The boys at KMP have been working hard to promote Krav Maga in the Philippines. Attendance has been steadily rising and, now that school has let out, the Krav Maga classes are always full.

Last week, we had a TV crew film our sessions (- I asked Ken, KMP’s head honcho, not to include me in any of the footage) and it was aired last night on “Patrol ng Pilipino”. Click here to watch it. (It’s in Tagalog, but the interviews with Bjorn are in English, and the footage is pretty cool so watch it anyway.)

I missed the lesson in bridging, but I was at the session that involved defense against gun and knife threats and that was pretty awesome. That was the first time I worked with guns and it felt like we were in a movie, doing these super cool gun disarming techniques.

I’m so glad I continued my Krav Maga lessons.

Last year, I focused more on kettlebell training. I enrolled for eight sessions of Krav Maga but only managed to finish five.

At that time, I only wanted to train with then kettlebell/Krav Maga head trainer, Dindo de Jesus. Since he was head trainer, I thought that anybody else would be second rate.

Until one night, at kettlebell training, Dindo was away and Fred Nogales was filling in for him. We were supposed to do push jerks. I always felt uncoordinated doing this move so Dindo always had me do something else. The other guys in the class would sometimes try to show me how to do it properly but I guess I was always overthinking it. That night, Fred patiently broke the movement down for me and I was finally able to do push jerks.

That’s when I realized that Fred was anything but second rate and was – and is – actually a damned good teacher.

Since the reorganization of KMP (- Dindo has since left and formed his own group), I’ve gotten to work with Fred, Ed Ongsiako, and Bjorn Karlsson. They’re very different in their approaches but they’re all excellent instructors. Not only do they know their material well, they can impart their knowledge clearly and effectively.

It’s good that they mix things around at KMP and I get to train with all of the instructors at least once during the week.