COLUMBIA, Md. — Krav Maga Maryland is one of several businesses destroyed after a gas explosion in Columbia.
Krav Maga is reality based self defense training.
“The ability for anybody in any walk of life to be empowered. Not just feel empowered but actually be empowered and strong,” said general manager Elisabeth Green. "They go from feeling nervous and insecure to understanding the power they have.”
Their old facility was ruined and on Monday they found some where else to train, Revolve Wellness Studios.
“It works out great for them and works out great for us,” said John Corbitt, the owner of Revolve. "That's the nature of our model, people can come and go very quickly.”
That's exactly what they did. Green said she saw the facility to rent on Monday and had their first class Monday night, only giving members about an hour notice and they still had a great turn out. Tuesday, they had a packed house.
“A lot of people would have folded up like a tent and went home but our students are too important. Training is too important,” said Jeremy Robbins, the lead instructor.
He said right now they are pushing past adversity like he tells his students to do every day.
"It's a chance for us to come together and show how working together to accomplish a bigger goal," said Robbins. "That bigger goal is to find a way to keep training.”
Right now, they're just having pop up classes when they can. They hope to find a place closer to their old facility in Howard County. However, the change from Columbia to Catonsville isn't bother clients right now.
“It was my second home. It wasn’t my second home because of the place, it was my second home because of the people,” said Nicole Pierce.
“Krav is a family," Morgan Wheaton said. "We’re here to not only support the community but we love training and we’re here to get safer and there’s no point in stopping.”
Green said there was simply no option to delay or cancel classes.
“We have a job to do. We have training to provide for people,” said Green.
They're going to keep doing that, no matter what.
“We wanna keep momentum and let our students know that we’re not going anywhere, we want to keep training in Howard County," said Rachel Parker, Director of Communications for Krav Maga Maryland. "We wanna keep training in Maryland and just let people know that we’re not gonna stop offering them life saving training.”
