Hi, This site might interest one and all. http://www.isayeret.com/overview/kravmaga.htm We describe KM as self protection and not self defence, because situational awareness is the key to many of the techniques. For example, going alone to a cash machine late at night is probbly not the smartest of moves, however in such a situation and you are being approached, request the other person or persons to be polite and stay a few yards away and point to where you want them to stop. The response will be either an apology and you can assume a fair degree of safety, or the request is ignored. Then you have at least some warning of impending doom. KM is about fighting from a position of disadvantage, so premptive moves are practiced over and over. The techniques involved are better demonstrated than described, especially the one above. KM is a mindset. Avoid trouble wherever possible, but carry the fight to the opponent and leg it, cursing your stupidity for not behaving sensibly. As KM has developed to reflect changing circumstances, the techniques have been refined to deliver optimum responses. Use Google to search Krav Maga and I think you will all be impressed. Pericles
Don't get it. Sounds like the stuff given out in 'assertiveness training' seminars, some of which doesn't come across as polite at all! Are you saying you would smack someone 'pre-emptively' for not obeying your request to stand clear? The Japanese have a word, 'zanshin', which is roughly translated as 'awareness'. For me that means I take responsibility and try to be aware of threats as much as possible in any situation. In your scenario, I think it would be up to me to be aware of avoiding the risk, even maybe not using the machine if I was suspicious, not to go round telling other people where to stand and hoping they comply. Sounds a bit too military for civilian life! Is there a 'drill' to follow as in 1. identify threat 2. engage 3. disable ??
Hi, As mentioned in my posting, going to a cash machine a night is not sensible and on a balance of possibilities, being approached by a group of 3 or 4 young men should cause concern. I suggested a way to verify what the immediate future might hold. You are at liberty to make your own choices. But, having learned of this tactic, you may well one night have the opportunity to use it. After all s--t happens. Pericles
Certainly does. If '3 young men' then the level of threat is greater than I read into your original posting. I was once followed by 3 such blokes when leaving a bar. I sensed their pace quickening so I immediately implemented plan 1 - ran like ****! It worked, as my holiday chalet was within easy distance. On another occasion when I sensed a threat I did what I had been trained to do in aikido - place myself in a position whereby the body of one guy blocked any attack by the other. I could then deal with the first guy - shomen ate face strike and use his attack energy to spin him into the second guy, then run like**** again! I hasten to add I'm now older and don't seem to be such a target. In the UK guys up to the age of about 25 are most at risk, especially where drink is involved, and they are very likely to end up in the cash machine situation you describe.
Hi Kiaiki, Krav Maga is much about psychology and circumstances when used on the street. Some of the techniques can cause appalliing damage, but can be applied in a more gentle manner. In judo, a throw over the shoulder can be a soft takedown or can be carried out with power and height so the assailant goes head first into the concrete. My middle son is 16. I am 61 and we train together in Hendon. There is no way I can compete with his athletic prowess. I wallow in his wake, but his speed and guile helps me to expect the unexpected. He stopped training in Shotokan at 1st Kyu when 13, because he was bored. Krav Maga is full contact and that he likes. Interestingly, last term some clown at his school offended my son mightily, by damaging his newly acquired moped. The clash did not take place because my son seemed to be so incensed that the look on his face was enough to send the other much larger guy fleeing. Discussing the incident later that day, my son said he knew he could have demolished the idiot instantly and that knowledge prevented him from carrying out the intent. Posture and preparation. Position and committment. Our resident instructor is Israeli and for gradings another instructor comes over from Israel to evaluate progress. However, the order in which techniques are taught are based upon what it would be useful to know and not on a formal and ritualised oriental teaching system. Most sporting martial arts are just that. No contact seems to be the rule. The various forms of wrestling are going to be useful for conditioning and understanding that some pain is involved, but ending up on the floor is the wrong place to start fleeing for your life. Overall, Krav Maga is predicated on the idea that there will more than one assailant, all armed with weapons and no help is on hand. From that position of disadvantage, you carry the fight to the opposition and then withdraw. We train against attacks where the weapons are revealed only at the last moment. Everyday, stabbings occur, so here are some tips. Principles of Krav Maga • Eternal vigilance • Avoid injury • Take advantage of natural reflexes • Defend and attack simultaneously • Attack the vulnerable areas of the body • Use all natural weapons as well as anything close at hand • The only rule is there are no rules Components of Krav Maga • Defences against punches and kicks • Releases from bear hugs and chokes • Defences against knifes, clubs and axes • Defences against firearms • Defences against multiple attackers • Various types of arm blows • Various types of kicks • Sparring under pressure • Controlled ground fighting Style Overview Krav Maga is unarmed personal self protection. It relies on natural instincts and reflexes for effectiveness. Situational awareness and mental conditioning are integral to the training. Never to do more than necessary, but react with speed, economy of motion, and the appropriate measure of force. Speed is paramount and the