Introduction
The Israeli Krav Maga Advantage
Responsible people pursue Israeli krav maga training to shield themselves from violence, not to orchestrate violence. The kravist trains and prepares himself to face down the unfortunate, ugly specter of violence. Krav maga training, by both necessity and resultant design, focuses on the realistic and brutal nature of a physical assault. This self-defense and fighting system is designed to thwart and neutralize any type of threat or attack. The key survival ingredient is your mind-set. Those who train physically and mentally to preempt and, if necessary, thwart violence with overwhelming counterviolence will respond differently from people who do not condition themselves.
You, the kravist, when threatened or attacked, must unleash a torrent of overwhelming counterviolence. (This assumes there is no peaceful option and the circumstances are legally justified.) Krav maga’s goal is to neutralize an attacker quickly and decisively. If you must defend yourself, krav maga enables you to effectively stun, incapacitate, and, if necessary, control your attacker. Your honed, instinctive reaction will turn the tables on your attacker(s) immediately. Krav maga tactics are designed as defensive-capability multipliers. A few mastered krav maga techniques are highly effective in most situations. When properly learned and practiced, these tactics will become first nature.
Conflict Avoidance
Nonviolent conflict avoidance is always your best solution. The following is the most important lesson krav maga can teach you: Do not to be taken by surprise or caught in the “-5.” (The “-5” is when one is unprepared to fight for one’s life.) Becoming an accomplished observer helps you resolve a situation before it fully evolves or gets out of hand. By constantly surveying your locale and its dynamics, you will notice at all times who and what surrounds you.
Walking away from a confrontation is a test of mental discipline and moral fiber. For example, if a situation involves someone taunting you, attempting to embarrass you, or assert social hierarchy, take the sensible action and walk away. Should you (correctly) walk away, be sure to disengage with a heightened sense of potential confrontation awareness. Until you are safe, continue to maintain both a mental and physical preparedness to spring into action. Extricating yourself from a potentially violent situation is both wise and pragmatic for myriad reasons, including avoiding potential injury to you and your family and avoiding criminal and civil liability proceedings.
Use common sense, basic precautions, and a confident demeanor to minimize your chances of being targeted and assaulted. Notwithstanding these preventive measures, accept the possibility of violence targeting you. There are several types of violence, including social, criminal, sociopathic, and professional. Statistically, you are most likely to face the first or second categories, social or criminal, respectively. Terrorism usually falls into a blend of the latter two categories. While you need not live in fear, denial is the most common obstacle to taking appropriate action. This is why you must be prepared, if you must face down a violent situation. Sharpen your mental and physical skills so you can implement them without thinking.
Instinctive, Aggressive Reaction Is Required
When in danger, your brain and body respond reflexively. Therefore, your self-defense reaction must be both instantaneously reflexive and instinctive. If you are in a fight and an attacker makes an unanticipated or unrecognized action, the brain cannot find a practiced response, resulting in decision paralysis. By training to respond, you will call upon your instincts and reflexes when attacked. With proper training, you will learn to conquer your fear and to control the energy and power from your body’s fight-or-flight response. Realistic training is designed to eliminate the third human reaction, a freeze response. You will learn not to freeze under pressure. While it is unusual to be in a situation where you must fight for your life, it does happen. You must be prepared.
Krav maga harnesses your natural abilities for you to (re)act optimally with little cognitive interference. With practice, you will be able to explode into action. Your attacker will literally not know what hit him—repeatedly. Only serious, hard, and appropriate training can trigger this fighting response. If push comes to shove, literally and figuratively, krav maga is designed to handle any type or number of assaults. For a kravist, there are no set solutions for ending a fight. A kravist may have different physical strengths and capabilities. He may have a strong kick or hand-strike capabilities; or strong infighting; or throwing skills; or takedowns, etc. This book will provide you some of the simplest and most effective defensive and counterattack measures.
There are no rules in street defense. This essential tenet distinguishes self-defense from sport fighting. In a scripted sport fight the following nonexclusive tactics are generally banned: eye gouge; throat strikes; headbutting; biting; hair-pulling; clawing, pinching, or twisting of the flesh; striking the spine and the back of the head; striking with the tip of the elbow; small-joint manipulation; kidney and liver strikes, clavicle strikes; kneeing or kicking the head of an attacker on the ground; and slamming an attacker to the ground on the attacker’s head. These are exactly the combined core tactics krav maga emphasizes.
