The History of Krav Maga
The Founder Imi Sde-or
Krav Maga is literally translated as “close combat” or “contact combat. Krav Maga is a generic Hebrew term that can be related to any martial art or hand to hand combat form. Europeans and Americans typically think of the sysetm of fighting skills devised by Imi Sde-Or, and made famous across across the globe in films like "enough" with Jenifer Lopez.
The Krav Maga system was developed by the pioneering Imi Lichtenfeld (Sde-Or ). Imi was a Czech-born gymnast, boxer and wrestling champion. From a young age Imi was exposed to boxing, wrestling and gymnastics by his father Samuel Lichtenfeld. Samuel, a police officer and ex circus strong man, started one of Europes first gyms and taught the local police force restraint and arrest techniques. Imi's early exposure to fighting and training set the scene later in his life to develop the hand to hand and conditioning skills of the one of the worlds most successfull armies, the IDF.
During the facist led persecution of jews in the 1930's and 1940's, and after mounting exposure to the Nazi street attacks Imi became experienced at street fighting and gang fighting against "Storm troopers" the so called gangs of young facists. Imi with some companions fought to keep the facists out of the jewish areas in brutal gang fights that used clubs, bottles knives or anything else to available in the environment, including the occassional firearm.
Imi eventually became a marked man and had to leave his native country for what was then called Palestine, (now Israel). Here Imi served in the Czech legion under the British Army seeing action in the middle east in Libya, Egypy, Syria and the Lebanon. As early as 1944 Imi was teaching hand to hand to various groups and the fore runners to what would later become wings of the IDF special Forces such as the Hagannah and the commando unit the palyam.
A young Imi in his prime
Development of Krav Maga for the Military
After the formation of an Israeli state in 1948, Imi 's experience and training resulted in him being tasked with developing hand-to-hand combat training and fitness for the new Israeli Army as the chief Instructor for Physical Fitness and Krav Maga at the Shool of Combat fitness.
This was no mean feat. Imi had a short period of time, minimal resources and the lives of young Israelis depending on what he taught them. Lack of resources including firearms meant that trainees were taught how to use clubs, knives and even rocks to defend themselves. Imi taught techniques and principles that were easy to learn and easy to apply. It also had to be learned in a short period of time and work under extreme pressure. Over the next two decades, Imi trained IDF soldiers and special forces operatives in what would become the Krav Maga system. Krav Maga had developed into an aggressive combative style featuring elements of boxing, judo, and jujitsu as well as stick- and knife-fighting techniques provided throughout the IDF to this day.
Imi teaching Knife defence
Development of Krav Maga for civilians
After retiring from active duty Imi continued to develop his fighting system for the general population. Again he looked to something that was fast to learn, easy to apply and could be learned in a short period of time. Due to Israel’s near-constant state of conflict with its neighbors, Krav Maga had been continually tested and evolving through years of real combat. The techniques developed for the battlefields of the Middle East could readily be taught to civilians as they were based around natural reactions, simple movements and aggressive defence principles. WIth huge numbers of soldiers being trained and using Krav Maga in real situations, Imi had an unparalled testing ground for what really worked in the heat of a life threatening attack.
So began the development of Krav Maga for civilians. The needs of civilians and soldiers differed markedly. Civilians typically had no weapon, no team or squad to back them up and could be old, young, ill or just plain unfit. Krav Maga had to work for this wide spectrum of abilities in a range of situations varying from mild aggression to life threatening situations.
As a system of self protection it had few rivals, it was fast to learn, easy to apply and had been proven to work again and again. Not surprisingly, Krav Maga became an international success.
Despite its aggressive no-holds-barred approach to self-defence, Krav Maga endorses a system of humanitarian values including personal integrity, non-violence, good citizenship, and humility in its practioners. It may be the gritty training methods, or tough no nonsense approach but Krav Maga does seem to attract really nice people.
Krav Maga Politics
It is beyond the remit of this article to comment on Krav Maga politics other than state some basic facts as I understand them.
Imi assisted Eyal Yanilov in establishing a new organisation, the International Krav Maga federation in 1978. There remained an Israeli Krav Maga Association and there was friction between these 2 groups. Another student of imi's, Darren Levine started his own organisation in the united states now called Krav Maga Worldwide. This organisation worked in harmony with the IKMF untill a legal dispute occured leading to a falling out of the organisations. In Europe some smaller organisations have been started by some of imi's other students. Whilst there is disagreement around a number of technical issues, primarily the differences between the factions is mostly political. Instructors from the main organisations will teach very simmilar technique, near identical principles but may have different views on technique. Currently the IKMF appears to have the largest International following, whilst the American organisation KMWW probably has the most students overall, (although this is based primarly in the USA)
Krav Maga Offshoots
A range of Israeli systems have emerged internationally, each hoping to capitalise on the success of Krav Maga. They are of varying quality with probably some of the better quality contents from Mike lee Kanieric (of Hagganah). There is now Kapap and more recently "Commando" Krav Maga which runs 3 day instructor courses.
The Commando system is not really Krav Maga ( I know anything can be called Krav including aikido and tai chi), but it is really Monis own system renamed Commando Krav Maga. Several sources have come out of the Israeli Military as apparently its not used by the special forces/Commando's either. Inspite of his extensive claims, Moni Aizik never taught or teaches Krav Maga to the Israeli Military and never trained with Imi so he is just cashing in on the name i guess.
Where can I find Krav Maga in the UK
The largest credible Organisationin the UK is undoubtedly the IKMF. It has the best training and teaching methodologies. Most other Krav organisations recognise the training and will accept it as a qualification with ONLY a few days conversion training.
There are fair few CKM clubs but they seem to pop up and dissapear fairly quickly, or leave the organisation. CKM is not to my knowledge recognised by any Krav organisations, although is in the unique position of recognising only it' s self. Simply put the IKMF have more instructors, more locations and better training than the opposition. They also provide regular instructor and student training across the UK via national seminars and gradings etc.
Visit here to find a local instructor
www.krav-maga-uk.com/index.php
|