trainee is taught to strike instinctively at the vulnerable parts. Krav Maga is a dynamic system and constantly evolves as situations require using continuous motion to complete the defence. The system is battle-tested and street-proven. People when faced with threatening or violent behaviour experience shock and fear. Most assaults are sudden and frightening and many people experience mental & physical paralysis for a short time. By not reacting swiftly, the initiative remains with the attacker. Krav Maga teaching assumes the defender is in a position of great disadvantage. The training sessions are designed to simulate real situations and so beginners learn to leave their initial fear and surprise in the practice arena. The simple techniques are repeated time after time until they become instinctive and usable. Krav Maga training emphasises situational awareness on the street. Constant watchfulness is emphasised at all times. Do not walk blithely into danger talking on a mobile phone. Always check 360 and be ready to take action. Escape to safety if appropriate. Practice deception and negotiation to gain space and time. Appear to submit and wait for the right moment, but the first principle is to survive. In addition to surviving the attack, it is important to avoid injury as far as possible. By taking advantage of natural reflexes to combine defence and attack at once, ten hours of Krav Maga instruction delivers better self defence abilities than two years learning complex martial art manoeuvres. In life threatening situations, the rule is there are no rules, so use all natural weapons as well as anything close at hand. Our typical training itinerary Close range with multiple knife thrusts. Medium range slashing attacks. Long range with fast moving assailant. Knife attacks from behind. Two or more assailants. Two defenders against one assailant. Team defences, three, four or more, defending against multiple assailants. Overhead swings to head and shoulders with axe. Defences against strangling and headlocks. Submission techniques. Releases from four directions with minimum damage to assailant. Ground fighting techniques. Principles and techniques of defence against firearms. Automatic pistols and revolvers. Neutralizing threats from rifle, shotgun or SMG. Hostage situations. Putting defence into practice. Street simulations. Fighting spirit. Multiple attacks from by other KM students and the course instructors in situations matching difficult street incidents. Dealing with the consequences of violent incidents. Looking at the civil and legal implications of self defence. How people react, both physically and mentally. Websites of Interest www.israelikrav.com www.sdtactics.com.au http://www.isayeret.com/overview/kravmaga.htm www.krav-maga-sdf.org.uk Regards, Pericles
Sounds interesting. Our style of aikido is very similar in outlook and composition. The only exception would be grappling groundwork, where I would have to rely on the judo I did some years earlier. Our style, Shudokan uses atemi to a considerable extent (striking) while many others use what I would call a feint. If not blocked or redirected, the blows would definitely hit home. We also emphasise weapons defence including modern 'street' weapons like baseball bats, large knives etc. which not all aikido schools do. I agree that simple confidence building and a small range of good techniques is best for self defence and our school taught a series of very simple moves over a couple of months which could be remembered under pressure, including strikes to the eyes etc. The founder of aikido synthesised many techniques from other arts and moulded them into a coherent system. Sounds like Krav Maga has done the same for street defence.
Hi Kiaiki, A couple of years ago I tried to get the boys interested in Aikido. I went along as well and discovered I could not complete a forward roll, let along a break fall. I hit the deck like a sack of spuds. Pity really, because I like the flow of Aikido. In Krav Maga, we seek to go to ground on top with our elbows striking home. When there is a cushion like that beneath me, I am ok. To get to that position, we always carry the defence to the assailant, moving fast forward with the multiple strikes to throat, face and testicles. We train to go from full stop to full speed without thinking what to do. The eyes see and body responds. Drop the opposition and leg it. We are not there to get into a combat situation. Being on the ground is not where we want to be. Great emphasis is placed on standing up, but out of reach. You have to see it to understand the way it works. I had not seen the technique demonstrated before in any other martial art. Is it part of the curriculum in Aikido? Regards, Pericles
Perincles, How is KM more effective against multiple attackers than any other art ? Surely it's the practitioners competance and ability more than the art itself that matters in a self defence situation.
Not really the same approach. We train in some techniques which could be used offensively -after all, we need to know how to attack each other in order to practise defence. The emphasis, however, is mostly on using the energy of the attacker to redirect with a throw or disable with a lock or strike. In this way, we may deal with multiple attackers without getting exhausted as quickly because we are using their energy more than our own. As for rushing at them with a series of blows ending up on top on the ground - ever seen how fast a knife can be deployed? I would think there is a high risk of skewering unless you are superhumanly fast. I wouldn't like to try what you decribe because as soon as I launch my attack on one guy, aren't I then completely vulnerable to attacks from the others? I agree with OBCT too, you've got to be exceptionally good and exeptionally calm to make any defence against multiple attackers work. The particular martial art you study is perhaps less important as long as you practice long and hard for a long time before thinking you can handle a street fight against a multiple attackers or a potential weapon. I've seen good demos in dojos against 3 or even 5 attackers, but on the street?
