Krav Maga

[SimonM]

Look at it this way, who has a better chance?

A person that can fight well with and without rules
A person that needs to "fight dirty"

As I have often pointed out, rules LEVEL the fight and if you can't beat someone on a level field, then how to you expect to beat them if they are not restricted ?

Give that man a beer!

[MightyB]

got'cha !!!

But seriously - I'll have to write a long drawn out thread about how Kung Fu lost its edge because people can't internalize the fact that TCMA was all about's the killin'. There's a long and sordid history that got us to this nebulous quazi inefficiency that we have today, but if you internalize, not intellectualize, that kung fu is about's the killin', then you'll gain a new perspective on the training and why we still do some of the things we do.

[MightyB]

Look at it this way, who has a better chance?

A person that can fight well with and without rules
A person that needs to "fight dirty"

As I have often pointed out, rules LEVEL the fight and if you can't beat someone on a level field, then how to you expect to beat them if they are not restricted ?

Sparring/fighting with rules and equipment is just another facet of the overall training program, much like forms. It's not the end level.

Efficient, ruthless killing - that's what original TCMA is about. That's what I think real Krav aspires to also.

[YouKnowWho]

Since you can't fight dirty everyday, your dirty fighting experience can not be developed as good as your clean fight experience. You will end with

- high successful rate by using your clean fight skill, and
- low successful rate by using your dirty fight skill.

This is just simple mathematics.

[MightyB]

Since you can't fight dirty everyday, your dirty fighting experience can not be developed as good as your clean fight experience. You will end with

- high successful rate by using your clean fight skill, and
- low successful rate by using your dirty fight skill.

This is just simple mathematics.

True - but the clean fight skill can lead to better dirty fight skillz.

[Kymus]

I think in this day and age, there should be a balance.

Half the reason why I don't smack down tuff guyz on the street is because it's not worth messing with their lawyer-fu. The other reason is I just don't feel like bothering

If they're just another tuff guy and I gotta fight them because ignoring them doesn't work, then I'll keep it clean. If they are a serious threat to me, then I'll hit their knee before they can tell me about my momma.

[goju]

There is BS in almost EVERY MA nowadays.
Just a fact of life it seems.

Well yeah that is true ive experienced a little bit of bs in stuff that was other wise great. for example alot of the standing self defense joint locks in Gracie Jujitsu. but there seems to be a lot of it in Krav IMO

I believe a lot of people buy into it because its sold as being military tested but the notion that The Israeli military is crashing through windows and steven seagal arm locking the **** out of some crazy muslim terrorist who has a knife to the throat of a hostage is absurd.

Israel prefers to bomb the crap out of their enemies and when they arent doing that they are shooting them. I wouldnt be surprised if its ever come down to a soldier being completely unarmed and having to go hand to hand or hand to knife with the enemy. and some of the rather odd impractical stuff they are showing kinda confirms that to me, Not to mention when you see them sparring full out like in that vid i posted it just turns into sloppy kickboxing.So why not just go learn proper kickboxing?

I dont see krav giving a person any more of an advantage in a street scenario then training the ole usual high percentage stuff ie boxing, MT ,wrestling, judo etc,etc. It just comes off like another pseudo jkd reality fighting system that pops up every other month in black belt magazine

[Kymus]

I think Goju is spot-on. It seems like over-hyped BS to me. Generally any art that claims to be the l33t-real-deal-no-BS-way-of-kick-ass is riding on a lot of BS.

Most any art that emphasizes lots of sparring and practicing against a resisting opponent is gonna be legit. Still, I think it's important to be well rounded in punching, kicking, throwing, and joint locks as well as close, medium, and long range fighting.

I remember I guy I knew was really interested in learning Krav Maga and he showed me some videos of it and he's all "yeah, you just beat the sh!t out of the person. Whatever works"..........

