have a hard time breathing. In traditional martial arts, you never learn these scenarios.”

Lavoie says karate informed his study of Krav Maga. “I don’t see them as two separate entities,” he says. But he does say

that learning the latter made him more aware of his surroundings and more confident in protecting himself and his family. “I’m not an easy target like I used to be,” he adds. “That’s the goal of Krav Maga — that you can walk in peace.”

Fellow student Roxana Istratescu, 26, has been studying with Mougeot for about two and a half years now since coming to Ottawa from Romania. She also wants to obtain her certification at some point so that she can become an instructor. “As a woman, you’re expected to be passive. You’re not encouraged to be aggressive. I

want to encourage women to tap into that aggression.”

Not having had any previous martial arts training — Romania offered no Krav Maga and she wasn’t interested in anything else — Istratescu says the most difficult aspect has been that of being one of very few women in a huge class of men. But it’s been rewarding.