If you must fight, identify the opportune moment to attack the attacker with a continuous overwhelming counterattack using retzev or “continuous combat motion.” Combined with simultaneous defense and attack or near-simultaneous defense and attack, retzev is a seamless, decisive, and overpowering counterattack forming the backbone of the Israeli fighting system. Retzev may be understood as using combined upper- and lower-body combatives, locks, chokes, throws, takedowns, and weapons interchangeably and without pause.
Exert maximum speed and aggression. Your goal is not to definitively win a fight, but, rather, to escape. Never forget that the level of force you use to defend yourself should be commensurate with the threat. Once the threat is no more, you must cease counteroffensive actions. The krav maga system is designed to conform to you. You do not need to conform to the system or adopt any rigid, set solutions. To be sure, there are preferred counterattack methods using retzev to prevail, but you must react instinctively to the best of your ability.
Training
With proper intense training, you will learn effective physical tactics, while mentally adjusting to a harsh, violent reality. When training, practice the select krav maga methods in the upcoming chapters under extreme simulated pressure. Train in the most realistic setting possible to develop the mental preparedness you need to react in life-threatening situations. As you repeat techniques and situations at real speed (with safety in mind), you’ll develop your fighting prowess. To reemphasize, your krav maga techniques will become your automatic reflex whenever you find yourself in danger.
To adopt and streamline the krav maga method, personalize the techniques and make them your own. Choose the ballistic strikes and other combatives with which you feel most comfortable and that give you the greatest confidence. Put just as much emphasis on mental training as you do the physical through visualization and scenario planning. You can also use your mind to train your body to automatically and instinctively react to danger. Visualization and scenario planning can boost your confidence, reduce fear, improve your fighting technique, and help you cope with unanticipated hostile situations, because you will have envisioned them beforehand.
By visualizing a new experience, you deposit a new conditioned response into your memory bank. You perform routine tasks such as covering your mouth when you sneeze, because these tasks are just that, routine. They become routine by repetition. By visualizing possible situations and your reactions to them over and over again, your brain immediately recalls your reaction whenever you physically find yourself in such a situation, and you react accordingly.
Your brain does not distinguish between the actual tasks you physically perform and the ones you imagine or visualize. If you’re unsure about this, think about watching an unexpected violent real-life encounter on the Internet and how you may cringe or blink in disbelief. Similarly, have you ever felt your heart beating or palms sweating while watching a realistic suspense thriller? Notably, athletes are thoroughly versed in the powers of visualization and have used it with great success.
Emphasis on a Few Core Tactics
Krav maga emphasizes learning a few elementary core tactics that can be performed instinctively and adapted to myriad situations. If necessary, you will know how to maim an attacker by striking vital points and organs or applying choking or breaking pressure to an attacker’s joints. The goal is to embed your subconscious with the proverbial “(I have) been there, done that (through a training scenario).” Therefore, your autonomic response is, indeed, “I’ve been there, done that.”
Optimally, the potential confrontation is over before it can begin. You have neutralized the threat at its inception. Most important, you should have confidence in your krav maga training, because all techniques are battle-tested and field-proven. Do not, however, mistake your training for a real attack. In an actual attack you’ll experience an adrenaline surge, and a likely decrease in your fine motor skills, your heart rate will skyrocket, your hearing will diminish (“auditory exclusion”), and your vision will narrow (often known as “tunnel vision”). Notably, most people who have survived violent confrontations had the mental commitment to prevail. They do not often attribute their survival to a specific technique.
Legal Considerations
However and whenever krav maga self-defense might be used, it must be legally justified, incorporating the appropriate level of counterforce. For non-deadly force, the law generally recognizes that a person may use such force as reasonably necessary to thwart the imminent use of force against that person, short of deadly force. Note that you may step into the shoes of a third party to intervene, using and meeting a specific state’s standard.
The law in most countries evaluates a person’s response according to an objective “reasonable person standard.” For self-defense, the operative language becomes “reasonable force.” In other words, what would the reasonable person do, or how would an objective, reasonable person react, under the totality of the circumstances?
Only fear of imminent bodily harm provides justification to use force. Objective reasonable force is best viewed on a sliding scale. The level of force employed is often dependent on an assailant’s capability, opportunity, and intent. You can measure an attacker’s capability in several ways. A weapon, large physical size, or displayed martial prowess such as a fighting stance, generally indicates the assailant’s measure of capability.
