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Sorry for the long post in advance.
I am really wondering if Krav is enough as practiced at many schools. A while back I posted when I was doing BJJ a bit. My ground skyrocketed in comparison to doing just Krav. I switched more to Muay Thai for now with some added MMA. My standup seems to have definitely improved than Krav alone. I mean, just doing basic things like blocking and foot work, seeing the openings for striking etc has noticeably increased. It’s to the point that I like practicing at my other gym and seeing how much I have improved when working with the folks at my Krav place. When I did BJJ, I was catching folks in submissions and generally giving them a run for their money as a small buck 20ish female. Now with Muay Thai, I can spar with guys at my Krav much better. The other day I got several hits to various guys’ heads which I could not do in the past. You could see some of them were surprised as well. Again, I am a small female and they have definite height and reach advantage.We don’t spar that much at my Krav place unfortunately. They have a late and short sparring class one day a week that is too late for me. I did it some in the past though. I am a green belt and so I have seen a little more sparring in actual class than in the lower belt classes. I guess going out and about and seeing what is out there has really opened my eyes. I really think there is something to using techniques against a resisting opponent and not just drills. Even better is having resisting opponents who know what they are doing. I was getting my lunch ate at my other gym and it really opened my eyes to things I was doing wrong. Now when I go back to my Krav place it’s like a laboratory for me to test what I learned.
Why do I stick with Krav? I still like Krav because of the mindset. I think training just BJJ, MT or MMA can get people too much in a “one-on-one” mindset that can be detrimental on a street fight. Krav reinforces awareness to me. I like some of the common defenses to things that Krav teaches. I also like to learn the weapons defenses. For straight fighting though, I really feel like it’s better to supplement Krav. Now I know some people probably have Krav places where that would be unnecessary maybe due to the experience level of the trainers. I think it’s great for a Krav instructor to have had another background like MT, BJJ, MMA, boxing, etc to fine-tune fighting skills. I wish I had that at my Krav gym but I feel like I have had to search elsewhere for those “finer” fighting skills.
Re: Krav Maga Alone?
I guess what I am looking for is… has anyone else noticed this?… That non-Krav training augments your training more than Krav alone.
Re: Krav Maga Alone?
quote kravjitsu:I guess what I am looking for is… has anyone else noticed this?… That non-Krav training augments your training more than Krav alone.It all depends on where you train and your goals. Hopefully your school has a diverse instructor group . . . and if not, then you should probably augment your training. If your goal is to become a great BJJ practitioner then you definitely need to train at a BJJ school.
As for fighting (standing), you should be getting enough instruction and practice at your KM school, especially as a green belt. So yes, because of my school I am able to do KM alone, but I’m also not expecting to gain the ground skills that match a pure BJJ purple belt.
Re: Krav Maga Alone?
For a while, I was training at both an MMA gym (with a Muay Thai emphasis) and a Krav gym. For both time and money reasons, this became unsustainable. In a month of Muay Thai, I probably learned more about striking than I did in a year of Krav. I still use some of the tricks I learned during sparring where more often than not, I can get the better of the higher level belts (or patches, I guess. We’re a kmg school). I ended up picking the Krav gym over the MMA gym because I wanted the self defense aspects of Krav. Kravists are generalists. They train for both the likely (a fistfight) and less likely (guns, knives, etc, although I’ve had the former pulled on me twice). The time you train in knife and stick defenses is time you don’t train punches and kicks. But a specialist will usually beat a generalist, all other things being equal. In a fistfight, I’d put my money on a Muay Thai guy over a Krav guy any day. So to your question of “is Krav Maga alone enough,” it depends on what you’re after. For self defense against the people who are most likely to attack you (people without a ton of training, multiple attackers, occasional weapons), I’d say yes. It’s as good as you can hope for, considering these are situations in which the odds will usually be stacked against you. If you’re trying to become a better fighter – someone who fights other people who have a moderate or better amount of training in fighting other trained individuals – then probably not. But I think you have already seen that. If you have the time and money to cross train, I say go for it.
Re: Krav Maga Alone?
oldKMdude… I think you make a good point about Krav Maga makes you a generalist. It’s cool to see someone else who had other training that accelerated their skills. Probably for many people, especially men Krav will be ok for most situations. Sometimes I do wonder with the popularity of MMA/UFC and more people training. The more people who train…MMA, wrestling, Muay Thai, BJJ etc, the more likely you are to encounter someone who may actually know a little something.
