"Krav Maga"

[KenJeet]

Just wanted to know the overall consensus on Krav Maga. Black Belt Magazine(Yearbook Issue) recently named it one of the top ten cream of the crop reality based fighting systems. What do all of you think about it for pure street self defense against all kinds of attacks, including those with weapons, and mass attacks?

[Maxximus]

I think it definitely offers good real world fighting ideas and self defense...but from what I've heard, it also has no real emphasis on conditioning and sparring. If that's the case i don't see how any techniques it uses, no matter how practical, can really be depended on in a real situation.

[GinSueDog]

I heard the same thing as well. That the majority of there training is using drills.-ED

[kenpo-power]

You seem to be forgetting that kava maga was developed during war time by the israeli's to be a very effective means of combat. It is not a system that is set up for point or full contact sport fighting it is for real defense. The system relies on scientific principles to deliver an effective and efficent means of self defense.

[SweepEm]

I don't know that much about the martial art except from second hand information, but I believe that this martial art might be one that tries to hone your "street" fighting skills to the point of being very effective in both offense and defense, whereas other martial arts have the classical sense of instruction.

[GinSueDog]

All I have to say is that just because it is used for wartime doesn't mean it is effective for street defense or self defense. I mean from the gun disarms that I saw it didn't seem too street effective to me. As it is, sparring is necessary for anyone serious about there training and self defense, drills just simply are not enough IMHO. BTW, Kung Fu claims to have been developed for wartime and it's effectiveness is questionable at best if not down right doubtful.-ED

[Mako]

I've never trained Krav Maga, but i've viewed their entire set of instructionals, and it seems to be a pretty complete stand-up self-defense art. (grabs, bear-hugs, strikes, gun, knife, etc.) Their limited ground techniques are a bit questionable, but as far as a stand-up purely self-d (I don't think it would translate to NHB at all), I thought it looked pretty solid.

[sccr06]

No emphasis on things like conditioning probably have to do with it being a developed hand-to-hand combat method not a martial art, per-se.
If you have hand-to-hand in the military you probably won't need to incorporate conditioning into it because in the military you do conditioning every morning at PT. This is separate from the combatives training you recieve.
Again, with the sparring, it is likely that they don't work sparring into a compressed military schedule and so they just train the techniques and then expect the soldiers to work on their own.
At least that is the way the US does it.

[Martial Artist]

TTT

I put TTT on anything that has Krav Maga written on it

[Machine]

Krav Maga is a very solid and pratical Martial Art. Obviously any Martial Art is only as good as it's pratictioner, and for the average person this art is very good.

As for conditioning it is not the Arts responsibility to improve that, its the individuals resposibility. In the clases they do do conditioning drills.

And yes sparring is a very important part of Krav Maga training.

The arts premise is to destroy a threat and never give up. In classes they do alot of mental aggression training. They base their techniques on simple natural body moves and follow it up by what they call combatives (knees,elbows, hands,legs, etc.).

Also Krav Maga is very open minded as into cross training if you so desire. At the Krav Maga National Training Center in LA you can get instruction on Krav Maga, and also instruction by people like a BB in BJJ, Bas Rutten, Bob Kahman, and Oleg Taktarov.They have a guy there named Amir Perets he is a hard core. He's from the Israel Army and watching him do Krav Maga and Weapon takeways, i'll guarantee you he would be very street efective. As for the ground he was ver solid there too.

They have a guy