is Krav Maga really effective

[Abschaum]

Bas Rutten explains it:

YouTube - Rallarsving - Bas Rutten

 

[Soul Rebel 2]

People are too blinded by the bullshido that they assume that it cant be taught right. IMO as long as a martial art has realistic sparring then it would have to be somewhat effective. Getting hit in the gym is the key thing that will prepare someone for a fight on the street, its often the thing that separates you from your assailant.

As for gun and knife disarming; its possible that you may find yourself in a situation where running is not an option. Scoffing at people learning disarms, saying that "its better to just run away" is no different than a krav girl saying "if you put me in an armbar I'll just bite your leg".

 

[Lionidas]

After training in Krav Maga, Boxing, Muay Thai and BJJ these are my thoughts.
Krav Maga is effective for self-defense situations only.
You can't use the moves in sport fighting, they're illegal and brutal when applied correctly.

Sparring is the most important aspect of training which is Krav's only real weakness. It's almost impossible to spar 100% because the moves are meant to a 1 and done deal.
Kick to the nuts....run away. Stomp on the foot, hammer fist the groin, eye gouge and run away. These moves are meant to last a few seconds at the most.

Having said that, it's important to train in Boxing, Muay Thai and BJJ in addition to your Krav Maga training if you want to be fully ready in any self-defense scenario. Boxing is probably the most important martial art to add to your Krav Maga training. It teaches you how to throw a punch but how TAKE a punch as well which is equally as important.

Krav Maga teaches fantasic muscle-memory moves. Having been in a few street fights growing up, I can say with no shame that I have done a kick to the groin and it worked. What people on here don't understand is that many kicks in Muay Thai are meant as damage over time techniques because it's a sport fight. You have multiple rounds and many minutes to slowly damage your opponents legs and body to make them fatigued which will in turn help you knock them out in later rounds or win a decision.
Krav Maga is about brutal, fast moves that last 15-30 seconds MAX. You kick the groin, punch a solid 1-2, hammer fist and run away.

In conclusion, Krav Maga is self-defense only. In order to use it to its full potential, you have to add sparring.


p.s. After training in multiple arts and sparring in multiple arts, Krav Maga and Boxing are the two best combinations for self-defense. If you can afford both or find a gym that offers both arts then I highly recommend that combination.

 

[clift]

The thing that gets me about Krav Maga is that it is basically every Traditional Martial Art I've ever seen but with a new name and they swear up and down that it is new.

Then they give you these life or death scenarios that statistically no one would have a chance of surviving and they tell you to hit the guy in the nuts, or rake his eyes, etc. Basically just shit that you could have told yourself to do without paying for it.

I've taken Krav Maga and it's just not impressive. You'd be better off learning boxing, MT, wrestling, or BJJ and just telling yourself that everyonce in a while, you might have to kick someone in the nuts, poke them in the eye, or run the fuck away.

I don't know about that man, I don't think there's any martial art that teaches you how to disarm someone with a gun. This is military type training more so than a martial art, even though that's what it goes by.

Let's face facts though, you can't really practice it in a realistic scenario... so when push comes to shove only some people are going to be able to pull that stuff off, some will freeze like anyone else. This is like the "black belt" in Kempo who can kick perfectly and punch perfectly when calm, but in a street fight freaks out and does stupid things he'd never do under normal circumstances.

Of course with military training added on top of it you should have people who can stay fairly calm under intense situations, so it may be more applicable for them(especially since a lot of the moves are made to kill or maim the offender).

 

[clift]

Sparring is the most important aspect of training which is Krav's only real weakness. It's almost impossible to spar 100% because the moves are meant to a 1 and done deal.
Kick to the nuts....run away. Stomp on the foot, hammer fist the groin, eye gouge and run away. These moves are meant to last a few seconds at the most.

That's what I'm saying :wink:

There's no in between... if you're in one of these life or death situations you go for these moves with the intensity of a person staking there life on that strike. You can only guess at it's true effectiveness in battle until you (hopefully won't) need it. I think most can agree though that a hammer fist to the nuts will distract the average individual enough to let go of your shirt or release a hold enough to get away.