Hi to you both, We come back to the point I made earlier, You have to see it to understand it. Taking OBCT's question first, Krav Maga is not an art. Its origins stem from the Israeli Defence Force's need to train its people in H2H very rapidly. Starting in 1948, Imi Sde-Or created a programme of simple and quickly learned techniques that were were named Krav Maga, in English Contact Combat. I urge you both to look at http://www.isayeret.com/overview/kravmaga.htm and the other sites I posted. It is not just me who is saying Krav Maga is an excellent way for self protection, all around the world military and law enforcement agencies rely on Israeli instructors for training their people. It is not like that with sporting martial arts. As for being calm before conflict, we are anything but. That is the point. Inexperience and fear can result in freezing on the spot. We train against multiple attackers in order to understand the tactics. We train against knives, clubs and firearms. We do not go seeking fights on the street. We actively work to avoid conflict, which is why we practice psychological deception. But, s--t happens and Krav Maga training delivers competence far more rapidly than any conventional martial art that I have seen. There are many great masters out there. I have watched Steve Benitez demonstrate Silat techniques at http://eastweststudios.com/index/index.php?module=htmlpages&func=display&pid=1. He is really good at defeating knife attacks because Silat is an edged weapons battlefield art. Steve has over 20 years of training. If you want to go the mystical and oriental route to harmony and self enlightment, I would not disagree. However, if you want to get good at looking after family and friends, go for Krav Maga. 12 lessons do change people. We see it all the time. Regards, Pericles
QUOTE: PERICLES: "If you want to go the mystical and oriental route to harmony and self enlightment, I would not disagree. However, if you want to get good at looking after family and friends, go for Krav Maga. 12 lessons do change people. We see it all the time." What on earth allows you to judge martial arts in this derogatory way? 'Mystical' elements aside, how many martial arts have you seen in their applied self defence forms? Please apply your own logic. I may not have sen KM except on TV, but neither must you have seen a hard style self defence application of martial arts, if you really believe what you say. This is degenerating into style vs. style which always spirals round and round in these threads, so I'll make this my last contribution: I don't think you can equate 'sports' orientated competition stuff like judo with a battlefield-originated martial art. Even within aikido there are schools which use very little technique which may be applied on the street - equally, there are schools which are very SD orientated and use defences against all the stuff you decribe. Have a look at www.shudokan.info . The 'jutsu' applied techniques used have many hundreds of years of successful testing. I'm told the Tokyo riot police, for example, use many of our techniques. They are just as quick and easy to learn as a set of techniques and psychological approaches. I doubt that there is anything 'new' in any of the recent (last 100 years) self defence schools except against firearms, just modifications and improvements on the same basic repertoire whcih are now being applied to street weapons. Krav Maga obviously suits you and good luck to you, but there are huge numbers of other approaches being used by military and security forces worldwide with which you should compare it, not with sports based martial arts - may as well compare it with beach volleyball, if you get my drift. Look at the profile of the instructor on our website (above) for example.