I'm also not convinced that just because it's from the Israeli military that that makes it super legit. My Jpanese Jujutsu teacher is a former Navy Seal. What does he do? JJJ and Tang Soo Doe. Maybe there's some stuff in there from his military training? Beats me. But he's not teaching teh sooper l33t military trainings that will beat anyone.

[Kellen Bassette]

Still, I think it's important to be well rounded in punching, kicking, throwing, and joint locks as well as close, medium, and long range fighting.

You mean like Kung Fu would be, if people weren't so afraid of hard work and getting hit?

[Kymus]

You mean like Kung Fu would be, if people weren't so afraid of hard work and getting hit?

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I've taught semi-privately for over a decade to a few close friends and - over the years - people they knew or met up with joined in with us. I say - tongue in cheek - that I teach like an angry old Chinese man (ok, maybe not that bad, but you can get an idea). These guys know I don't care if they're tired or sore; they gotta keep pushing it. Nothing terrible; hard, but not dangerous.

I trained this one new guy and he started goofing around and trying to spar with me. I blocked his kick, he lost his balance and fell on his side like a falling tree almost. He gave himself a contusion. He stopped training with me after that and when I spoke to him later about some stuff of mine he had (like my Iron & Silk DVD ) he starts talking about how I should apologize for throwing him (I never threw him; not once. Not even lightly) and breaking his ribs (it was a contusion; he told me himself the next day) and how he should've sued me.......

Stuff like this makes me wonder where the balance is. How can you teach students to eat bitter and to work harder and to emphasize realistic combat (etc. etc. etc.) without having to worry about people quitting, complaining, or suing?

Eventually, once I think I'm ready to start a brick-and-mortar school, I'll probably set up two classes: one regular class, and one hardcore class. The students that work hard and have been around for a little while can come to the hardcore class and really learn and really train. For the average person, there is the average class. Of course, I don't plan on quitting my day job to teach, either, so that gives me some flexibility since I won't have to depend on teaching for my full income.

[Kymus]

Master Ken's Secrets of Street Fighting When You're Fighting a Street Fighter in the Street!

[GeneChing]

Enter to win KungFuMagazine.com's contest for Krav Maga – Professional Tactics autographed by David Kahn! Contest ends 5:30 p.m. PST on 7/21/2016

[GeneChing]

See our WINNERS: Krav Maga – Professional Tactics autographed by David Kahn thread.

[GeneChing]

Good for Krav! Santa Clara is close to KFTC headquarters but a lot of web CEO/celebs are here.

WHAT'S YOUR WORKOUT
A CEO’s Straight Line From Martial Arts to Leadership
PayPal chief executive Dan Schulman swears by Krav Maga, the intense Israeli self-defense practice
PayPal CEO Dan Schulman undertakes a Krav Maga self-defense workout with his coach, Danny Zelig, right, owner of Tactica Krav Maga Institute, in Santa Clara, Calif. Mr. Schulman says the fight training has helped hone his leadership skills. JASON HENRY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By Jen Murphy
June 3, 2017 7:00 a.m. ET

Most CEOs start their day strategizing bottom lines or growth strategies over email. Dan Schulman starts his day at the gym, figuring out how to disarm someone with a knife. He credits his daily Krav Maga (pronounced krahv mah-GAH) training with developing leadership skills he has put to use in roles at American Express , Virgin Mobile, Priceline, AT&T and in his current position as president and CEO of PayPal Holdings Inc. “They say leadership is defined in times of stress, and I think Krav Maga trains you for those moments,” he says.


Krav Maga teaches students attack moves that quickly neutralize a threat. Here, Mr. Schulman, right, drills a situation when an attacker catches a kick and tries for a takedown with Mr. Zelig. PHOTO: JASON HENRY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Krav Maga, or “contact combat” in Hebrew, is a self-defense and fighting system that combines techniques from judo, boxing, wrestling and aikido. It was originally taught to the Israeli army. Today, the practice has been embraced by law-enforcement agencies, as well as gyms, where a faster-paced version has become an increasingly popular workout.

