Dave Maga
I’m Dave Young, a musician from Burnaby, BC.
I’ve always been interested in martial arts, whether watching action movies or as a practitioner, and when I was a teenager I became involved in Tae Kwon Do. I enjoyed the physical aspect as well as the mental focus required to perform well. As I grew older, music became more and more the centre of my life and I stopped taking martial arts classes. For the past decade I have played with many bands around the Vancouver area, and one of these, The Devin Townsend Project (www.hevydevy.com), has afforded me the opportunity to tour extensively. Life on the road is always fun and interesting, but difficult sometimes in terms of being in a different place every day, often not having the opportunity to get much exercise, and typically running on a lack of sleep. We often fly or drive for long periods of time, there’s a lot of sitting around involved, and waking up in a parking lot in the middle of nowhere in a new city doesn’t always inspire much confidence in your safety.
For these reasons, feeling good mentally and physically has become an important pursuit in my life, and to this end, I began to look for a way to get back in to martial arts. I wanted to find a style that suited me; one that could focus aggression, and be powerful as well as subtle. I wanted to know that I could handle myself, no matter where I found myself. After a little searching, I found Krav Maga. It’s philosophy of controlled aggression, dealing with real world street situations, and attacking while defending really appealed to me and since joining Urban Tactics Krav Maga in Burnaby a few months ago, I’ve already started to feel more secure and better able to handle myself. The instructors are very knowledgable, not only about Krav Maga, but about other martial arts, human physiology, and the psychology of attack/defense situations. I feel this gives a good background on why particular moves are used in certain situations, and how the human body (both attacker and defender) will react.
With all the traveling I do, and all the different people I’m around and situations I’m in, I feel like Krav Maga is really the most adaptable and practical self defense system that’s out there, and it has already helped me immensely with mental focus and confidence.
I look forward to my future with Krav Maga.
Written By: Dave Young