Earlier this year, Leanne Gossels asked fellow freshman Craig Bohrson if he wanted to train Krav Maga with her at Krav Maga Maryland, an organization that teaches the self-defense system in locations all over Baltimore.
Although interested in continuing his training — Bohrson has some background knowledge of Krav Maga from his hometown in Manchester, England — he was faced with the difficulty of getting to the facility, which was in Owings Mills. “[Gossels] recommended this place if I wanted to train, said it was the best she could find,” Bohrson said.
“I thought it was a long drive so I recommended we try to get them to come here instead. Start a club. That’s how it all began.” Gossels and Bohrson are now co-presidents of a promising Hopkins Krav Maga club.
Bohrson trained in Krav Maga for a little over a year back in England, but has an extensive history with Karate. “Before [Krav Maga], I trained in Shotokan Karate for a very long time, since I was 10 or 11 maybe. I had gotten my black belt, but [felt that] it wasn’t all that useful,” he said.
Attaining his black belt was a great achievement for him, but didn’t lead to the kind of confidence in defense that he thought it would. “Black belt had always been this on the horizon thing. Mythical in a sense. This point that, if you reached it, it would guarantee you ultimate protection in any situation. That never really happened.”
He went on to say how many martial arts are anachronistic, as he described it, in the sense that they were developed a long time ago for different situations. Although the art has been preserved, instructors are teaching some moves that are no longer applicable. “They were designed to be trained for hours and hours every day in ancient times when threats were different,” Bohrson said.
He explained how outdated martial arts teach non-instinctual movements that take an immense amount of time to master — and even when mastered, there are the accompanying honor systems that can prevent full defense. Krav Maga can be learned in a much shorter amount of time.
“I started with absolutely no prior fighting experience and in less than a year of official training [I] can confidently defend myself,” Gossels wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter.
Krav Maga solves many problems of other martial arts and more, offering a survival- and instincts-based training that uses modern weapons and realistic encounters and encourages trainees to prioritize their safety above all else. “In a life or death situation, survival should be your main priority . . . and Krav Maga’s central belief really is, to make that happen, you should do anything. So whereas in Karate you’ll practice striking the face or solar plexis, in Krav Maga you train to hit the groin, kick out the knees, attack the eyes,” Bohrson said.
Krav Maga, which translates literally to “hand-to-hand combat” from Hebrew, is the official self-defense system taught to the Israeli Defense Forces.
It was developed as a mixture of street fighting techniques and other martial arts in order to form a more modern and applicable system of self-defense. The original founder is recognized to be Imrich “Imi” Lichtenfeld, who was born in 1910 in Budapest and went on to develop Krav Maga in Czechoslovakia in the ‘30s to defend himself against anti-Semitic street gangs. In the ‘40s when Lichtenfeld moved to Israel, he brought the fighting style to the Israeli Defense Forces, which now incorporates Krav Maga as part of its basic training.
Today, it’s taught in all kinds of law enforcement agencies all over the world as a practical method of training. “I think it’s illustrative that most militaries and police forces teach either Krav Maga or something closely similar,” Bohrson said, emphasizing the effectiveness of the system. Krav Maga Maryland describes the system as “a unique combination of high intensity training . . . instinctive moves, practical techniques and realistic training scenarios that provide students the tools they need to protect themselves in a minimal amount of time.”
Eager to start training, Bohrson and Gossels personally contacted Krav Maga Maryland and successfully got trainer Jeff Mount, who works in the Owings Mills facility, to come to Hopkins and teach students himself. While classes are free to all students at the moment, the bulk of the club’s funding goes to bringing the organization to campus. Most of the other martial arts clubs on campus have instructors who come and teach voluntarily, so Bohrson and Gossels’s biggest challenge has been trying to make sure that future classes remain affordable for students.
“The classes right now cost no money for students. But next year we’re going to try to get the classes down to $10 a week. That would be for two two-hour classes [per week],” Bohrson said. He explains that while the need to pay isn’t an optimal situation, it’s a relatively low rate and he’s thankful that the club has secured well-trained and experienced professionals.
“They’re very good,” Bohrson said. “I have taken other martial arts classes at Hopkins and . . . I think Krav Maga has been the best so far. Three instructors came.” The instructors at the first session were Jeff, Curt and Ryan, all from Krav Maga Maryland. “They brought lots of equipment and it was a very intense and very useful training session.”
In the future, Bohrson and Gossels hope to master Krav Maga to the point where they can teach basic classes themselves for free.
Cost aside, response on campus to the newly formed club has been positive. Bohrson cites upwards of 60 people on the mailing list, over 40 at the information session, which was held only a few weeks ago, and about 20 at the first training session. Bohrson and Gossels were happy with the turnout, which was surprisingly large considering the short amount of time the club was able to devote to advertising.
“We had two weeks notice for the information meeting. We only started advertising the Monday of the week of the first training session because we made plans with Krav Maga Maryland that Sunday,” Bohrson said. At the first session, students — Bohrson and Gossels happily report that both females and males were present — practiced “aggression” and participated in a lot of shouting and core training. They also delved right into specific defense moves, including responses to choke holds from the front and back.
The club is eager to attract more students though, which will help lower costs, and wants to emphasize the usefulness of the practice as well as the fact that the sessions are geared towards beginners. “[It] is actually designed for people with no previous training,” Gossels wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter.
The club plans to hold another training session today in the ROTC Gym from 7 to 8:30 p.m. and expects a good turnout. Sessions are open to any interested students. If the participants are eager to continue training as the semester winds down, Bohrson and Gossels will offer an additional class the following week. Next year, the club has plans to hold training twice a week, two hours per session. “I think it will be very popular here,” Bohrson said. “We fill a unique niche on campus.”
The club has other plans outside of training students. “We also hope to incorporate some public seminars in self defense,” Gossels wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter. “[We want to] spread awareness and training as far into our community as possible.”
On a campus that lacks regular self-defense training classes — sometimes classes are held, but only for a month, or only for women — Krav Maga is bound to find both a group of dedicated trainees and students eager to learn the basic techniques of self-defense.
Both Bohrson and Gossels have met participants in facilities outside of school who were driven to train because they experienced a situation in which their safety was threatened.
“The things you will learn have actually saved people I know personally,” Gossels wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter. Whether that holds true for participants at Hopkins or not, she’s positive that many students will come and train in order to be prepared. “We live in Baltimore, and as with any city, there are certain dangers involved,” she continued. Even on campus, students can only feel safer with a few self-defense moves on hand.
