Krav Maga Leeds Instructor Mike outlines what makes Krav Maga so effective
There are likely to be a number of you reading this right now who, for whatever reason, want to learn to defend yourselves. Maybe something has recently happened to you or a friend or recent goings on in the world that have made you feel slightly vulnerable and you want to do something about it.
You’ve likely read alot about self defense – Karate, MMA, Jiu Jitsu, Aikido, Boxing yada yada. With so many Martial Arts available to you why would you choose Krav Maga over the others?
Well I’m not going to tell you that Krav Maga is superior to all of them, because it isn’t, the fact is that anyone adept at any of these martial arts would be formidable and not someone you’d want to try and attack, but with less than 1% of the population training in some form of martial art (Adult participation in sport survey, 2011 Department for Culture, Media and Sport), your chances of being attacked by someone adept in a Martial Art is very slim indeed. Why is this important?
Point 1) MARTIAL ARTS ARE PREDOMINANTLY SPORT BASED – THUS THEY HAVE RULES
Again, this is not to bash other styles, I have experience with a few different styles and they all have rules, do’s and do not’s, and in competition, a referee. The drunken drugged up idiot on a night out who just wants to fight does not have these rules, and there will be no referee to split you up if one person starts getting on top and no soft crash mat to fall on to if you are knocked out. He is likely to spit, bite, eye gouge, hit you with anything he can pick up and kick you when you go down.
– BJJ is a fantastic, skillful martial art requiring great fitness, strength and co-ordination. It also requires (predominantly) taking your opponent to the floor, this is a fantastic place to receive a good kicking from the drunken idiots friends.
– Karate, MMA, Boxing etc are all incredible sports/Martial arts which teach discipline skill power and speed. But I wouldn’t be convinced they could all deal effectively with an idiot flailing around a broken bottle, dead set on removing your liver (Karate and Aikido aside with a good level of experience and training).
Krav has no rules, it is much like a real fight, it is primal and aggressive, common sense and takes no prisoners. If our imaginary drunken idiot above is dead set on attacking us, then we are dead set on giving him an almighty kick in the bollocks before finding safety. Krav maga thinks nothing of gouging an attackers eyes, striking them in the throat, pinching them, squeezing and twisting delicate parts of their anatomy and breaking fingers etc. and why should it? Your potential attackers won’t..
Point 2) MARTIAL ARTS CAN TAKE A LONG TIME TO BECOME PROFICIENT IN
As I mentioned above, Martial Artists are formidable. Extremely so. The are so formidable because they practice for hours and hours over years and years. A good Martial Artist would deal with an average attacker as if he were being attacked by a child. But this takes dedication time and commitment.
Krav Maga is not a Martial Art, it is a system. We apply the system to attacks. We drill different positions, different angles and we keep it common sense and simple. We deal with movements. A punch is dealt with in the same style as a stab, a wild swinging punch in the same way as someone swinging a stick, or a knife slash. The movement from the attacker is the same so the defence should be also.
We pressure test skills to put our students in the position of defending themselves while under stress and the effects of adrenaline, this way the skills are learnt and recalled by the brain and the body much more quickly and it takes less time to learn.
At Leeds Krav Maga we aim to have our students proficient in basic self defence in around 16 weeks of training, which is a rapid turnaround.
Like I have said numerous times, I’m not slagging off Martial Arts (I’m currently not fit or fast enough to outrun any, so I can’t stress this enough) if you want to dedicate time and effort in learning a fantastic skill then more power to you, go and do it. If however, you’re simply feeling a little low in confidence in handling a self defense situation and want to get better quickly, then consider Krav Maga. The imaginary drunken idiot may regret it one day, but you certainly won’t.
If you’d like to learn more about Krav Maga Leeds, get in touch with Mike!