As a woman, I have often questioned even on this forum how much Krav alone can get me with a man if I am attacked… even on some untrained ones. Groin shot and go is best scenario but what if it was more prolonged than one shot?
Women IMHO need a lot of extra skill to make up the difference when defending herself or fighting a man than what another man would need. I have seen how important skill is. I can’t rely on just brute force as a woman. I have to play smarter. Work a lot on evasion, angles, and speed… things you would get at a Muay Thai place in finer detail for example.
I feel like if I were defending myself against a woman, I would be ok with Krav alone. Fact of the matter is I am more likely to be attacked by a man so I feel like I need to almost be like a fighter just to have better odds of surviving different types of attack. I hope it never happens though.
Re: Krav Maga Alone?
I always believed that adding to your skill set can never be a bad thing when you know how to apply it effectively in the situation you’re in. Learning BJJ is a great addition to your ground skills, but going for submissions in the street isn’t always the best option. Muay Thai and Boxing can increase the effectiveness of your striking, but you probably wouldn’t want to treat a street situation like a sparring match.
Like OldKMdude, time and funds (now age as well) only allow for one discipline. I choose to continue with Krav because of the weapon defenses and multiple attacker situations. Being a lot smarter now than in my youth, I think I can pretty much avoid a fist fight with anyone. It’s the guys with the guns, knives, sticks, and 2 or 3 friends that worries me more.
Being a female, rape, assault, robbery, abduction are more likely threats against you than someone trying to start a bar fight. Not to say that BJJ and Muay Thai can’t help in those situations…it certainly can’t hurt…just remember to turn the Krav switch on and get yourself out as quickly as possible.
Just this week two guys robbed an armored truck at a shopping mall in broad daylight. I just ate lunch at that very mall 1 hour prior to the robbery. It’s these guys that I worry about.
Re: Krav Maga Alone?
I’ve been giving this some thought and I think the quality of your instructor is more important than the particular discipline (s)he’s teaching. Take some of the instructors on this forum. They’ve trained extensively in various striking, grappling and weapons arts as well as Krav. If you were lucky enough to have one of them as your instructor, you can bet that you’d be better prepared for life on the street after your classes than before them, no matter what the class was called. Any good instructor is going to teach you some street smarts and let you know that there’s more to defending yourself than any narrow art. If CJs Dad were your Krav instructor, do you really think you’d need to add Muay Thai or BJJ to be well rounded? I don’t think so. It couldn’t hurt but you wouldn’t need it. OTOH, there are bad instructors in all the arts including Krav. You might learn something from them but you’d probably have to broaden your horizons to really be able to defend yourself. My $.02……
Re: Krav Maga Alone?
If I am relying on my instructor’s outside Krav experience in addition to his/her Krav experience, then it still seems to me that I am not totally depending on Krav alone. I am relying on Krav PLUS the other tasty tid bits that the instructor may bring in from previous MMA, MT, BJJ, boxing, wrestling, etc. experience.
That brings up another point… I think most people would rather have an instructor that had other pertinent disciplines in addition to Krav instead of only Krav training if there was a choice.
Re: Krav Maga Alone?
I’m just learning about Krav as I am a female who sees how dangerous the world is and really wants to be able to defend herself against anyone, man or woman. I have never really been in a fight, nor have I feared for my life against anyone, so I don’t really need anything where I need to know how to destroy someone. I just want to learn self defense to defend myself and to get away from anyone trying to hurt me. Reading this thread really helped me with that. I dont think most criminals who attack you train at the gym to learn a specialized fighting style so I am not as worried about that. I am still on the fence but this thread was a great help.
Re: Krav Maga Alone?
Personally, rather than looking at an instructor’s CV of what schools he has attended, I’d like to know that (s)he has some real-world experience using this stuff on the street — cop, military, bouncer, grew up in a bad neighborhood, etc., etc. My training partner is former special forces and a great practical teacher even though he doesn’t have much formal education in the martial arts.
