Krav Maga and Book Signings...

Wow, September was an eventful month!  It started with a fabulous 9 days of training in Krav Maga (with a Kung Fu demonstration for 300 families at the end of the first day), ending in an 8+ hour test.  Now THAT was FUN!!!  Then, September 27th was another big day...I had my first ever official Book Signing at a local bookstore, Katy Budget Books.  They actually had my name, picture, and a pic of my book cover on the digital marquee sign out front!

I really enjoyed the Krav training.  Emmanuel Ayache is a fabulous instructor, given to very structured, detailed explanations of technique and challenging summary drills that were also tons of fun.  Occasionally, there were 'winners' of the summary drills, and those folks got prizes.  One pair of winners got to punch and kick the rest of us as we all stood in a ring around them.  Another pair got a 400 yard piggyback ride from us while the others did jumping squats.  Yes, my idea of fun may be different from that of other, more 'normal' folks.

Over the course of the training, we learned punch and kick defenses, knife threat defenses, handgun threat defenses, stick attack defenses, choke defenses from both standing and the ground, even some rifle defenses.  The training started each day promptly at 9am and rolled on until sometime after 6, with an hour and fifteen minute lunch.  We had little breaks here and there, just a few minutes where I was able to toss down 3 or 4 peanut M&M's so I wouldn't get hungry.  There was just SO much to go over, and Emmanuel did a fabulous job of it.  We had homework several times, either planning warmups for the next morning or afternoon or doing lesson plans that we were to use when teaching the class various techniques.  I have over fifty pages of notes on all the techniques, drills, and lectures we had during the week, and I can actually read them!  Test day was grueling, but I had an absolute blast.  Over 8 hours of technique and sparring.  FUN!!!!!  In the end, I passed with very good remarks, and ended up a G1 level KMG Instructor.  It's been quite a journey, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

There is more, but since I actually started this blog post almost a month ago and I really think I should post something separate for my birthday, I'll get right on that.  Go train somewhere, learn something, and have some fun!!!