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Krav Maga

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File:KravFighting.jpg
A Law enforcement officer disarms and disables an opponent using Krav Maga.

Krav Maga (Hebrew קרב מגע: "contact combat") is a self-defense and military hand to hand combat system developed in Israel. It came to prominence following its adoption by various Israeli Security Forces and is now used by military and law enforcement personnel, as well as civilians, around the world. The version of Krav Maga taught in civilian martial arts classes is more often a simplified version that emphasizes personal self-defense, and is likely to exclude the killing techniques taught to the military, or the holds and come-alongs taught to police forces; there are legal proscriptions in some countries which govern and constrain the teaching of hazardous or life-threatening techniques to civilians.

Etymology

The generic name in Hebrew is usually translated as "close combat." The word maga (מגע) means "contact". The word krav (קרב) means "fight" or "battle." In Classical Hebrew Krav means "close". According to this the traslation would be "close contact". A more modern translation like "contact combat," though, can be misconstrued as something like "kickboxing" or "full contact karate." English-speakers often shorten the term to Krav.

As a historical note, the original name of Krav Maga was Kapap (sounds like "ka-PAPP") which was an acronym for Krav Panim el Panim, face-to-face combat.[1]

History

Imi Lichtenfeld

The beginning of the system that would become Krav Maga in Israel was developed in Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the 1930s by Imi Lichtenfeld, also known as Imi Sde-Or. (Sde-Or - "Light Field" - is a calque of his surname into Hebrew.) He first taught his fighting system in Bratislava in order to help protect the Jewish community from Nazi militias. Upon arriving in the British Mandate of Palestine prior to the establishment of the Jewish state, Imi began teaching hand-to-hand combat to the Haganah, the Jewish underground army. With the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Imi became the Chief Instructor of Physical Fitness and Krav Maga at the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) School of Combat Fitness. He served in the IDF for about 20 years, during which time he continued to develop and refine his hand-to-hand combat method. He died in January 1998 in Netanya, Israel.[2]

Expansion outside Israel

Prior to 1980, all experts in Krav Maga lived in Israel. That year marks the beginning of contact between Israeli Krav Maga experts and interested students in the United States. In 1981, a group of six Krav Maga instructors traveled to the US to offer demonstrations of the system, primarily at local Jewish Community Centers. This, in turn, led to demonstrations at the New York Field Office of the FBI and the FBI's Main Training Center. The result was a visit by 22 people from the US to Israel in the summer of 1981 to attend a basic Krav Maga instructor course. The graduates from this course returned to the US and began to establish training facilities in their local areas. Additional students traveled to Israel in 1984 and again in 1986 to themselves become instructors. At the same time, instructors from Israel continued to visit the US. Law Enforcement training in the US began in 1985.[3]

After the death of the founder

After Imi's death, a number of different schools and associations developed around the world. Although there is an ongoing debate as to who may claim to be Imi's legitimate successor(s) and whether the term "Krav Maga" refers to a specific martial art or is simply a generic term (much like Boxing)[4], it is generally accepted that there are four mainstream Krav Maga umbrella organizations:

Training

Basic principles

In Krav Maga, there are no hard-and-fast rules. It is not a sport, and there are no competitions. All the techniques focus on maximum efficiency in real-life conditions. Krav Maga generally assumes a no quarter situation; the attacks and defenses are intended to inflict the most pain possible on the opponent. Groin strikes, headbutts, and other efficient and potentially brutal attacks are emphasized.

The guiding principles for those performing Krav Maga techniques are:

  • neutralize the threat
  • avoid injury
  • go from defending to attacking as quickly as possible
  • use the body's natural reflexes
  • strike at any vulnerable point
  • use any tool or object nearby

The basic idea is to first deal with the immediate threat (being choked, for example), prevent the attacker from re-attacking, and then neutralize the attacker, proceeding through all steps in a straightforward manner, despite the rush of adrenaline that occurs in such an attack. The emphasis is put on taking the initiative from the attacker as soon as possible.

Techniques

Although Krav Maga shares many techniques with other martial arts, such as Boxing, Savate and Muay Thai (for the punches, kicks, elbows and knees) or Ju-Jitsu, Judo and Wrestling (for the grappling and disarming techniques), the training is often quite different. It stresses fighting under worst-case conditions (for example, against several opponents, when protecting someone else, with one arm unusable, when dizzy, or against armed opponents).

Training in Krav Maga is an aerobic workout, and relies heavily on pads. Students take turns holding pads and doing combatives against the pads. This is important because it allows the student to practice the technique at full strength, and the student holding the pad learns a little of what it feels like to get hit. It can be almost as taxing to hold a pad as to practice against one. Some schools incorporate "Strike and Fight," which consists of full-contact sparring intended to familiarize the student with the stresses of a violent situation.

Training may employ a speaker system blasting loud music, stroboscope and/or fog machine meant to train the student to ignore peripheral distractions and focus on causing as much damage as possible. Training might also contain ways to deal with situations which could end in fights. Physical and verbal methods to avoid violence whenever possible are taught.