Mr. Schulman, 59, was introduced to the practice when he was 13 and visiting Israel. “I was living on a kibbutz and was put into youth military training,” he recalls. “I was a skinny little kid and it was incredibly intense, but also extraordinarily practical and useful in stressful situations involving conflict.”

In Krav Maga, all elements of the body—legs, knees, elbows, hands, feet—are used as tools to strike and defend. “People complain about having less resources, but having too many tools often starves you from being as creative as you might be,” Mr. Schulman says.

Mr. Schulman rediscovered Krav Maga after college and now practices daily. He splits his time with his wife between Silicon Valley and the New York City area. (The couple has two college-aged children.)

He trains at Tactica Krav Maga Institute in Santa Clara, Calif. At Gotham Gym in New York he boxes and slips in some Krav Maga kicks.

“Part of the Krav Maga philosophy is that the best way to win a fight is not to get into a fight. So we spend a lot of time figuring out how do you de-escalate situations and win through avoidance of conflict,” he says.

When conflict is unavoidable, Krav Maga teaches how to use everything at your disposal to neutralize a threat while remaining calm under pressure. “My teacher always says, ‘Standing still is asking to be hit.’ That’s a valuable lesson in business,” he says. “If you stand still as a business just because things are going well and you don’t challenge yourself, inevitably your competition catches up with you.”



Mr. Schulman gets an intense core workout by keeping steady on skateboards while he hits the heavy bags during a Krav Maga training session. PHOTO: JASON HENRY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The Workout
Mr. Schulman trains for a minimum of one hour daily during the week and up to three hours on Saturdays and Sundays. He warms up on the speed bag or heavy bag, sometimes challenging his core by balancing each foot on a skateboard, and will then do footwork drills, like various kicks, to loosen up. The next phase involves working on technique, like a particular combination of kicking and striking, or escaping from a headlock, followed by 15 to 20 minutes of sparring. He might have to disarm someone with a knife, stick or gun.

Once he’s worn out from sparring, he finishes the workout with a set of drills. He might bear-crawl around the perimeter of the room, stopping in each corner to perform push-ups, then reverse and go the opposite direction. “I might end up doing 150 push-ups in that exercise,” he says. “It requires incredible focus to get through it when your body is already at its limit.”

Mr. Schulman typically works one-on-one with a coach or sparring partner, but says it’s also important to train with groups. “You don’t want to get too used to one fighting style,” he says. “Often in fights, there are multiple attackers.”



Mr. Schulman does more work with Mr. Zelig. The fighting system was originally introduced to the Israeli army. A faster-paced, less-combative version has become a popular workout. PHOTO: JASON HENRY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The Diet
Mr. Schulman has half of a cup of coffee pre-workout. “That’s just enough to get the body going without having coffee sloshing around in my stomach during a workout,” he says. Post-workout he has yogurt and fruit. Lunch is light, usually a salad, and dinner is a protein, often steak or fish, with a vegetable or salad. Two to three times a week he must attend a work lunch or dinner. “I’ll have one or two sips of wine to be social, because people don’t want to drink alone,” he says.

The Gear & Cost
Mr. Schulman likes the minimalism of Krav Maga. He spars barefoot. His uniform consists of Nike Pro Combat compression shorts, a T-shirt, a mouth guard and Revgear MMA gloves, which retail between $30 and $60. “If we’re really going at it, I wear shin guards,” he says. “I have scars on my legs from not wearing them.”



Mr. Schulman hits the heavy bags to improve his striking power. He says the workouts have helped him learn to think clearly under pressure. PHOTO: JASON HENRY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

THE KRAV MAGA MENTALITY

Krav Maga might look like something out of “Fight Club,” but proponents say the philosophy of the fighting system develops skills that translate to the office.

“Krav Maga training develops an individual’s ability to effectively deal with confrontation,” says Danny Zelig, founder of the Tactica Krav Maga Institute, based in San Francisco. “People learn to maintain confidence and mental function without shying away from conflict due to fear of confrontation.”

