KMSF: How long have you been doing krav?

Pam Tao: It's been about four and a half years. I started in October 2002 at the old school.

KMSF: Who did you train with first?

PT: I started originally with checking out the school. My M.O. was to show up and observe the classes first. I'd heard about krav from the media buzz around a movie at the time, and then I saw the ads that KMSF was running back then, too. My brother had studied karate and judo for a long time, but I had studied dance. When I joined, I had lost a lot of weight, so I had all this excess energy and wanted to do something with it. I also realized that I didn't know how to throw a punch, and I felt like it was something I needed to learn. It was part of that list that every woman should know: how to change a tire, changing your oil, and how to whack somebody. I felt I needed to complete that skill set.

So I went into the old school, and "auditioned" Barny in a way; I wasn't going to take classes from someone who didn't treat the system or the students with respect. I got a good vibe off him, and decided to join. I asked him years later what his first impression was of me, and he said he thought I would never come back. He thought I would observe his class for 15 minutes, walk away, and he would never see me again, which is very amusing to me.

Also at the time, I received a bonus at work, so I decided to throw that money into 10 private lessons to get up to the same speed as everyone else. I felt more comfortable doing that before I joined in the level 1 classes. It was a matter of alleviating the intimidation factor for me, since I had never done martial arts before.

KMSF: Working one-on-one and coming from a dance background instead of martial arts, what was your initial impression of the Krav Maga system? Was anything surprising to you, or different from what you expected? Was it more difficult?

PT: Not really. I've talked with other people who have dance backgrounds, and we all agree that it's really easy to transition into. As a dancer, you look at something and you can mimic it physically. You look into the mirror, and you can translate that mirror image to your own body. Or you see somebody, translate what they're doing, and internalize their explanation of the movement much more easily. Dancers tend to work in metaphors, and we understand body mechanics very easily.

KMSF: I can imagine on a physical level with that kind of background, your ability to learn any new movement skill is fairly easy. What about psychologically? You said you wanted to learn how to hit something, which sounds to me like a skill set every girl ought to have. How was encountering it psychologically for you?

PT: I've told several people that I am, arguably, an entirely different person than I was five years ago. There are two things I've learned from krav: one is to trust my intuition. So if you feel that something is not right, it probably isn't; I've learned to stop second-guessing myself. It even works in a business capacity or a social setting, so if something feels wrong, it probably isn't me. I've become really sensitive to that. The other thing I've learned is distance and personal space. I've learned to evaluate my safety in my surroundings in a whole new way. My sense of personal space is bigger than before; I'm less comfortable with people when they are within that distance. My personal space with someone I don't know is around eight feet, whereas before I started krav, it was four feet. Now I know that anything closer than eight feet is too close, and I can do something at eight feet. It's helped me to be more sensitive to my surroundings.

KMSF: How was the experience transitioning from regular classes into sparring?

PT: Sparring has been my biggest challenge, just because it's not like dance. It's not a programmed set of movements - which you receive at the lower levels of krav, even into the higher levels. Krav is very good at programming movement, breaking it down and making it very intuitive and automatic. Sparring is entirely improvisational. You learn a basic set of tools, and then you use them in a fluid manner. I'm still learning, but I'm getting to the point where I'm learning to combine movements and not be afraid of failure. I used to think getting hit was failure, and it's not. It is just part of the game, and you learn to take your shots in the most safe way.

KMSF: Some people have trouble not only dealing with the reality of getting hit, but actually hitting other people. Was that difficult for you in any way?

PT: I didn't have a problem with that per se. The way I approach training - not just in sparring, but also in regular krav classes - is I view people everybody from the neck down. Once that bell rings, I'm looking at the movement of my opponent rather than thinking of the emotional aspect. I take the personality out of it. If somebody is cool and I want to work with them, then maybe I'll bring their personality in and it will become more of a collaborative learning process. On the other hand, I keep that sensitive perception going, so if my opponent is losing control, I'll back off. And it feeds back and forth. One of the most important lessons I've learned in krav was during the green belt test. I got hit in the nose, and it started to bleed, and Eric fixed me up and was totally calm the entire time. And that stuck with me more than any other lesson that I'd learned - when you're calm and portray that vibe of being cool and collected, you're going to get a lot further and have a productive outcome. I started paying attention to the vibes people send off during classes, and when people are pushed to their limits and have all sense of propriety stripped away, you find what they're really made of.

In the same vein, I think Barny has managed to create an environment of hard work and rewards. And I'm really impressed with the cooperation by people in the upper levels and how they help each other out. It becomes very collaborative in higher levels, because every single one of us has different styles of krav.

KMSF: What do you do outside of krav?

PT: I work in a biotech company, but I'm going to change jobs pretty soon. I'm going to be someone's personal assistant; it's a lot more freedom. Eventually I want to make a pretty big career change, but for now, I'm done with biotech. I'm pretty much done with corporate America on the whole, and I really want to be out of the office and more physically active in my job.

KMSF: So you were in an office setting, rather than a laboratory?

PT: Right. I was preparing documents for regulatory submission. We'd put together papers for the FDA, and they'd send back approval or changes for the studies and drugs. It was very detail oriented.

KMSF: So what did you study to get into that field? Did you have a scientific degree?

PT: Not at all, I fell into it. I was one of those people who didn't have a career path, and I took the job as an admin there. The company was good, so I just stuck with it. It was a place where you would work hard, and they'd find a place for you. But honestly, work has never been a big part of my life. It's something to pay the bills. I feel confident now in leaving the financial comforts of corporate America to pursue something I really want to do. I'm going to become an instructor at KMSF, and I want to get into personal training. I like to work with people, but I'm a little intimidated by standing in front of a class. I feel like I'm not an expert, that I'm still a student and learning like everyone else. But I feel the best way to learn something is to be forced to explain it, so I'm sure I'll learn a lot. Another thing is that I'm one of the smallest people in the school, so I feel a bit of discomfort about that. I'm not this huge fierce guy teaching martial arts, I'm this teeny-tiny person.

KMSF: That would be more impressive to me from the perspective of a student. Someone's physical traits shouldn't have too much bearing on a self-defense system that purports to be for everyone. Your size is going to be what makes you a better teacher, because you have to push through your physical disadvantages and focus on technique.

PT: That's true. I'll have the chance to work on that.

KMSF: You're obviously making a lot of changes in your life. How does being in krav help you make your decisions?

PT: It's made me less intimidated and less afraid. I know I can take care of myself. In work situations, people try to pull rank on you and be arrogant, but with the confidence from krav of being able to take care of myself in a real world situation, their words start to mean nothing. I've also learned to translate the physical stress of krav to being able to calm my emotions and handle stress better. Krav reset my threshold for pain as well, so I can deal with the physical affects of stress more easily. I've found acceptance for who I am through the school, so I'm so much more confident in myself. I am rewarded through the respect I get at KMSF; that respect is particularly beneficial for the women who train here.

KMSF: Is there anything you want to say to your future students?

PT: There are two things that have helped me in class. One is a phrase, or a mantra to keep you going. Mine is, "How bad do you want it?" That phrase keeps me going through conditioning classes, stress drills, sparring, everything. The second thing is you really need to think about how you learn. Everyone has different learning styles, so when you figure out how you learn things best, put yourself in those situations to improve yourself.