Krav Maga training effectiveness

The first thing my KM teacher told me was that the majority of the time you're in a fight with someone who genuinely wants to cause you harm, you're going to get hurt. The most you can hope for most of the time is having that knife hitting your arm instead of plunging into your heart, as it is nearly impossible to completely stop someone with intent to hurt you.
I think your instructor has been watching too many Bourne films. If someone has a knife and wants to hurt you they are hardly likely to do you the courtesy of waving it infront of you so you have a chance to defend yourself. They'll shank you, prison style, and the first you will know about it is when the knife is in your back.

On the other hand if someone shows you the knife, chances are they just want to scare you into giving them what they want (money, phone, body (for the purposes of sexual assault),

Hence the saying; A stabber rarely shows and a shower rarely stabs.

Have you or your instructor looked at the crime statistics in your area to determine number of recorded knife crimes? How many stories of people fighting with knives in the street are there in your local paper in the last 12 months? Is is something you realistically need to learn where you live? Your KM teacher is going to feed you the Jason Bourne fantasy of knife fighting because he wants to sell you KM lessons, but what it the reality where you live?
 
I think your instructor has been watching too many Bourne films. If someone has a knife and wants to hurt you they are hardly likely to do you the courtesy of waving it infront of you so you have a chance to defend yourself. They'll shank you, prison style, and the first you will know about it is when the knife is in your back.

On the other hand if someone shows you the knife, chances are they just want to scare you into giving them what they want (money, phone, body (for the purposes of sexual assault),

Hence the saying; A stabber rarely shows and a shower rarely stabs.

Have you or your instructor looked at the crime statistics in your area to determine number of recorded knife crimes? How many stories of people fighting with knives in the street are there in your local paper in the last 12 months? Is is something you realistically need to learn where you live? Your KM teacher is going to feed you the Jason Bourne fantasy of knife fighting because he wants to sell you KM lessons, but what it the reality where you live?
No one's fed me any fantasy, I've never been in a fight and doubt I will be for a very long time. I live in a rich country with extremely low crime rates, and I'm not worried about anyone stabbing me when I walk down the street. If I were being mugged, I would do what the guy said, I wouldn't try to show off any KM. That'd be stupid. But statistics don't help you if you end up in a bad situation. It might not be a knife, but I've seen a guy break a bottle while drunk at a bar and threaten someone else with it. Nothing ended up happening, but if it had escalated, things could have gone very bad. If I'm ever in a situation like that (statistically unlikely but always possible), I'd feel a lot better knowing I've put some work into dealing with something like that. I've just been using a knife as an example, but a broken bottle could do just as much damage if used correctly. As I said earlier in this thread, if someone walks up behind you and shanks you in the back, you're screwed. No way around it. But fights where you are aware the other guy is holding a weapon do happen, and in those cases having done the techniques in class would help, I believe.
 
I live in a rich country with extremely low crime rates, and I'm not worried about anyone stabbing me when I walk down the street. If I were being mugged, I would do what the guy said, I wouldn't try to show off any KM.
Shouldn't SD training reflect the threats you are most likely to face? People waving knives or bottles in your face is not going to be top of the list of most likely threats I would imagine if that is where you live. What do the crime statistics in your area show is the threat someone of you age/sex demographic is most likely to face?

A military SD system developed for for a highly volatile part of the world would not seem to be designed for a civilian living in a well off low crime rate surburban environment.
 
Shouldn't SD training reflect the threats you are most likely to face? People waving knives or bottles in your face is not going to be top of the list of most likely threats I would imagine if that is where you live. What do the crime statistics in your area show is the threat someone of you age/sex demographic is most likely to face?

A military SD system developed for for a highly volatile part of the world would not seem to be designed for a civilian living in a well off low crime rate surburban environment.
Why focus on statistics though? If there's only one stabbing in my town per year, thats a very low chance of me being stabbed. But what if that one person were me? Knowing the chances of being stabbed are low doesn't help me if someone happens to be trying to stab me. This is all hypothetical, of course. I'm not gearing up for war or anything. I guarantee 95% of KM students don't ever use it in a real life-or-death situation, but it doesn't hurt being trained in it.