“Making decisions under stress boosts mental strength and teaches students to focus their efforts and energy on the most important, immediate needs,” he says. Krav Maga develops heightened negotiation and improvisation skills through situational awareness, he says.

“An individual learns to take cues from others during their attempts to de-escalate and negotiate with an aggressor during dangerous situations,” Mr. Zelig says. “A heightened sense of awareness allows leaders to understand their peers, co-workers and upper management and to be in tune and aware of their co-workers’ current mental states by the cues they give.”

[GeneChing]

Happens to all styles, once they franchise...

Battle Royale Over Rightful Heir to Israeli Self-Defense Discipline


Haim Gidon, left, a claimant to the Krav Maga grandmaster title, at the beach in his hometown, Netanya, Israel. “Even with eye gouging, you have to know how,” he said. “You have to bring your thumb all the way in.”CreditUriel Sinai for The New York Times
By Isabel Kershner

Dec. 30, 2017
NETANYA, Israel — More martial than art, this form of fighting extols the virtues of a poke in the eye and a timely kick to the groin. Its masters insist it is not a sport, because there are no rules, except for one: to survive.

Krav Maga, the rough, close-combat self-defense system developed in the Israeli military, has become a mainstay of special forces training here and an increasingly popular Israeli export.

Global terrorism has increased the demand among law enforcement agencies and civilians abroad for instruction. And in a kind of return compliment, a detailed manual titled “How to Survive in the West,” and attributed to the Islamic State, advised jihadist recruits to learn the moves.

But about 80 years after the Krav Maga street-fighting system was conceived, its champions are sparring among themselves. The man credited with creating Krav Maga, Emrich Lichtenfeld, known as Imi, a boxing and wrestling champion who immigrated from Czechoslovakia and settled in the coastal town of Netanya, died in 1998 at the age of 88.

Now his disciples, and the disciples’ disciples, are competing over whose school is the most authentic and who is the real grandmaster. It is like a family fighting over an inheritance.

“The martial arts world is replete with controversy about who is the top instructor within a given discipline,” said David Kahn, the chief instructor of the American branch of the Israeli Krav Maga Association that Mr. Lichtenfeld had established. “Unfortunately, Krav Maga finds itself embroiled in this same type of internecine conflict, as Imi never appointed a successor.”

One of the claimants to his throne is Haim Gidon, 73, who leads the association. Mr. Kahn, his longtime student, was recently in Israel to help produce a documentary aimed at recording the history of Krav Maga, weighing the various claims to Mr. Lichtenfeld’s mantle and validating Mr. Gidon’s credentials.


Israelis practicing Krav Maga during a lesson at Mr. Gidon’s gym in Netanya. There is no competitive Krav Maga circuit, because the idea is to break all the rules, not play by them.CreditUriel Sinai for The New York Times

Imi Lichtenfeld was born in 1910 in Hungary and reached adulthood in Bratislava, in what was then Czechoslovakia. The son of a police detective who also ran a wrestling club, Mr. Lichtenfeld excelled in various athletic disciplines and is said to have developed his street fighting and mixed martial arts skills to protect his community from attacks by anti-Semites and marauding fascists.

Mr. Lichtenfeld set off for the British Mandate of Palestine in 1940, and he began training the Zionist forces in skills like stick fighting and bayonet tactics.

After the state of Israel was established in 1948, he became the Israeli military’s close-quarters combat chief. The system has since evolved into a vital component of Israeli combat training. Elite forces endure many hours of intense coaching. There is no competitive Krav Maga circuit, because the idea is to break all the rules, not play by them, although the army did institute an annual Krav Maga contest a few years ago.

The chief producer of the documentary, Paul Szyarto, an American fitness guru and co-founder of VMMA, a chain of mixed martial arts training centers, accompanied Mr. Kahn to Israel and interviewed Mr. Gidon for the movie.