 

[Higus]

I think the main appeal to KM is that it trains you for self defense scenarios like multiple attackers, armed attackers, having a gun pointed at your face, etc. They don't teach you any different techniques than you would learn in a kickboxing class or a submission grappling class, but they teach you the application of those techniques in extreme scenarios. Think of the difference between someone who only hits the heavy bag and someone who actually spars. It's one thing to understand how to punch and kick, but it's another to actually do them against someone fighting back.
Likewise, a boxer might understand how to get in range of a person in order to land their strikes, but a KM expert would be prepared to use similar techniques against an armed opponent or against multiple attackers because that is specifically what he trained for.

 

[crunchie]

The thing that gets me about Krav Maga is that it is basically every Traditional Martial Art I've ever seen but with a new name and they swear up and down that it is new.

Then they give you these life or death scenarios that statistically no one would have a chance of surviving and they tell you to hit the guy in the nuts, or rake his eyes, etc. Basically just shit that you could have told yourself to do without paying for it.

I've taken Krav Maga and it's just not impressive. You'd be better off learning boxing, MT, wrestling, or BJJ and just telling yourself that everyonce in a while, you might have to kick someone in the nuts, poke them in the eye, or run the fuck away.

hahahahaha 100% sums it all up, my buddy does krav maga, spends loads of money on 'seminars' as well, such a waste. i went along to the class, it was an hour of 'now if ur opponent tries to punch u, kick him in the nuts, chop his throat'... at the end i was like 'so we dont spar?' my buddy came to my jitz class the following week..... a 110lb middle-aged woman twisted him into a pretzel and tapped him about 6 times in 3 minutes

 

[spankdaddy]

I write without ever having taken Krav Maga classes, but my impression is that they make their practitioners comfortable with inflicting serious damage (eye poke, throat piercing, etc) in danger scenarios... so I believe it's probably effective.

 

[rnc357]

Here is my take on krav. In my 20s I practiced combat ju-jitsu at a hardcore gym. The ground stuff was a lot like Bjj and the stand up was kick boxing. Also I did do Bjj for about a year. This was before MMA. Im now in my mid 40s and I practice Krav. I have also worked partime bouncing/security jobs for the last fifteen years. I have had many injuries through the years ACL, hamstring, tricep surgery, broken ankle and ribs. plus four concussions. If I was a young man I think wrestling/Bjj and MT/Boxing would be the best. But as a older guy looking for practical self defense I think Krav is Ok, even though it will never replace certain ju-jitsu techniqes (chokes) that I know so well. I do find it funny when some of the younger krav guys talk about how bad they would be in a bar fight. Also the bar where I work is near an mma gym, most of the fighters are great guys, but there is a group in there early 20s that come in. They are a bunch of trash talking punks with a couple years of training and a few fights under there belt and they cant believe when a old busted up bouncer throws them out of the bar so easily when they start to unleash there amazing mma skills.

 

[FlyingOmoplata]

I tried... really tried to get into Krav Maga. Here is MY experience with it.

I had been looking for a new place to train, and one of the places I checked out was a KM gym. I wanted to both see what all the hype was about and see if I had anything I could gain from training there, so me and a buddy took a trip down and audited the class. Here is a rough breakdown of that experience.

The class started with a short run, the instructor had all of the students run to the end of the block and back, yes, that is right, a single block, not around the block, not past the block, but to the end and back. This is what served as the warm-up. Not exactly a brilliant start, but, I wasn’t always a fan of the warm-ups at my previous gym either and mostly handled conditioning/strength on my own.

From there we were paired up with students and instructed on the first of many “knee to the balls” drills. Our “opponent” was expected to hold up a suitcase pad at abdomen level, pretend to punch us and we were to “grab the shoulder and knee the pad”. This knee was intended to simulate a knee to the balls, which seemed fair enough, anything short of simulating that would be insane. Most of the focus on this drill was “intensity” the instructor really pushed the students to not only knee the pad, but to knee it like you wanted to hurt the person behind it. However, the instructor didn’t want so much intensity that the person on the other side of the pad grimaced… and in fact he asked me and my friend to “knee with less force” which seemed very contrary to the “knee with intensity” statement. This actually sent up the second red flag for me, as apparently intensity is only good until it causes discomfort.

