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Anyone know anything about Krav Maga ...

(Note: Reposted her for proper usage)

Krav Maga

Translated loosely to English as "contact" or "close combat", Krav Maga was founded in the mid-1930's by a Jewish man named Imi Lichtenfield. The primary purpose of the art was to assist the average person as well as the soldier in dealing with threats to their person during a time in which his native lands were beset on all sides by Egyptians, Arabs, and Palestinians hostile to them. It is utilized by the Israeli Defence Force (in which service is mandatory leading to a general overall population knowledge of the style) as well as being taught to Israeli allied special forces (many SAS combat techniques, for instance, were founded in Krav Maga). It is also utilized in many other countries as a rapid, effective way to teach civilians an effective form of self defense against personal assaults such as mugging and rape. Many other modern arts owe their genesis to Krav Maga (many militaries used it as a basis for their own combat forms) just as it owes its own founding to various other, older martial arts. It is also taught supplementally to police and security forces around the world where alacrity in training co-opts the need for tradition.

The primary premise of Krav Maga is a concept known as "diametrical force". That is, the idea of Krav Maga is maximum effect with minimum effort leading to minimal injury to all present parties. I teach my own students that this means you must never harm another person more than you have to to end an altercation. Death is only the most extreme of responses to a situation. The mechanical principle of Krav Maga is simultaneous attack and defense, with almost every defensive motion possessing a striking counterpart (i.e. an overhand block thrown at the same time as a low body blow.)

There is no such thing as sparring in Krav Maga, and there is no true sports form of it. What little partner training is done is either in the form of pre-planned combatives and time-limited fighting situations in which both Kravists are heavily assaulted by large numbers of other students in a non-lethal fashion (typically the attackers may not strike) and must defend themselves for a specified amount of time. Weapons training in Krav Maga involves modern threats and weapons like longarms, sidearms, and knives, as well as clubs and improvised weapons. The primary focus of the weapons training is disarming an enemy, rather than using them yourself.

Krav Maga is considered a very ruthless fighting style because it is a "no-holds-barred" style. That is, whatever you can do to end a fight with minimal injury to all parties is entirely permitted. Sometimes this is as simple as deflecting a few attacks to show how hard it would be to take you down. Other times, this may involve such unsavory tactics as groin strikes, biting, hair pulling, and eye gouging. Still other times, it may require the dislocation, hyperextension, and/or breaking of a non-vital area to negate the effectiveness of the attacker(s).

Krav Maga is measured in different ways dependent upon the instructor teaching the course. The most common format is via Levels. A Level 1 Kravist is considered roughly equivalent to a Tae Kwon Do/Karate yellow belt, and can be expected to be capable of defeating most rudimentary threats as well as defusing situations without violence. The highest level, Level 6 (denoted as a black belt and considered equivalent to a third or fourth degree black belt in TKD/Karate) is reserved for the best of military students and instructors and involves not only knowledge of combatives, but skill with tactics and psychological methods of defusing tense situations. From Level 2 onward, students are expected to cannily defend themselves against up to five unarmed assailants or three armed assailants.