The HaganaH Blog

1) James Cooper TX
2) Ryan Ortman CA
3) Stu Bryant PA
4) John Clarke FL
5) Chris Kisslan FL
6) Anthony Kuntz
7) Kevin Evitts CT
8 ) Mark Thompson FL
9) Jeanette Dahnert TX
10) Larry Cott FL
11) Sam De Jesus NJ
12) Dave feirrera NJ
13) Misha Novitzki GA
14) Jay Makrevich FL
15) Todd Burrows IL
16) Joel Burrows IL
17) Joe Bogart FL
18) Connie Hernandez FL
19) Ed DuPlesis NY
20) Kyle Deleonard FL
21) Craig Brown FL
22) Sheri Rosenberg FL
23) Oscar Mendoza FL
24) Aleyxy Petrov FL
25) Andre Barret FL

Full house in our “Black Fin” Muay Thai and Kickboxing sparring class tonight here at the National HaganaH Headquarters….even some of John Clarke’s fighters geared up and  joined us tonight

On to FIGHT class, full mat as well, Donnut Boy is teaching the warm-up….life is Gooood!!!

The Best Never Rest…with 4 new Combat Wrestling and 9 new Combat Fitness Instructors this last weekend, we are not about to slow down!

Tomorrow starts FIGHT Instructor Certification…14 candidates, time to Rock’N'Roll!!!

The first course taught at the Israeli Compound this weekend was IPTT Level-1 and Level-2 handgun course by Garret. Those who attended can tell you how great this course was!

Also, Garret will be teaching a Special Knife Fighting class tomorrow here at the Israeli Compound at 7:30pm….this Special class will cover techniques that Garret learned both in Lotar and Shadav…

On Fri/Sat/Sun James Cooper will be here from TX, teaching the Combat Fitness Instructor Level-1 Certification. This Certification is the next level after the open-class certification , the Coach level. At the Instructor Levels Certification it is no longer an open-class certification, on these levels there are physical pre-requisite requirements. While Coop and I teach the Combat Fitness Instructor Level-1 Certification , John Clarke will be busy teaching his Combat Wrestling Certification on his mat.

LOTS OF GREAT ENERGY ALL UNDER ONE ROOF!!!,,,    see you on the mat

….over 100 people are traveling in the next 2 days to Vegas :   HaganaH Black Belts, FIGHT Instructors, Combat Fitness Coaches, Combat Wrestling Instructors and FIGHT Students from all over the country are heading to the 6th Annual HaganaH Conference which will  kick off this friday afternoon, safe travels to the entire HaganaH family!!!!

some people , on saturday mornings, go to Temple…

some people , on sunday mornings, go to Church…

Joe Bogart didn’t :

saturday morning , he was here for Combat Fitness doing King Kong and then reviewed all his Street Scenarios , Knife Defenses and GunDisarms with fellow FIGHT Instructor Luis Rosario

sunday morning, he was here Sparring with HaganaH Black Belts Larry Cott and Miguel Ramos and fellow FIGHT  Instructor JB Glossinger

NICE   BROTHERHOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!

where were you saturday and sunday morning???

FIGHT Instructor and Combat Fitness Coach Luis Rosario and FIGHT Instructor Connie Hernandez are taking getting ready for the conference this morning very seriously here at the National Headquarters. Both just finished a Ground Survival session in preparation to Neil Melanson’s session on saturday the 22nd.

The session included agility drills , both solo and 2-men drills in prepartion to the material Melanson will be teaching…

FIGHT Instructors and FIGHT Practitioners are getting ready all over the country for an awesome weekend of training with only 2 weeks away…but, no one, and I mean NO ONE is taking getting ready for the conference more seriously than the 6 candidates that are up for testing for their HaganaH Black Belt this year at the conference.!!! 

