Krav Maga Blog - Jan 2017

If you’ve spent any time working in the security industry, you will have spent a lot of time observing people, and you will soon have come to the realization that most assaults follow a similar pattern/process. When you understand this, you will be able to recognize attacks before they occur, and either disengage, or prepare yourself so you can increase your survival chances. I have never been a great athlete, or benefited from an unusually great reaction time, etc., however I have learnt to act quickly and decisively in situations, in the moments before an assailant initiates the attack, which...

Crime and violent crime may at times be opportunistic, but it is never truly random, yet unfortunately we often use randomness and opportunity as synonyms, when in fact they aren’t the same thing. If we leave a window open which a burglar uses to enter our house, we may curse our luck, and argue to ourselves that we were subjected to a random crime i.e. what are the chances that a burglar would be walking past our house on the one day, when we forgot to close a window? The point is, we helped provide the burglar with an opportunity...

A lot of people in the Krav Maga community knock traditional martial arts, such as Karate and Judo, without understanding the value of certain training methods and ideas that they contain. There is sometimes an “arrogance” pertaining to Krav Maga, that it’s got it 100% right, and the traditional arts are flawed and have got it wrong. I would argue that neither have got it completely right or wrong, and I include myself in this – If I am always striving to improve the way I and my students train, and find more effective training methods, drills etc. I endeavor...

It is easy to fall into the trap of overthinking a situation. It is also easy to fall into the trap, of believing that more information about something will help you reach the best decision. If you are dealing with one or more aggressive individuals, you won’t have the time to gather more information about the situation – however, many people try to do just this. I have seen people trying to process what is happening to them, and gain a complete understanding of it, when they are dealing with a person who is only moments away from punching them...

I’ve written about improvised weapons before, explaining the categorization system that was taught to me by Avi Moyal of the IKMF (International Krav Maga Federation), and the differences between “weapons of carry” (things that you have about your person) and “weapons of opportunity” (things in the environment), etc. I haven’t, however, written much about “drilling” the use of said weapons. Before I go into some of the drills I have used, and teach, it is important to understand what we mean by “improvised”, as there seems to be a level of confusion around this. If you teach somebody how to...