Hi Kiaiki, Your Aikido site is very good. I am impressed by Sensei's lineage and he certainly is not going to have difficulty in self defence. But, it has taken him years of dedication to get that good. I do not have the time, nor the fitness to get there. I mentioned in an earlier posting that it was the breakfalls that defeated me. I need to stay upright. I trained in Shotokan for two years under Sensei K. Enoeda back in 1973/4 and gave Wing Chun a go around the same time. Since then I have taken a great interest in all forms of martial arts. You have to be very good at them to make them work in self protection. My son Ashley graded 1st Kyu in Shotokan at 13, but all through his gradings he was penalised on many occasions for contact. Pulling punches or kicks in a fight seems counterproductive and that would be my only reservation about the effectiveness of sport martial arts in self protection. I am not knocking these sports, only pointing out that the techniques do not lend theselves very easily to street fighting. By the way, I hope you do not mind but the IDF did incorporate quite a few Aikido moves into KM, as well as a number of Jui Jitsu and other grappling moves. Imi was a top class boxer and wrestler in his youth and used his skills with a knife in Bratislava during the early part of WW11. His book is on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1583940081/102-8593461-8470559?v=glance. I am aware that there are other approaches to training forces around the world. It is just that KM seems to be more wide spread. A quick check of Krav Maga on Google is an eye opener, is all. It is not my intention to create dissension on this site. When next I travel to Nottingham, perhaps we can meet at your dojo or you could meet us at EastWest Studios if you are in NW London. Best regards, Pericles
Time and injury have ruled me out of training at the mo, but thanks for the invite. Staying upright would have been good for me, too. Aeroplaning into the ground at 45 degrees (from a head height throw) onto one shoulder wasn't - especially at my age (now 50). I'm told a few steel pins and chopping out half my collar bone might fix it - for a while! I'm wondering whether something a bit less acrobatic may be sensible! I'm actually toying with ecrima as a complementary art
Hi Kiaki, Escrima would be excellent. Those thin rattan wands pack a punch out of all proportion to their structure. I saw one used to destroy a coconut on tv about a week or two ago. A short length of the plastic pipe now used for central heating and water supplies in houses will substitute very well. I carry off cuts in the boot with other bits of diy plumbing gear, including a cd titled "Become a plumber". My business requires that I work outside the revenue earning times of my clients, so I can be going about my lawful business in less than ideal surroundings. Martial Arts Illustrated had an article some time ago about limb destruction techniques. Simply put, the idea is to seriously numb arms and legs with judicious use of the rattan. A lighting fast series of smacks on wrist, fingers, knees and shoulders are very discouraging to an assailant. Bit like getting the cane, only worse as six of the best arrive in little over 2 seconds and there is every likelyhood of a further six arriving soon after. It would seem that not just toying with escrima and being a diy plumber on the side, could represent a viable system of self protection. Regards, Pericles
Sounds good. I also heard from a UK plumber that a bit of cut off copper 15mm pipe is reasonable to carry ('to a DIY store') as a kubotan substitute, preferably with one end roughly cut off. Ouch. The local escrima club seems to use hardwood for practice - guess a couple of lengths cut off a jo may do for home. Anyway, if it saves my joints at the expense of an attacker's I'm all for it. The walking stick is also very useful in the UK!
I think a kubotan puts you too close to the assailant and the difficulty lies in getting in more than one strike. Escrima stick strikes are lighting fast because they weigh so little. They can be moved as fast as drum sticks. Rattan escrima sticks are easy to buy on the internet. They are 18" to 20" long and flexible. Hardwood would be too stiff I think. This morning, I had the same thought about the walking stick. I had both ankles x-rayed and whilst I waited for the plates, I considered the option of a cane. It would seem that years of activity have stretched ligaments in my ankles so much that a couple of bones in each joint get trapped and pinched. If that is the case and it is not osteo-arthritis, then a small op to tighten the ligaments to hold the bones together and I will be able to run and jump again. I could even try Aikido again. If you cut the 15 mm plastic pipe to 24" and then strike your wrist quickly 2-3 times using the whip in the pipe, you will be stunned at the pain delivered by such an innocuous instrument. And it is not recognisibly a weapon, just something you happen to have handy in your car. The walking stick can be with you all the time, of course. Picture the scene, an aged man hobbling down the street with a walking stick and being confronted by a gang of yobs. " Please let me past" comes the request in a submissive voice. "No way granddad--give us your money." "You know" says the old man, "When you look at railway lines, can you tell in which direction the train passed?" For a brief moment, the yobs are puzzled and inactive as they struggle to answer the question, which is all the time the old fellow needs. ----- Looking down at the bodies squirming on the ground, he smiles, bows and stumps slowly away, his stick in his belt, somewhat resembling the katana of a samurai. Scene fades. OOOOgh, my aching bones, I think I must get a walking stick. Regards, Pericles.
12 lessons? Not to sound disrespectful but you cant even learn how to dance salsa with any degree of proficiency in 12 lessons, how in the heck are you expected to learn how to fight in 12 lessons?
Sounds to me like too much of a marketing ploy. Yes Krav Maga is a practical no fluff reality system but to say that after 12 lessons you will be guaranteed to defend yourself and familly is abit of a far out claim.
I've used the Kubotan succesfully against a knife, in striking and in pain enhancement. Mine was specially machined for me from solid brass so is tougher and heavier than the standard aluminium rubbish. Agreed it is a 'close quarters' weapon but you're going to be close if in danger. As for the walking stick, look at 'Canemasters.com' and Hapkido. There's a lot of traditional 'applied stuff' in this book, which covers short sticks as well: STICK FIGHTING by Masaaki Hatsumi and Quintin Chambers (pub. Kodansha) Books by Takayuki Kubota who 'invented' the kubotan are on this link to Amazon, but many are hard to get now: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos...6971780-1004403