Dr Joe Bogart is been very hard at work preparing for this test…in our last sparring coach session I had to tell him ” I think you border line over trained…slow down with the loads in your workouts, you dont want to show up over trained”

See you in Vegas

I have asked this question many times : if you had to fight for your life tomorrow, would you change the way you train today?

some people answer right away : Yes, for sure!

some hesitate to give any answer…

and some answer : No, I am ready!

your fisrt line of defense is your training , period! If your answer was “Yes, for sure! or, you hesitated to answer…your training has not prepared you to survive an all out violent attack for the pure fact that you yourself already defeated yourself by doubting your training …or, even worst , disgarding it all together.

when I was in bootcamp at the “Bezek” base , the Golani Brogade Infantry basic school of the IDF (1985), the training I received was proven in combat by those who fought before me. It was the prerequisite preparation of a Golani Warrior. But most of the training was more mental than physical to begin with…

Up to that point I trained in 4 Martial Arts : Judo, Karate, Krav Maga and Muay Thai…those were all good, but at Bezek we learned that the 1st line of defense is not so much technical so to speak but more of an attidude: the Warrior Spirit . And that’s where I learned that “perfect intention will beat perfect technique”

Your training has to be solid, real, durable, effective to be able to stand a reality fighting test in the real world. The first seed in your training should be the mind set needed to support the tactics you are deploying at the moment of violence…if the mind set is proper then the first layer of defense is already standing strong. Mind set in training is usually related to the objective of the training and to the people who are leading the training. If the objective is real world self-defense, than the objective is very serious, and the people leading the training have to convey a very clear message of the training.

That mind set has to be one thing: Aggresive!!!!

To be agressive has been missunderstood for decades in the Martial Arts, some Martial Arts even try to teach not to be agressive…in HaganaH that is not the case. To us agression is like fuel….techniques without that fuel, is only techniques, they will fail. Techniques fuelled by a well organized agression system….well, thats a different story.

14 ladies started a 6 weeks intense Combat Fitness Boot-Camp here at the National Headquarters yesterday morning…

While most of the women enrolled into the program for selfish reasons such as losing weight and/or get in shape, this 6 weeks Boot-Camp is designed as a crash course in our world of Combat Fitness which will eventually turn them into “machines”…for the last couple years I have deployed this program here at the National Headquarters and it has been very succesful among the guys, producing awesome results.

Yesterday the first workout was a “300″ workout, 300 reps total….15 stations, 20 reps each station, no rest!!! It was not an easy task for the ladies to finish…we had one who almost passed out and two pukers, and one that got scared and simply didnt even start the workout.  

Cant wait for tomorrow’s workout…

Lets see how many women finish the Boot-Camp , and how many of them turn Combat Fitness into a a lifestyle thereafter!

will keep you posted………

Hi everybody,

I hope everyone had a great holiday season and everybody is recharged for a Kick Ass year!

This week’s topic is dedicated to “the line of defense”:

As the entire HaganaH family is gearing up to teach the 1st of the 18 Street Scenarios in our FIGHT Curriculum around the country , that brings up the issue of the principle we follow in our method of teaching : Indentifying The Primary Danger!

In each one of those 18 scenarios we always start by asking our students “what is the primary danger?” , by the FIGHT Instructor indentifyimg the primary danger the students learn to understand logistics of attacks. The primary danger is always the IMMINENT danger. If ignored by the defender and if the defender’s first tactic deployed is adressing another logistic, the defender will faill…its that simple. In the FIGHT curriculum, if that mistake is made in the Hand-To-Hand (no weapons involved) part , that failure might be forgiving according to the toughness of the pratctioner. In other words if the defense failed but the attacker did not completely incapacited or terminated the defender , the defender is still in the fight.

However, in a knife defense scenario or a gun disarm scenario, its a complete different story…it will mean a serious injury, or death. So in the knife defesenses and gun disarms the 1st line of defense, which is indentifying the primary danger, it is a crucial element for assurance of survival.

In the IPTT curriculum its even more crucial. Garret always says : “100% must go in the imminent danger as soon as you enter the scenario!” in other words if 100% didnt go into the imminent danger in a gun battle (notice I said battle and not fight…more to come on this subject in future topic) , you are now dead and that battle is officially over!

After indentifying the primary danger comes the proper tactic to adress just that, so the 1st line of defense serves , or overlaps , into the 2nd line of defense…

Hope everybody is ready for a Great week of training