Krav Maga - Have you learnt what you were supposed to learn?

- Extracted from Kravstation.com
- Posting by Mr. Boaz Aviram
- 3rd in line Chief of Krav Maga IDF

observing classes in many schools, I see the same students not progressing in their fighting skills even after a year of training.

This is due to the fact that they never learned all the pieces of the puzzle together. krav Maga is very simple. It is taught like computer programming.

The math of learning is simple: it is basically 1+1=2. You learn one piece of the puzzle, and add the next. Then you have a new unit, and then you add another piece of the puzzle.

If you break each technique to 3 parts (the military favorite number)or you are being more flexible and add a step or two, you take each one of the approximately 150 Krav Maga techniques and perfect them.

Compared to writing the alphabet where your mind is needed to be trained to control your fingers to write each letter by repetitive drawing 100 times of each letter, Krav Maga assumes you do not need to spend a lot of time to learn how to shove your thumb to a person's eye. Comparing to the game of tennis, you are not chasing a quick ball, but a larger mass of a human being, so again, the time spent on quick eye movement and judgement is being cut down. You use your legs for running, jumping landing anyway, and you use your hands to pick up items, open doors all day anyway.

Now you need to switch gears. You need to learn the correct sequence which body part starts first, and which one follow to make it easy for you to maximize the ease of use of your body. You need to learn to work with higher speeds.

But first you need to learn and understand the mechanics of the whole picture "Danger Analysis".

You need to set limits of your expectations of your training. You are learning how to fight another person that does not have more than 2 hands and 2 legs. Now you need to explore the most effective way your possible opponent could use his body to hurt you. He could be as fast and devastating like Muhammad Ali, and as fast and devastating with his kicks like Bruce Lee. You guys can pick your favorite average martial artist. If you find the common denominator to all these and other you find the formula of training in an instant. Some students require a little more and some less.

However if you look at the average athlete in the average Krav Maga Civilian school, and you conclude he does not make any progress within a year of training, you can conclude that the school is saying that it teaches Krav Maga. But Krav Maga is a training method. So the conclusion would be that the school does not teach Krav Maga!

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*Self defense is a subset of Martial arts*
*Reality based self defense training cannot always be 100% real, because there may be no one left to train with! But do it real enough or else RBSD is just a bullshit term* - Me
*Train for what happens most and you will be able to handle most of what happens -- Marc "Animal" MacYoung*