Also KM started for the military but can easily be adapted for civilian use. Mainly just take out the part where you learn how to attack and defend with the stock and barrel of a rifle and bang, you're prepared for most things you'll run into in the regular world.
 
Why teach them though? Doesn't that make them worse off in a fight? You'd better just leave them be untrained, because they have the same fighting chance as you do, right?
thos discussion has polarizered to ( the ussual ) silly positions. Those being that learning ma makes you supper dooper at defending your self, or its not a bout fighting ,and you will lose anyway in a street encounter.

the simple rule of thumb is,,,,,,,,,, if you have the required skills and the physicality to put them into action the ma should win/ defend himself. If the skills are under developed or he doesn't have the superior strengh, speed ,co ordination to pull them off then he will probably loose.

taken ng a knife of someone is very easy, provided you have perfected the techneque AND if you are,considerably faster than the knife man with the strength to get it out of his grip/ deliver a killer blow. If not you will get stabbed some where, it is just the rules of the jungle
 
Why focus on statistics though? If there's only one stabbing in my town per year, thats a very low chance of me being stabbed. But what if that one person were me? Knowing the chances of being stabbed are low doesn't help me if someone happens to be trying to stab me. This is all hypothetical, of course. I'm not gearing up for war or anything. I guarantee 95% of KM students don't ever use it in a real life-or-death situation, but it doesn't hurt being trained in it.

Also KM started for the military but can easily be adapted for civilian use. Mainly just take out the part where you learn how to attack and defend with the stock and barrel of a rifle and bang, you're prepared for most things you'll run into in the regular world.
yes, but with the point I made above, KM was developed for the idf. If you are 22and just completed basic training for the army. Then you may well have the physicality to use them effectively . Though I'm sure the idf don't have a 100% win record with it either. But you need the fitness, be that strengh co ordination speed balance to pull it off. If you have no physical advantages on your attacker, then all you are left with is a technique and the element of surprise, which means you either take them out in 5 secs or you lose
 
yes, but with the point I made above, KM was developed for the idf. If you are 22and just completed basic training for the army. Then you may well have the physicality to use them effectively . Though I'm sure the idf don't have a 100% win record with it either. But you need the fitness, be that strengh co ordination speed balance to pull it off. If you have no physical advantages on your attacker, then all you are left with is a technique and the element of surprise, which means you either take them out in 5 secs or you lose
Thank you for finally bringing this thread back to where it started. That is precisely why I want to start kickboxing on the side, so that I can get that higher level of physical fitness and strength, and be able to use that in my KM training.
 
Thank you for finally bringing this thread back to where it started. That is precisely why I want to start kickboxing on the side, so that I can get that higher level of physical fitness and strength, and be able to use that in my KM training.
yes and that a very valid logic. . But the point that other are making is that For most of the students it is indeed a Jason Bourne fantasy of killer moves that ( your words) neutralise an a much more physically able attacker in seconds and that's dodgy advertising.

my initial point was the kickboxing techniques' will in most instances be superior to KM, not least because of the simplicity, the live practise and the fitness you need , with the notable exception of knife and gun disarms, which as we have established are dodgy at the best of times
 
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KM was developed for the idf.

It was actually developed before the IDF was formed, it was designed for Jewish people ( not fit or even young people) to be able to defend themselves from the many anti Semitic attacks we are subjected to even to this day. It is taught to the IDF in a stronger more robust form but it's not a substitute for weapons, it's very much a last ditch line of defence. There has been a lot of knife attacks in Israel by terrorists ( the thought is that the London attackers are emulating them) but the first thing is to shoot them not try to defend against them. The KM training is also very good for training confidence and aggression into recruits, one reason that the British army still trains with the bayonet. British soldiers have had to use their bayonets a couple of times in Afghanistan but it was a very much last ditch defence, weapons are the obvious first choice. martial arts training/hand to hand/ unarmed combat whatever you call it has obvious value for training recruits, that they may have to use it at some point is not really the reason they teach it.