The rest of the drills were all essentially variations on the knee the balls drill, and towards the end of class my friend and I were getting a little bored of this. At one point, when he wasn’t occupied, I pulled the instructor aside and asked if/when they did sparring for the class. And his response was and I quote “Krav Maga is not about whomping on each other. If you guys want to be tough and whomp on each other go find a MMA class. Krav Maga is about self-defense”. We left after that and frankly, I worry about the people who train there as they were all middle aged women and men, all of whom were out of shape and liable to piss someone off more than successfully defend themselves with the techniques as they were being executed – especially without live resistance in their regular training.

I was a little bit let down, I was hoping for something modern and real world applicable. I left feeling like I had just walked out of a 1990's Karate McDojo.

 

[pash123]

Krava maga is a waste of time. It's a gimmick and a way to take people's money just like all the other "self defense" martial arts. Krav Maga is aimed at people who are too scared to train in a real boxing, MT, MMA gym. These people think that because they go to a few classes of Krav, they will be untouchable on the street. This is false, because they do not do hard sparring. In the heat of the battle, guys who train in krav maga will not have the reflexes, the expereince of the knowledge to handle a real time fight. Therefore krava maga doesn't serve its purpose for defending yourself in the streets.

Their gun/knife defense looks pathetic. I'm by no means gun or a war expert, however their techniques seem flimsy and unrealistic. By using common sense, most of their techniques just wouldn't work in a real gun/knife situation. When all of these techniques are demonstrated, there seems to be no resistance from the attacker (guy with the gun/knife). He basically lets the other guy perform all these fancy techniques on him and essentially let's himself get beaten up. Doesn't sound like that would happen in the streets...

You want real knife defense? Check out Jon Fitch training with US Army on knife defense by using his BJJ and grappling skills. This is some serious shit:



I also doubt it is used by the Army of Israel. MMA styled approach to army training has been around for a long time and has been proven to be most effective. Combat sambo has been around in the Russian Army since the 1920s. US Army uses MCMAP which is basically like a crash course in BJJ and MMA. This is because an MMA styled approach is ideal when defending yourself.

If a krav maga guy decides to fight a boxer or MT guy in the street, it will be lights out for mr.maga.

 

[Frode Falch]

Is it just me, or does all the negative stuff about KM in this thread come from people who never have trained it seriously?

 

[devante]

the bottom line is 90% of all students at a martial arts school of any style will never be that good, could be lack of coordination or commitment,no real natural ability,etc
most students ive seen train really would be lucky to win a street fight, however the training does increase there chances.
every school only has a handful of good fighters,but a shitload of fighters who think there good.

in the context of being a competitive amateur or pro your right; most people don't have the determination or even the requisite athletic ability to compete and we aren't even discussing phys/mental toughness.

so most people won't and can't compete on any level; as far as the streetfight, i think that is more of a mentality thing. But once again most people lack that as well; but the last part you wrote is the truest, most people think they are better than they are and that is why most people get beat up and most people don't get better.

 

[Marvin Covar]

Haven't trained in it, so i don't really know. Interested in giving it a shot, though.

 

[db03892]

Krav maga isn't even a martial art let alone a sport.
It is shameful, and the people who practice it have no real skill.
Just a bunch of thugs.

 

[DoctorTaco]

KM slogan, "Krav Maga: Hey, It's better than nothing!"

 

[PostcardMMA]

I think Krav Maga and other self-defense oriented arts are useful, but you have to understand the context. If you want to be a fighter and have the time and interest, it will obviously be more useful to train a competitive sport with a lot of sparring. A trained fighter will also usually do better in a real fight as well because of their training, reflexes, etc. It will probably also be easier for a trained fighter to successfully apply self-defense techniques in a real situation because they're already used to combat and have trained their reflexes.

Krav Maga and other self-defense classes are useful for normal people who want to improve their chances of surviving in a life-or-death situation but don't have the time or interest to train to be a fighter. Learning to become comfortable with a few disabling techniques that will give you time to run away is definitely valuable to the average person.

 

[My little Tony]

Fight Quest - S01E09 - (Krav Maga) - Full Episode - YouTube

 

[quatin]

Is it just me, or does all the negative stuff about KM in this thread come from people who never have trained it seriously?

Or from people who went to some McDojo for 1 day. What is this stupid shit about no sparring in Krav? Who made that up?

 

[FlyingOmoplata]

Or from people who went to some McDojo for 1 day. What is this stupid shit about no sparring in Krav? Who made that up?

Of the three schools in the immediate area, none of them offer sparring.

If 3 out of 3 KM schools are McDojos....