Re: Krav Maga Alone?
quote catapult:Personally, rather than looking at an instructor’s CV of what schools he has attended, I’d like to know that (s)he has some real-world experience using this stuff on the street — cop, military, bouncer, grew up in a bad neighborhood, etc., etc. My training partner is former special forces and a great practical teacher even though he doesn’t have much formal education in the martial arts.I was going to post a similar comment. I think the quality of your training partners are equally important. I like training with people who know how to take the intensity to as near real-life as possible without sacrificing safety.
Re: Krav Maga Alone?
quote goldenholden:I have never really been in a fight, nor have I feared for my life against anyone, so I don’t really need anything where I need to know how to destroy someone. I just want to learn self defense to defend myself and to get away from anyone trying to hurt me.My goal is to not to be able to “destroy” someone either. I have just found that due to the size and strength differences in men and women, it is better to actually be skilled in fighting for women. I mean skilled just so you can *survive* not beat the tar out of multiple male kung fu MMA masters. People always talk about self-defense against an untrained attacker. Well, if that “untrained” attacker is a man and he is intent on harming you as a woman, I would say a woman should be pretty skilled to overcome the sheer size, strength and even aggression difference between most men and most women.
I think some women have this idea that all they need to do is kick a guy in the groin, gouge an eye, do a flurry of palm strikes and all will be well. If this guy is *really* out for some harm, I would not count on that.
Can Krav Maga get a woman to that type of skill? With the right instructor (who has Krav and non-Krav experience) and A LOT of dedication, I would say yes. Does every school have that? I would say no. My school did not have that. It is still worth going to but I felt I needed to supplement.
Re: Krav Maga Alone?
My goal in training KM is to learn how to defend myself from an attacker, or attackers, just enough so I can escape to safety. It’s not to become the next Jason Bourne or Jack Bauer. It’s also not to become the next rising star in the UFC. I’m saying this as a form of self-affirmation.
Like oldkmdude, I don’t have the time, money or youth to cross-train in other arts while also training KM. So, KM will do just fine for now.
However, if KM no longer becomes available to me because of conflicts with my schedule or geography, then I’m thinking FMA might be a decent replacement. :):
Re: Krav Maga Alone?
I think that for getting someone “street ready” in as little time as possible, nothing beats Krav. And that’s kind of the point. It was designed to take someone from zero to 60 in as little time as possible. Just look at the level 1 curriculum in the major orgs – it’s mostly linear strikes (straight punches, knees, front kicks), aggression, constantly pushing forward, and defenses against chokes that no one with any training would ever do, but the types you see from angry people who are intent on hurting you. These techniques rely more on aggression and surprise than skill.
Now I’ve been doing Krav for about 3 1/2 years and fell in love with it from day one. I plan to keep doing it for many years to come. But I don’t think that it was really meant to be studied in the way that many of us like to do it these days – as a martial art (sorry, self defense) that you practice for many years. It seems like the higher up you go in Krav, the more you build on what you know in a way that adds breadth somewhat more than depth. You don’t tend to get really spectacular at a few things; you tend to get pretty good at a lot of things.
Now take something like Muay Thai. You learn pretty much all the moves in a month. Then you spend years trying to master their application. You hear professional boxers say things like “I need to work on my jab” and you think “really? you’ve been boxing for years and you feel like you need to work on the first punch you ever learned?” But that’s the difference between a specialist and a generalist.
I don’t think there is a one size fits all approach to fighting. Your body type, your strengths and weaknesses, and types of situations you’re likely to get into will be individual to you. For me, I’ve found that the tools that I’ve gotten from Muay Thai and boxing have really helped – I’m not a huge guy, so I need to be able pick my shots and make them count rather than go toe-to-toe with someone who weighs twice as much as me.
Sorry for the long rant, but the short version is: Krav is great, but if you can cross-train, do so.
Re: Krav Maga Alone?
quote oldKMdude:For me, I’ve found that the tools that I’ve gotten from Muay Thai and boxing have really helped – I’m not a huge guy, so I need to be able pick my shots and make them count rather than go toe-to-toe with someone who weighs twice as much as me.This basically reiterates what I was saying about needing to be more skilled to be able to overcome the size and strength differences I am likely to encounter. It is not realistic for me to go “toe-to-toe” and duke it out with most guys if one would attack me.
I feel like I need extra skill (i.e. learning from a specialist) to know how to make every strike or move count in that situation too.
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