Every fandom across all cultural spheres contains a proportion of individuals who make said fandom their entire identity, and gets very worked-up when someone else has a different though related passion. This can range from the eye-rollingly silly, like the Harry Potter nerds who named their child Hermione, filters all current events through the lens of Hogwarts houses, and frankly need to read a different book, to the deadly-serious, like the various Ultras factions notorious within the broader realm of football hooliganism. Of course, the martial arts world is no different, with people often being militantly obsessed with their own chosen style. If anything, martial arts is particularly bad for this, as its classically-masculine allure makes it a magnet for people with enormous but brittle egos.

A tragic truth of the Modern World is how it seems to get (or at least feel) more dangerous with each passing week, and moreover, also affecting us at younger and younger ages. Even if we set aside the current high-profile social issues surrounding knife crime, gang violence and (mercifully rare) rampage attacks with mass casualties, children have always been subject to the mundane - but immensely impactful - shittiness of other children: name-calling, pushing & shoving & hitting, intimidation, and a litany of other unpleasant behaviours that all fall under the broad umbrella of ‘bullying’. So the inevitable question arises in the mind of the concerned parent: “what can I do to help my child?” - a question my own parents asked of themselves some 25 years ago, and one that I feel we might be able to answer via age-appropriate self-defence training…

Having picked up the blog again after the Christmas break, I’ve found I had a bunch of ideas for articles which, once I sat down to actually write the things, covered topics I couldn’t readily flesh out into a whole post, at least not without retreading old ground. So instead, I’m writing a Q & A of sorts, which allows me to give time to these smaller subjects, including answering some actual questions I’ve had over the years. Let’s begin…

Sparring - going toe-to-toe with another person and having a (controlled!) fight - is perhaps one of the most quintessential aspects of any martial art in the public imagination, more so even than katas and flashy demonstrations of acrobatic skill (Chinese long-sword optional.) However, it is also one of the most off-putting elements of martial arts training for the novice practitioner…

So, you've found Pentagon Krav Maga (excellent! That means I have satisfied the capricious Algorithm Gods that run Google), and you're interested in joining us. But you find yourself a little unsure of what to expect. Perhaps you've seen videos on YouTube of highly-trained man and woman in combat fatigues going ham on one another, or read articles extolling its ferocity, and find yourself thinking 'but I work a deskjob…!”

It is said there is a hierarchy of factors when it comes to survival, be it the in sense of being lost in the wilderness, to combat or indeed self-defence. People often fall into the trap of thinking that all they need are the right tools and they'll be just fine, an attitude known in some circles as 'all gear, no idea'.

Everyone comes to the wider martial arts community with a story to tell, and every business (at least small ones like mine!) is to a greater or lesser extent reflective of the values of the people that run it, which are themselves shaped by those people's stories. So, as the owner of a small business in the martial arts space, I wanted to discuss my story in a little more depth, so that you, the customer, can understand the values I attempt to live by, and subsequently seek to project through my work at Pentagon Krav Maga.

Type the name of any martial art into Google, and I can almost guarantee that before you're halfway down the page there'll be a question along the lines of 'is [blank] good for self-defence', usually leading to a blog post or forum thread extolling said martial art's virtue for self-defence (yes, the irony of this being one of those very same blog posts is not lost on me!)