ORIGIN AND RECENT HISTORY


Dror with Grand Master Imi Sde-Or
Krav maga founder, grand master Imi Sde-Or (Lichtenfeld), developed the system during his decorated military career as the IDF chief instructor of hand-to-hand combat and fitness. During his remarkable service, Imi wrote the IDF official self defense and hand-to-hand combat manual. In 1964 Imi officially retired from the IDF but continued to refine and oversee the instruction of krav maga in the military and law enforcement contexts. For approximately twenty years of Imi's military active service, krav maga was largely confined to the Israeli Defense apparatus. Upon retirement, Imi engaged in refining, improving and adopting krav maga to meet civilian's needs. In 1972 the first civilian instructor's course was held and in 1978 the Israel Krav Maga Association was formed.
Since that time the popularity of krav maga, both in Israel and internationally, has grown steadily. Today, krav maga is taught in private studios, as well as public schools throughout Israel. In the United States, krav maga has gained a firm foothold, with a particularly strong presence in California and New York.


CARACHTERISTICS

Krav maga is a modern martial art not only in the chronological sense, but in its fundamental precepts as well. The hallmarks of krav maga are; ease of learning, practicality, movement efficiency and modernity. It is a user-friendly system which draws on a wealth of field experience as well as upon current psychological, physiological and bio-mechanical findings. The relatively free form nature of krav maga (unlike many traditional martial arts, krav maga has no “Katas” or “forms”), allows for great flexibility in each individual's style as well as in the incorporation of new techniques and improvements into the style.

The most fundamental level of the martial art involves a systematic evaluation of human beings as fighting species. The innate physical and psychological characteristics of the species, as they pertain to physical combat, are the firmament upon which the system is based. Krav maga is designed to fit and conform to these characteristics. Moreover, this information is applied to both defender and attacker in an effort to best understand and remedy a wide range of close-in encounters. Over time, the increasingly sophisticated picture that has emerged was, and still is, informed by experience to forge a system of self-defense and hand to hand combat which is uniquely well suited to today's varied and demanding personal security environment.

KRAV MAGA COMPONENTS

Krav maga is composed of two integrated parts; self-defense and hand-to-hand combat.

Self-defense is the foundation of the discipline and comprises the bulk of what the beginning student will learn. Defenses against chokes, holds, bear-hugs and grabs are some of the techniques that fall under the rubric of self-defense. The start of each technique is the respective instinctual reaction to the given attack. The advantages of this scientifically informed approach of grafting learned responses to instinctual reactions are; faster response time, steeper learning curves and greater retention. Self-defense training involves not only the study of a variety of techniques but their application in a host of less than optimal circumstances as well (e.g. drills are done when students are tired, with their eyes closed and while surrounded by a number of other students who allow little recovery time between attacks). The goal is to artificially create the stress, anxiety and surprise characteristics of real life attacks.

Hand-to-hand combat involves less well defined treats and is therefore the more complicated and advanced aspects of the system. Students are taught multiple armed and unarmed attacker defenses and drilled in real-time tactical decision making, fighting spirit development considering the psychological and mental possible states associated with surviving aggressive and violent confrontations. While many self-defense techniques involve counter-attacks and strikes, the study of more involved combinations and how to press a counter-attack is, for the most part, the province of this aspect of the art. Students spend a great deal of their training time exercising feints, gross body movements , seamless transitions between techniques and informed improvisation as well as studying combative tactics, strategy development, timing concepts, vision, and other theoretical and fundamental aspects of the art which related to the concept of fight management.