Krav Maga
Background
What is Krav Maga you ask? It's the fighting style of the Israeli Defense Forces. It was invented by Imi Lichtenfeld in the mid-1930's. It was invented as a means of self defense for Jews in Bratislava, who were being attacked by fascist groups.
What is it?
Krav Maga is a cornucopia of different styles. It includes moves from boxing, karate, judo, jiu jitsu, wrestling, and various weapons styles such as Kali. The biggest things stressed in Krav are: finish the fight as soon as possible, and avoid going to the ground. Why avoid going to the ground you ask? The thing Krav Maga gets you ready for is real life self defense situations. This isn't the octagon where you have a referee, 1 on 1 fights with fighters who are the same weight. In the real world you will be up against multiple opponents, some might be twice your size. So if you go to the ground while fighting someone, you run the risk of landing on something sharp and hurting yourself. The biggest risk however, is if he has friends close by. You might f this dude up using your BJJ skills, but his friend(s) are gonna come over and kick the crap out of you while you are on the ground. So Krav Maga teaches you ways to avoid going to the ground, and what to do if you are taken down, i.e how to stand up quickly, and how to fight from your back. One of the most notable features of Krav Maga is it's weapon defenses. You learn to disarm an attacker who is using a knife, a gun, a stick, or any other object as a weapon. The most important thing to this is that they teach you to avoid fights against someone with a weapon if at all possible. No this isn't the movies where you can "Chuck Norris Roundhouse Kick" a knife out of someone's hand, and the proceed to pound them into oblivion. This is real life, and things happen. So if you can avoid the fight if at all possible, do so. Anyway back to our point, if s@$% hits the fan and you can't avoid the fight, you learn weapon takeaways and defenses. These can be very useful in a life-or-death situation.
Who uses it? [1]
Israel
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF)
Regular Forces
Mossad
Shin Bet
United States
United States Air Force
U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI)
Some divisions of the United States Coast Guard
Federal Agencies, including FBI, CIA, DEA, United States Marshals Service, ATF, DHS. SWAT teams
France
National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (GIGN)
Belgium
Belgian Army
Brazil
Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais
Opinion:
The thing I love about Krav Maga is they teach you so many "concepts", I say concepts because they
don't teach moves per se, they teach ideas so that you can adjust them to any situation. That is the problem with martial arts, you learn a move, but if the other person is doing something different than what you practiced the move for, you are SOL. We had a guest speaker named Andrew, who is on the board of International Krav Maga Instructors. So this guy is high up there. He taught us concepts to use in any situation. Another great thing about Krav is that it is very easy to learn. Which is important because you don't want to try and remember your black belt kata when fighting for your life.
Closing Points:
Alright I want to thank you all for checking out this section of the blog. I hope you enjoyed. Please feel free to leave comments (constructive criticism is welcomed).
[1] http://treeoflifemedia.typepad.com/tactical_krav_maga/
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