Krav Maga/Martial Arts

Mason has been BUGGING me to find a place for him to take karate for months. I told him we could maybe find a place once schools was out so he hadn't been out of school 5 minutes when we were looking for a place. We found a place called Paul Evans Martial Arts - and the best part about it is that it is only about 4 blocks straight up the street from our house.
They told us he could come to a class and see if he liked it. Of course, the next teen class they had we were there. When we walked in Paul (the owner) told Mason they would be learning to use some kind of Samurai swords and some kind of staff that night and Mason's eyes got about as big as saucers. Needless to say, we were there two nights later for the next teen class with our money to sign up. The nice thing about this place is we pay one amount and Mason can go up to 6 hours every week. So, Paul tells Mason he should start coming to the Krav Maga class. The only person who might actually know what Krav Maga is would probably be Gary (so if you read this JaNae show it to Gary if he is ever home). It is some kind of martial arts used by the Israeli army or something. So now, in addition to the two nights of the teen class, Mason is now going to two nights of Krav Maga, and they have a weapons class on Fridays we are going to be adding to our schedule so I would say we are definitely getting our money's worth!

I went and watched part of the Krav Maga class last night and it was pretty intense. There were a few other teenagers, but most of the people in the class are adults. Mason comes home drenched in sweat after every class and he LOVES, LOVES, LOVES it. I had my camera in the car so I took a few pictures of some of the stuff they were doing.

This drill would have killed me. They were supposed to do a stand up or a sit up while one person was holding their legs, then punch three or four times in the air and then when they laid back down another person hit them on the chest (hard) with this big padded thing. And they had to keep doing it until Paul told them to stop. I know this isn't a great picture but Mason is on the floor doing a sit up and the guy standing behind Mason's group in all black is the owner. He is covered in tatoos and looks like this big mean guy but he is surprisingly nice and friendly (when he isn't teaching Krav Maga).

For this drill they had to drag themselves across teh floor with someone on their back. When they got to the other side of the room, they switched places and went back across the floor.

This little activity was punching a padded board, but the punching was the easy part. Holding the padded board without having it hit you in the chest each punch was the hard part.

Sweaty and happy!