Fitness Conditioning

Gershon Ben Keren

Wed 28th Dec 2016

I was recently asked to write an article on physical conditioning for Krav Maga; and with people beginning to think about making New Year’s resolutions, which usually include some health/fitness goals, etc., this is perhaps the best time of year to be writing such an article. I believe that it is necessary to have two types of fitness, which are in fact inter-related: you need to have a certain level/type of fitness that allows you to take part in classes without succumbing to exhaustion, and another type/level that allows you to survive a real-life violent confrontation. The two are of...Click To Read More

Predicting Violence Through Movement

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 19th Dec 2016

I’ve written about Synchronizations of Movement before, however I want to put these pre-violence indicators into the context of victim selection and being targeted for surveillance (themselves pre-violence indicators that can help us predict violence). This week, CCTV footage of a woman being kicked down a flight of stairs in a Berlin subway started to do the rounds on social media (N.B. the man responsible for the attack has now been identified), and there are several personal safety and self-protection lessons that can be learnt from this. This article is not attempting to blame the victim in any way, but...Click To Read More

Unsettling People

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 12th Dec 2016

One of the lectures I remember most clearly from my university days, was by a professor who was explaining how the human brain operates, if you were to view it as a computer e.g. what algorithms, sorts etc. it uses to manage information. The reason I remember it so vividly, is because I came away from it going, “Is that it?” I was sorely disappointed that the actual underlying operations that the brain uses to manage the information it stores and recalls was basically very simple – almost simplistic. Obviously, the inner workings are more complex than this, but at...Click To Read More

Fear Versus Anxiety

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 5th Dec 2016

I am a big believer in people making personal risk assessments for themselves, and where appropriate, for their families. I have written before about what risk is: the intersection between assets (things, persons you want to protect), threats (those things which could harm your assets), and vulnerabilities (those things which a threat could exploit, inadvertently or deliberately, to harm an asset). One of the reasons I believe it is important to make such assessments – and regularly update them – is that it forces you to consider the potential threats your assets face (you are also an asset), which in...Click To Read More