The best defense, said Mr. Gidon — who drove a tank in the 1967 and 1973 Israeli wars — is to avoid getting into a confrontation in the first place and, if possible, to run. “But if there’s no choice and there’s a knife to your throat, you’ve got to know how to face it,” he said. “Even with eye gouging, you have to know how. You have to bring your thumb all the way in.”

For Mr. Szyarto, Krav Maga encapsulates the essence of Israeliness: resourcefulness, versatility and a mind-set of doing whatever it takes to win. Mr. Gidon said he agreed, at least in the military context, but also preached humility. “There is no such person as a fearless person,” he said. “The point is to deal with the fear.”

Mr. Gidon, who worked in the diamond industry after being released from military service, said he first met Mr. Lichtenfeld in 1969 and began training with him. As evidence of how far their relationship went back, Mr. Gidon related that Mr. Lichtenfeld attended his wedding in 1974.

As further proof that Mr. Gidon can claim to be the rightful heir, Mr. Kahn produced a notarized document signed by Mr. Lichtenfeld in 1996, in which he graded his top trainees, granting his principal student, Eli Avikzar, and Mr. Gidon what was then the highest rank, 8th Dan, followed by two ranked 7th Dan and one ranked 6th.


Mr. Gidon teaching at his gym. He prefers to remain above the fray regarding seniority in the Krav Maga world. “A teacher teaches,” he said. “Who should judge? Those who learn.”CreditUriel Sinai for The New York Times

Some online skeptics say Mr. Lichtenfeld was so enfeebled by then that he would have signed anything if asked.

Mr. Avikzar died in 2004.

Mr. Lichtenfeld’s association and its disciples spawned other organizations such as the Krav Maga Federation, the Israeli Krav Maga Federation, Krav Magen and Krav Maga Global, all considered reputable and authentic schools and all vying for business abroad. Graduates of those schools, in turn, went on to found the next generation of organizations — though purists, who trace Krav Maga instructors’ lineage and pedigree almost like a rabbinical dynasty, consider some of them fake.

Another claimant to the title of grandmaster is Haim Zut, 82, who was listed as 7th Dan in Mr. Lichtenfeld’s document. Mr. Zut, who leads the Krav Maga Federation and runs several clubs in Israel, said in an interview that he had been Mr. Lichtenfeld’s first student and that as the oldest surviving disciple, he should be considered the titleholder.

Then there is Eyal Yanilov, 58, who trained with Mr. Lichtenfeld and Mr. Avikzar and was also listed as 7th Dan. His Krav Maga Global organization’s website credits him as being “the only person in the world to whom Imi presented the ‘Founders Diploma of Excellence.’ ”

Ran Nakash, 39, who led courses for the military’s Krav Maga instructors and runs a boxing and Krav Maga gym in Tel Aviv, called the argument over Mr. Lichtenfeld’s legacy nonsense. “There is no heir,” he said. “Everyone is doing their own thing.” Mostly, he said, it is the military that sets the tone on training.

Mr. Nakash, bearded and tattooed, said it doesn’t matter how big or strong your attacker is if you go for weak spots like the eyes and groin. “If I’ve been stabbed, am I giving in or not?” he said, adding that a reaction in real time can mean staying alive.

One recent weeknight, about a dozen sweaty men and teenage boys trained at Mr. Gidon’s no-frills dojo, or studio, in a residential neighborhood of Netanya. They practiced fending off a knife attack and getting out of a stranglehold, repeating the moves until they came naturally.

United States special forces stationed in the region recently attended a training session here, and Mr. Gidon was leaving the next day for a training session in Poland. His so-called Gidon System of Krav Maga developed the concept of “retsef,” continuous motion allowing for a simultaneous combination of defensive and offensive moves.

Mr. Gidon said he preferred to remain above the fray regarding seniority in the Krav Maga world. “A teacher teaches,” he said. “Who should judge? Those who learn.”