Prepare to Defend Against the Worst Attack
Hello, KMMA Tribe, friends and Family.
Today I want to talk to you a little bit more about the lesson of the week that I’ve been teaching at Krav Maga Martial Arts. And if you’ve been to classes this week, you already got the lesson directly from me live. And in fact, I’m going to be talking to you about in this one, but we’re also going to be going deeper on the lesson. So first and foremost, it started with the physical lesson, right? The lesson plan for this week has been defending the rear. So we’ve been working on back kicks and hammer fist to the rear and elbows to the rear, and defense against bear hugs and chokes and other things from the rear. And so I asked this question to my students and being so astute and awesome students, they were able to answer easily. So I said the first question was, is defending an attack from the rear harder or easier than defending one from the front?
And of course, all the students said harder. When I asked, well, why is it harder? They said, well, because you can’t see what’s about to happen because it’s unexpected. And of course, these were the correct answers I was looking for. And then I jokingly said, well, because this is so hard to prepare for, we just don’t bother to prepare and got some chuckles. And of course, the point is that that’s not true. That even though we may very, very likely, and probably any case other than multiple attackers scenario, we’re probably caught by surprise if the attack has come from the rear. But having said this, and by the way, of course that’s because we would’ve turned to face the threat if we knew it was there, right? Okay. So that’s the rest of that thought. But the point is, of course, we still prepare. And then I talk to the students, okay, what are some of the things we do to be prepared? Should we have to defend ourself from the rear? And again, my bright and astute black belt leadership students were able to say, well, one, we work on our awareness. If we’re more aware, we can respond to the attack sooner, and it’s better to be able to back kick ’em is better than to have to strike ’em, is better to have to elbow. It’s way better than they already got their hands around my neck or their arms around my waist, right?
And then somebody said, so we got to train on the specific techniques. And I said, okay, and could you, I said, how do we turn on the specific techniques? And they said, well, you got to practice. And I said, okay. And that’s true and repetition. Yes, that’s true. I said, and by the way, could you have learned what you needed to practice on your own? Well, no. That’s why we’re here. We need a teacher. We need a sensei. And then we talked about training our attitudes. Attitude is a huge part of surviving any self-defense situation, our attitude and our mindset. And so then I was able to take this physical lesson and turn it the life skill leadership lesson that I wanted it to be. In fact, I said, kids, I want you to look around the room right now at the voice of experience and wisdom.
And I said, okay, adults, how many of you have learned your hardest lessons in life? Had some experiences where the worst things happened because you really, really weren’t expecting them, right? And of course, all the adult hands went up for the kids to see. And so that was the lesson this week was about, because then the rest of the lesson, of course, was that we prepare in all the same ways, right? It’s still about our attitude. There are still techniques to be ready, even though it’s unexpected. We don’t know exactly what’s coming, and we still need teachers in any specific area that we want to be ready and prepared. You have to find someone who already has the knowledge, someone with fruit on the tree in the area that you want to be better at, and get the training. And you don’t have to do it that way.
Actually, bright people like everybody watching this video can do it on their own. But we know that when we have a mentor, somebody that’s been there before, that we can compress decades into days. And that’s what we want to do. So today I’d like to take this same idea, the same train of thought, the same lesson about defending the rear. And because we’re defending the rear is about defending against something that’s unexpected and something that comes upon us from behind. And I want to go deeper because the most insidious of all enemies we face is in our own mind. It’s that enemy and it’s that voice that keeps us from being the best and highest version of ourselves that keeps us from taking the uncomfortable action that keeps us from believing that we can do and become and accomplish who we want to become and what we want to do and accomplish the voice, right?
Anyone listening to this has dealt with the voice sometimes because he’s the voice that says, you’re not good enough. You’re not smart enough, you’re too old, you’re too young. You didn’t do this. You didn’t do that. You don’t have the this. You don’t have the that, whatever. Hey, be realistic. Who do you think you are? Anyway, there is this voice that limits us. And how does that apply to the lesson of the week? Well, very, very often, that voice also comes from behind. Very, very often comes from the voices of our past. And this could be negative voices, especially in our most formative years in our childhood that are still telling us things that have created beliefs that do not serve us well. Or it could be our own experiences of the past times that we have felt and maybe felt again, and we didn’t like the pain associated with that failure. And so it keeps us from being confident and strong enough to do the things we have to do to become the person to accomplish the things that we want to be and become and accomplish.