A typical Krav Maga session in a civilian school is about an hour long and mixes aerobic training with self-defense teaching. As levels increase, the instructors focus a little less on aerobic training and slightly more on combatives. First, the instructor will run a very intense drill to get the class's heart rates up. Then, after stretching, the instructor will teach two or three self-defense techniques. In the beginning the techniques will either be combatives (punches, hammer-fists, elbows, knees and roundhouse kicks, for example) or grappling (breaking out of chokes or wrist-grabs, getting out from under an opponent while on one's back). After that, the class usually moves to a drill that combines the techniques just taught with an aerobic technique. Finally, there is the final drill intended to burn out the students. Depending on the class - and on the instructor's mood - this drill may be at the very beginning or at the end of the class.

Levels

Within the International Krav Maga Federation, the following system is used:

The present grading system for (Civilian) Krav Maga is divided into four major categories. The first three are Practitioner, Graduate and Expert. Each of these is further divided to 5 levels, each with a specific curriculum and requirements. Grading tests to pass from one rank to the next contain technical, theoretical and tactical subjects covering self-defense and fighting skills. The highest category of grades are the Master levels of which there are three. Anyone wishing to test for any Expert level must generally do this in Israel as it requires a minimum of two members of the Grading Committee (Eyal Yanilov or any of the other Expert Level 5 members of the Israeli Global Instructor Team) to be present at the grading.

Examples of rank patches which are worn on the training pants uniform, upper left thigh are shown below. The black bars on the rank patches denote the level. Three black bars on the Graduate patch denote Graduate level 3 etc.

File:P1patch.jpgFile:G3 patch.jpgFile:E2 patch.jpgFile:M1 patch.jpg

Aside from the civilian system, the IKMF has Military, Law Enforcement, Security and VIP/Close Personal Protection syllabi. Each syllabus has its own grading criteria and is generally only taught to people with employment in the relevant fields. Instead of Practitioner and Graduate levels, the Military and Law Enforcement Systems have Fighter, Warrior and Operator levels, [5][6] whereas the Close Personal Protection Syllabus grades are Bronze Shield, Silver Shield, Gold Shield and Platinum Shield.[7]


Within the Krav Maga Association of America, there are five levels prior to Black Belt.

  • Level 1 (Yellow Belt): Key concepts for surviving physical confrontations: instinctive response, simple, aggressive counters, basic combatives (punches, kicks, elbows and knees), defenses against chokes
  • Level 2 (Orange Belt): Additional combatives and wider array of self-defense scenarios; increased intensity
  • Level 3 (Green Belt): Additional combatives and more difficult self-defense scenarios (such as escaping from chokes or headlocks on the ground); greater number of surprise attacks; increased frequency and intensity of sparring
  • Level 4 (Blue Belt): Advanced punch and kick combinations and defenses against these attacks; gun, knife and stick weapon defenses; advanced ground fighting; more regular sparring
  • Level 5 (Brown Belt): Greater stress and tension are introduced; multiple attacker scenarios (both with and without weapons) and sparring against multiple opponents[8]
  • Black Belt training consists mostly of specialized military and security applications of Krav Maga, such as defense against a hand grenade or long rifle, third-party protection, sentry removal, and so forth.

Who uses Krav Maga today

In 1964, Grandmaster Imi Lichtenfeld finished his military service and adapted Krav Maga to civilian frameworks. In Israel, the style is introduced to elementary and high school students on the national curriculum, and is taught at the Wingate Institute, one of the world's leading physical fitness centers. It is taught to men, women, and children under the auspices of the Israeli Ministry of Sport and Education.

Krav Maga is the official system of hand-to-hand combat and self-defense employed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), Security Forces, the Israeli Police and Military Police and its Special Operations and Anti-Terrorist Units. The IDF including their Special Forces Units, Israeli Police, and Internal Security Branches currently uses this style on a day-to-day basis.

Krav Maga is taught to all ages and abilities, at community centers, schools, and clubs throughout the world. Krav Maga is taught to Sky Marshals, commercial airline crews. It is also taught in the United States, Canada, Brazil, United Kingdom, Ireland, Croatia, France, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, Russia, Italy, Poland, Japan, Thailand, Australia, Hungary, Serbia, Denmark, New Zealand and India.

In the United states, personnel from various Federal, State and Local Law Enforcement agencies and Military units around the world have received training in Krav Maga, including: the Federal Bureau of Investigation, AFOSI Anti-terrorism Specialty Team, United States Marine Corps, United States Marshals Service, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, Drug Enforcement Administration Arrest and Control Unit, U.S. Treasury Department, Immigration and Naturalization Service, State Department, Central Intelligence Agency, several divisions of the U.S. Coast Guard, and police and sheriff's offices in New York, Illinois, Texas, Alabama, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, California, and Maryland. In addition to the Special Operations Forces of Israel (i.e. Sayeret Matkal, YAMAM, etc.), several special units from other countries have adopted this system for their hand-to-hand combat. These units include GIGN, FBI HRT, and SWAT, among others.

Krav Maga in fiction

References

  1. ^ http://www.kapap.net/history.htm
  2. ^ http://www.krav-maga.com/founder.html
  3. ^ http://www.krav-maga.com/nhistory.html
  4. ^ http://www.edgecombatfitness.com/Kravmaga.htm
  5. ^ http://www.krav-maga.com/law_enforcement.html
  6. ^ http://www.sdtactics.com.au/html/instructor_training/Grading_System.htm
  7. ^ http://www.krav-maga.com/vip_protection.html
  8. ^ http://www.kravmaga-sf.com/class_descriptions.html
  9. ^ http://www.alias-tv.com/sydney.html
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