Also KM started for the military but can easily be adapted for civilian use.

Wrong way wrong. My mother learnt KM in the 1930s for it's original purpose.
 
Obviously I'm not a police officer, so I wouldn't know, but people keep saying on here that cops have to use reasonable force. Does that mean that police officers are only trained to take down someone safely and 'legally'? Because that doesn't make any sense. Why wouldn't they be trained to handle something worse than that and then dial it down when actually working in the field? Are you telling me that if a police officer has a gun pointed at them, that they must still consider the ethical implications of kicking the guy in the groin or gouging out his eyes? Of course they have limitations and such and if there were any other way to take the guy down I'm positive they would take that course of action, what I'm trying to say is that KM would help in a more serious situation where they can't manage with just pepper spray or their taser doesn't work for some reason. I also don't appreciate your condescension where you assume I'm brainwashed by Hollywood movies to think that a gun-to-the-head situation can be solved with simply twisting it out of the guy's hand, but surely it's better to train KM techniques in disarming someone than just sit back and say 'Oh well it's not as easy to disarm someone as they show in the movies' and just take the bullet, right? Also, you sort of proved yourself wrong in your last point. If it's sometimes considered 'reasonable' to use lethal force, such as in the case of a terrorist attack, then what happened to your argument that KM is not suitable for police work?

They can use unreasonable force. But they are not generally trained in it. Part of the training is like a lot of industry training which is done for the sake of liability. So if you do go and poke out someone's eye. You can't then turn around and say you were told to do it.

For the rest of it. The kickboxing will help the krav in pretty much the way you think it will.

In that to get any move to work on a guy you need a system that stops you from being hit and let's you hit them. Which is what kick boxing focuses on.

Then once you can do that you can apply krav tactics and hit people in their vulnerable areas.

I find that I need to do a lot of the very basic elements of fighting well before I can apply any of the krav stuff I have learned.

Even that block punch thing is a complete bugger to pull off in sparring.

Block,punch, arm grab, disarm, follow up? There is a mountain of fundamental fighting skills that are required to make that possible.
 
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They can use unreasonable force

'Reasonable force' is a legal term rather than a description of techniques. it's what you deem reasonable in regards the threat you face. What might be thought reasonable for me probably wouldn't be thought reasonable if you did the same thing.
I know quite a few Aussie police officers and I've never found their training to be for the sake of liability, I've always been quite impressed by how physical they can be when policing ( thought I'd better add that in case you got the wrong idea...:D)
 
The reason I like it as a form of self defense is that it teaches you how to go for the weak points of the body, which is something that isn't taught in any other martial art. Obviously if I were a skilled kickboxer or MMA'er I could apply those skills and throw in some eye gouges and the like, but in KM lessons you actually go through the motions of attacking those areas and so it helps develop that response to be instinctual. Also KM is taught in most military/police forces around the world, so I don't see how you can argue that it isn't (at the very least) ONE of the best forms of self defense.
Every art I've studied, whether in depth or only in a seminar, has touched on the idea of weak points. It's how things work.
 
'Reasonable force' is a legal term rather than a description of techniques. it's what you deem reasonable in regards the threat you face. What might be thought reasonable for me probably wouldn't be thought reasonable if you did the same thing.
I know quite a few Aussie police officers and I've never found their training to be for the sake of liability, I've always been quite impressed by how physical they can be when policing ( thought I'd better add that in case you got the wrong idea...:D)

Yeah. I was kind of using unreasonable force for simplicity.

Australians police tend to ignore the training.
 
Because they tell you what crimes you are mostly likely to be a victim of?
Again, it's what is 'most likely'. Things outside of that category still do happen, and when training KM it's not like I'm gonna pass on the lesson that teaches how to disarm a guy with a gun because it 'isn't likely' for it to happen to me, I'll take what I can from the lesson on the off-chance I'm ever held at gunpoint for some reason.
 
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