American law, for example, generally recognizes a “disparity of force,” when an attacker possesses recognizable physical advantages or prowess such as significant height, strength, and weight advantages, or displayed trained fighting skills, when adjudicating liability and criminal charges. In addition, environment might also influence more force, as, for example, in struggling next to a busy highway where you could be flung into onrushing traffic.
Force, especially lethal force, is generally never justifiable to protect property. For example, if someone keys your car, spits at you, or knocks over your mailbox, you may not resort to force to settle the score. To use physical force to defend yourself, you must have a reasonable fear of harm. Only when you fear for your own life or that of another should you use lethal force.
For deadly force, state laws generally recognize that a person may use such force as reasonable to prevent serious bodily injury (mayhem) or death. If you must resort to violence to protect yourself, you must be able to explain to a jury why and how you chose your actions and that there were no reasonable alternatives. This is counterbalanced against the understanding that any given physical confrontation has the potential to kill you.
Developed as a military fighting discipline, krav maga employs lethal force techniques. When faced with a deadly force encounter, you may, in turn, need to employ lethal counterforce. Forging an awareness of your own personal weapons (hands, forearms, elbows, knees shins, feet, and head) and an attacker’s vulnerabilities is essential to fight strategy and tactics, especially when he is armed and you are not. The human body is amazingly resilient, even when subjected to tremendous physical abuse. Pain may stop some attackers, but other individuals have enormous pain thresholds, especially if they are taking narcotics.
To assess the necessity of counterviolence, you must instantly gauge several factors, including your opportunity to retreat. Retreat can be problematic, if you are with another party such as a child or an elderly companion. Importantly, reacting from surprise allows the use of more force because you do not have time to rationally or reasonably analyze the situation. The moment you are deemed safe, any additional defensive actions may, in fact, become offensive actions. If you continue to injure an assailant who is no longer a threat, you could face civil and criminal charges, especially if you deliberately turn an assailant’s weapon on him.
You’ll need to articulate that you had no choice when faced with a threat who had the:
Intent (stated or evident goal of harming you)
Capability (has the prowess or tools to harm you)
Opportunity (proximity)
Notably, intent often involves the wielding of a weapon and verbal threats to life and limb. If any of the above three criteria is absent or becomes absent or you could avoid the threat, you are no longer acting in self-defense.
Once legal proceedings begin, whatever measures you took to defend yourself will most certainly be painted in different lights by an accuser/opposing counsel and your counsel in your legal defense. Your legal justification for your self-defense actions may center on the following points:
How well can you articulate the reasons for your actions?
Was your counterviolence warranted (using the reasonableness standard) to contend with the immediacy of the assault?
Even if you prevail in criminal court, you are likely to face civil charges, including aggravated assault, and might have to face compensating the injured party for lost earnings, medical bills, pain, and suffering, along with the prospective of a jury awarding punitive damages to teach you a lesson. It cannot be emphasized enough, when defending yourself, that you are only entitled to use the amount of force that is commensurate with the threat. As tempting as it might be to severely hurt or kill your assailant, you must make a deliberate conscious decision when to cease your counterattack. If you use counterviolence, you must believe the stakes are real and the aggressor is playing for keeps.
Israeli Krav Maga’s Tactical Ten Commandants
Israeli krav maga works against any attacker; the key is your mind-set. Never accept defeat or surrender. If you can breathe, you can fight. Do what you must to prevail.
Assess your surroundings. Common sense, basic precautions, and a confident demeanor minimize your chances of being attacked.
Nonviolent conflict resolution is always your best solution. De-escalate and disengage when possible.
A few mastered techniques go a long way and are highly effective in most situations.
The essence of krav maga is to neutralize an attacker quickly; there are no rules.
A strategy to end your attacker’s fighting ability is paramount when using simultaneous defense and attack. Fight positioning by moving off the line of attack determines your tactical advantage.
Footwork and body positioning, whether standing or prone, allow you to simultaneously defend and attack allowing for seamless combative transitions, essential to perform retzev or “continuous combat motion.”
Optimally, a kravist will move quickly to a superior and dominant position, the “dead side” to finish the fight. You dictate the fight using retzev combatives.
Dead-side strategy revolves around your capabilities and preferred tactics involving long, medium, and short combatives combined with evasive maneuvers. This positioning becomes even more important when facing multiple attackers.
Retzev is seamlessly using all parts of your body for an overwhelming, decisive counterattack. Combined with simultaneous defense and attack, retzev is the backbone of the Israeli fighting system.
Copyright © 2016 by David Kahn and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Griffin.