Krav Maga

[Aaron04]

Hello, I was wondering if anyone here has tried Krav Maga yet. It seems to be a pretty good system. I've heard mostly good (and a few bad) things about it. The stand-up portion seems to be pretty good and I know that most of the ground work is based on BJJ. Apparently there is some "dirty stuff" added in, like biting, eye gouging, etc.

Has anyone here ever trained in it? Or rolled with a KM guy? One strike against KM is apparently you must complete level 1 training before you even begin to do groundwork.

[Sean J]

Krav Maga was around long before anyone outside Brasil had ever heard of BJJ. But basically it is put together of elements of classic Japanese methods - including Jiu Jitsu. So I don't see why they should not picked up a few things from BJJ.

I am not too impressed with the system as such, though. For a while we had a couple of guy training at our dojo - KM practitioners who had even gone through training with the Israeli personal protection guru - I always forget his name - the most famous of them anyway. They also seem to waste precious time doing passive defenses and such like in any other main stream martial art.
I think it depends very much on the practitioners and their instructors ... I already see signs that KM - after it has been handed down a few generations outside the environment where people need it for fighting, and when the instructors have no practical experience, then it will be no different from any other MA based on Jiu Jitsu, Karate or the like.