So what do we do about it? How do we prepare? Well, this is how you do. This is how you prepare to deal with this enemy. We have to attack him directly. We have to attack him by actually rewiring our brain. By the way, there is a whole, now, there’s whole bodies of evidence and proof in the field of neuroscience that all beliefs rather, they’re limiting or empowering. There’s actual neurological trees in our brains. So this thing is science now too. I believed in it long before I knew that fact. But here’s, here’s the practical part. Here’s what you do about it. See, Tony Robbins says that beliefs are like tables, right? We have the table and then there’s all these legs that support that particular belief. And so some of these beliefs are limiting beliefs, right? And the limiting beliefs may be supported by the voices from the past that tell us negative things. They may be supported by experience from the past, which are negative references that support that table. So the first thing that we have to do is we have to break those table lakes. Board breaking isn’t a big part of kga, but we do it every once in a while just to work with people’s belief. This is a way important thing to break breaking them down those table lakes so that that negative limiting belief will fall.
But what can do even better is completely replace with new empowering references. The references are the table legs. And by the way, you can do that yourself in your mind. But to be honest, it’s a big piece of what we do here. A big piece of what we do to empower youth and teens and family to believe in themselves and to have the confidence to go boldly into their futures is by creating positive references, positive experiences of success, and what it feels like, what progress feels like, what it feels like to succeed. And the beautiful thing about this is as you’re created at the beginning, you’re just creating the tables and it really, really is a mental process. But what happens is the belief becomes more and more real as there are more and more legitimate accomplishments. It’s an awesome thing. It’s the cycle of success that I teach my instructor training program.
But listen, it’s what we do here. So if you’re here and you’re already a student and you’re listening to this because of that, and I hope you are, I hope that all my students watch this, then we’re doing the thing. And by the way, if you’re one of the many, many, what I love the most is family’s trained together. So if you are watching this and you’re a mom and dad, and you’re watching for yourself and your kids know that this is what we’re doing, while we’re giving you the confidence of knowing that you can defend yourself and them, we’re also giving you the confidence. I was going to say, we’re giving them the confidence, and that’s true. Giving them the confidence which is important so that they have fewer of these limiting beliefs in their future, giving you the confidence to know that they are prepared to succeed in what is a hard world, and that they are preparing for the attacks from the front, the flanks, and the rear, that they’re preparing to survive and thrive in any situation, and empowering to be the leaders in our community.
We are raising up those leaders today.
Prepare To Live; Empower To Lead!
Grand Master Stephen J. Del Castillo
Founding Master Instructor, Krav Maga Martial Arts
TampaKravMaga.com StephenDelCastillo.com
About Grandmaster Stephen J. Del Castillo: Grandmaster Del Castillo is the founding Master Instructor of Krav Maga Martial Arts and has been empowering lives in Pasco and Hillsborough Counties since October of 2000. He is an 8th degree Blackbelt, MBA, author, mentor and success coach, a US Army Veteran and a proud father and grandfather. He is married to Ms. Barbara Del Castillo who helps him run the school. Grand Master Del Castillo began his training in the early 80’s and has high level blackbelts in Tae Kwon Do, Karate, Premier Martial Arts and Krav Maga Martial Arts as well as experience in kickboxing, Jeet Kune Do and Jiujitsu. He has high level instructor certifications from BBSI, IKMF, and KMG and has been featured in numerous Martial Arts publications and also Success magazine. He was a competitive sport karate and American Kickboxing instructor until he enlisted in the US Army where he served in the 82nd Airborne Division, where he won an Army Green to Gold scholarship and proceeded to ROTC and the University of Tampa. He was commissioned in 1992 and went on to serve in Germany with the 3rd Infantry Division and then in several other posts in the US until he left military service to pursue his dream of creating KMMA in 2000. Today I continue to train, learn, sow and grow under the mentorship of World Champion Grandmaster Jeff Smith, who regularly visits the academy to help sow into my teams and students as well.
The Krav MagaMartial Arts Headquarters is in Lutz, FL at 1900 Land O’ Lakes BLVD and now our new location in 8836 US 19, Port Richey! Krav Maga Martial Arts serves Lutz, Land O’ Lakes, Wesley Chapel, Port Richey and surrounding areas.
See stephendelcastillo.com for more information and to order my book, Developing Your Superpower, Meditations on Mastery, Volume 1.
Also, check us out on Fun4TampaKids & on Go2Karate.com