About Krav Maga

About Krav Maga Yashir

Krav Maga, meaning “Contact Combat’ in Hebrew is a system of fighting that was developed with one goal in mind: to get an untrained, new recruit competent in hand-to-hand combat in the shortest possible time. In the 1940’s, the newly created IDF (Israeli Defense Force), required a program that could accelerate a new recruit’s ability to physically defend themselves, in weeks/months rather than years (which is/was the case with traditional martial arts). To do this a system that was based on instinctive and instinctual movements was created, based on the idea of how a person would naturally respond when attacked, rather than forcing them to learn an “artificial” and trained set of responses that was the approach most martial arts take. Krav Maga is based off of the idea of what you will do rather than what you might want to do, or what you will think you will do. Rather than make an individual adopt an external system, Krav Maga works with the body’s natural reaction(s) (internal responses) when attacked/threatened.

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One of the other ways that the system developed in order to accelerate the speed at which it could be learnt and practically applied was to reuse a few common movements that could be applied to a variety of threats and attacks. This meant that the overall syllabus that had to cover defenses against both unarmed and armed attacks, both when seating and on the ground, didn’t need to consist of unique techniques to deal with each individual attack but could reuse a movement/technique taught to deal with one attack, to deal with many different ones. This led to techniques being grouped into “families”. There are several benefits to this approach. One is that when you are practicing a defense against one attack, you are also practicing defenses against other attacks, cutting down the number of repetitions that are needed to “master” a technique. It also means that more time can be devoted to practicing solutions, rather than having to learn new ones.

Another key feature of Krav Maga techniques and solutions is that they are able to be performed when exhausted, and after adrenaline has worn of (a period when the body goes into a recovery state). As a country Israel has a relatively small population, and standing army compared to its neighbors. This meant that in any conflict, each combatant would be placed under an extreme workload. This meant that fighting when exhausted was a reality, and so any hand-to-hand techniques and solutions had to be able to be performed when somebody was fatigued and the initial adrenaline surge had worn off. To this end many Israeli solutions to violence factored this is e.g., the UZI SMG, was designed around the single idea, of allowing an exhausted infantryman, to change and reload a magazine whilst running. Krav Maga techniques are designed to work when a person is performing in a sub-optimal athletic/physical state.

If you are interested in experiencing why Krav Maga is such an effective fighting method and system of self-defense you can register and attend one of our beginner classes using the button below.

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