Merry christmas Jaz.

I think its more a mentality. So pick whatever martial art that lets you develop that; aggression, close-to-real (Sparring) and not to fiddley (realism) etc.

Like when you've been in fights would you say 'the training kicks in' or you just fucking go nuts because you know you can handle yourself which isn't a DIRECT result of the martial art itself, more the training (if that makes sense).

From growing up around it, most of the 'hard' guys were just the psychos and mental like that. Being a psycho,to me, is an extreme end of 'self belief'.

Okay, seeing as I actually teach Krav Maga I might as well weight in on this.

I think a lot of this is based on the people you have met who do Krav Maga. I'm genuinely curious where you saw these guys, I'd like to check it out. It's true that Krav Maga has an overblown badass type reputation due to the way it's marketed sometimes. As a result of this you get a lot of people who attend a weekly class for a short while and brag like they're tough, the same way you see guys who join an MMA gym for a couple of months and walk around telling people they're a cage fighter. I agree, some of the marketing is fucking stupid, but that's a fault of the marketing, not the system.

We do spar. A lot. We also do pressure drills (weapon attacks, multiple attackers) with fully resistant partners, though the amount of fucked up illegal moves we do requires some pretty heavy padding to avoid injury. Anyone who has spent any time with an instructor who knows what they're doing will have done this.

The key thing that people take from pressure drills like this is that they a nasty, messy and a lot of the time you won't make it out safely if at all. One of the main reasons we do this is to drive home the reality that you're not superman and situations like this should be avoided at all costs. We make a point of teaching peripheral awareness, compliance as a first step and focus on how to diffuse situations with self defense as a worst case scenario. It would be irresponsible not to make a point of that. I used to do muay thai and MMA primarily, and despite the fact that I feel more safe now that I know Krav, I'm a lot less likely to get in a fight now.

There was also nothing in that knife attacks video I saw that I disagreed with, or that flies in the face of how knife defense is taught in Krav. Our knife drills look all hectic and fucked up like that most of the time. We also at no point say that the knife defense drills we teach will work 100% of the time because frankly that's fucking ridiculous. No technique works 100% of the time. But it is possible to survive a knife attack using the stuff you learn in Krav, it's happened tons of times, and provided the person who is taught it understands that it's an absolute last resort it's certainly a lot better to know it than otherwise.

I get what your saying Stein and I'm sure that the Krav Maga you teach probably has some real world applications and your honest with the people you teach about its functionality and reliability in certain situations.

The problem is that Krav Maga seems to be such a martial art where charlatans are allowed to flaunt absolute bullshit and have it taken seriously like in the vid below.



For someone who practices Boxing, Thai, Judo, BJJ & MMA this shit never goes down because people who preach bullshit get found out very fucking fast. The martial arts I've just listed have been tried and tested in street and sporting environments and each one has proven its usefulness. I think because Krav has a reputation of being too deadly for sport or whatever, practitioners of it hide behind that veil and never really test out what they've learnt in all scenarios. It's all good and well holding your own sparring sessions with people who have been taught the same thing as you, but what happens against a good grappler or an awesome boxer?

I'm sure there are some really great proponents of Krav Maga who are able to handle themselves in a variety of situations. But from my experience I believe they are the exception rather than the rule.

Lol that guy in the video is called Moni Aizik. He's a compulsive bullshitter, isn't licensed by any Krav Maga association and ironically the only decent martial arts background the guy has is in Judo. He used to compete nationally in Judo competitions when he was younger or something. He tried to get around this by calling his system 'Commando Krav Maga' instead of 'Krav Maga' and has had tons of legal issues with different Krav Maga associations and and has got in trouble over false advertising several times. He is not representative of Krav Maga and that bullshit takedown defense has never been part of any Krav Maga association's syllabus.

commando krav maga sucks - the real story behind moni aizikBritish Krav Maga Association

The thing is that teaching martial arts isn't regulated, so you get bullshitters in all schools. I've seen Muay Thai instructors before who were bullshitters and had no business teaching, the same with MMA instructors, the same with more trad martial artists etc. Is that the fault of the system, or is it just instructors who are out of their depth and trying to make money?

A lot of the people I know who train with be are from grappling or boxing backgrounds. A lot of them use it as an add-on to what they already know. They tend to take to it easier because when you closely look at Krav you see that it's essentially a combination of boxing and wrestling with some illegal moves thrown in.

I think you guys have the wrong impression of Krav. I get that there are bullshitters out there, but if you spent a while a decent, qualified instructor I think you'd be surprised.

Theres only one way to settle this. You guys have got to fight. Unless you're scared.

Let's all get together and have a PUA Forum open mat.

I do remember some guys telling me once they did krav maga and after just 3 lessons. you where more equipt in a fight that 6 months of any other marshal art.

tried it once, who lot of eye gauging & kicking in the balls and running away.

I decided to let my mum teach me how to fight instead.

i call it. 'Kravmyma'

Think street. Train sport.

Well the first big thing that I took from it is the use of illegal moves and targets. Some of the main targets in krav are things like the knee caps, the groin and the back of the head. These areas are never targeted in sports martial arts, but they are some of the best areas to target if you want to disable an attacker quickly and efficiently. In the same way that a change in rules allowing kicks below the waist completely changes the dynamics of how you have to approach kickboxing, having new targets available changes how a street fight should be best approached. In with that comes stuff like eye attacks and gouges, limb destructions, headbutts and so on.

The obvious question after that is probably 'well why not still just do kickboxing and wrestling, then just do that stuff when you get attacked?'. The thing is in a high adrenaline situation like a street fight you'll do what's been practised into a reflex. If you're a boxer, you probably won't throw kicks or try and wrestle, and if you've not practised fighting dirty, you probably won't to that either, even if it's the most efficient option.

The other thing is that even with moves like an eye gouge, there's a right and a wrong way to do it and a right and wrong time. It's the same with any kind of move. A very obvious example of this that everyone has encountered is headbutts. Everyone's seen a shit headbutt in their time. There are a good few effective ways to use it, but a lot of people who attempt it end up doing more harm to themselves than the other person. There's a right and a wrong way to fight dirty basically.

I read some stuff online about street fighting. It was training stuff for the US police. It talked a lot about choosing the area. Like in the first contact getting the aggressor over to a place of your choosing, e.g. grass where you can then put them down and avoid being hurt by objects on the ground, etc if it turns into a wrestle. That sounds specialised for the police.

The article also said the most common thing with untrained people is when someone swings out a kick, e.g. aiming for the groin area the other person, as a reflex, puts their hands out, either to deflect the blow or maybe to try to catch the foot (not usually a good move). This lowers their guard, brings them in range and leaves them open to the punch that usually follows. Once a punch has connected it's scrambled brains time and the attacker has time to follow up with more. I can't remember what the article said about defending against that.