Krav Maga and self-defence

The unique characteristic that distinguishes Krav Maga from martial arts and combat sports is its uncompromising nature, its effectiveness at all costs. Imi was responsible for training the armed forces from Israel. Here it was important to prepare them as quickly as possible for an emergency. Regardless of their previous experience, age or gender. In addition, he had to make sure that the close combat system, once learned, could be quickly retrieved in later reserve service. Even in short training periods and without too high demands on the existing fitness level.

The Krav Maga Institute is part of the umbrella organisation KRAVolution. The KRAVolution association counts on the freedom of the individual self-defence schools to design their training, but controls the quality by testing and regularly offers advanced training for Krav Maga trainers.

The philosophy of KRAVolution is based on the fact that a self-defence system has to adapt to the respective times and the respective current threat situations and therefore has to be constantly developed further. In this sense the motto of the association: We train Krav Maga self-defense and not a curriculum. The principles are in the foreground and not the mere sequence of rehearsed techniques.

We want to defend ourselves and are not technicians. We are KRAVolution.

Not one master above all decides about curriculum and teaching methods. What and how exactly we teach is decided jointly by the whole KRAVolution team under the leadership of Carsten Draheim in an international committee. Again and again, the system is tested, reviewed and improved by experts around the world in order to meet the requirements of real life.

What is most important for us is you: our cohesion and that worldwide. That is why we are part of the KRAVolution. Because this is exactly what the association reflects, among other things, through the democratic structure of the organization; the TEAMwork!

> KRAVolution – Become a part of this unique team – Become a member now!

What is KRAVolution – the success story of the fastest growing Krav Maga organization in the world.

KRAVolution was founded in 2010 by our Lead Instructor Carsten Draheim, initially as a brand for his schools located in Germany. The first resulting company in Cologne was called KRAVolution. This developed into the Krav Maga Institute, “KMI” for short, together with several schools in North Rhine-Westphalia. In 2017, Draheim developed it into an international organisation. Carsten was also active as a so-called Military Director of the IKMF and wrote a book recommended by this association for all Krav Maga trainers: “Krav Maga – Effective Self-Defence”. His second book “Krav Maga – Effective Techniques for Self-Defence” already reflects the teaching methodology of KRAVolution. This is based on the fact that the self-defence system has to adapt to the respective times and to the respective current threat situation and therefore has to develop itself constantly. The principles are in the foreground and not just a sequence of rehearsed techniques.

Carsten Draheim is a close combat instructor for soldiers of the German Armed Forces, appointed by the Ministry of Defence of the Federal Republic of Germany. Furthermore Carsten and his team of instructors support police officers and military users in the field of professional close combat, arrest and self-defence techniques. He also continuously teaches men, women and children in civil self-defence in our Krav Maga Institute!

Professional organization
The success as an organisation depends on the success of the individual schools. This in turn depends on the successful education of its students.

Mission
We teach effective self-defense to ordinary people.
We teach customized Krav Maga for various organizations.
We turn students into fighters.
We turn instructors into teachers.
We focus on principles, not on techniques.
We have a passion for quality.
We focus on our students and instructors, not just on ourselves.
We measure our success by the success of our students and schools.
We have one mandatory requirement: It must be fun.
We strive for barrier-free training also for L

Most Kravists usually have no time for intensive daily training. Krav Maga is made for people who are not competitive athletes and cannot train every day. If the worst comes to the worst, they have to rely on their ability to react and on their intuitive behaviour. This is what Krav Maga training takes up. It trains the sequence of reaction and movement patterns with a minimum of training effort and with the aim of remaining capable of acting under stress.

Thus, the Krav Maga system deliberately consists of a limited number of possible actions.

If you can avoid the danger through attention and escape, you run away.

What sounds simple often leads to amazing results in training. Have we in our “civilized world” really forgotten how to interpret danger correctly? Have we forgotten how to run away at an early stage of a possible escalation? Yes, we have. We often rely on the fact that everything is already going well and that other people will help us. But this is often not the case. Especially martial artists have great difficulty with this variant of avoiding a fight.

Only when I can no longer escape, I defend myself with all the means at my disposal. Self-defence is not done in order to emerge victorious from the fight, but also with the aim of fleeing and to bring not only myself but also others – family members, colleagues and comrades – to safety. What is nicely described here with “all possible means” means nothing else than that war, for which Krav Maga was once developed to train soldiers, is always hard and brutal! So are the Krav Maga fighting techniques that derive from these principles: uncompromising, unfair, hard and brutal. And therefore highly effective.

Based on these principles, we train Krav Maga with professional users such as police officers or soldiers, who do their daily service on the streets or in different crisis areas, but also on the mat in training with civilian users.

This important element of Krav Maga is the consequence of the street fighting in Bratislava and the knowledge of the soldiers in Israel who are constantly at war. War is always bloody and brutal. Whoever loses a war must expect the consequences. Krav Maga therefore creates a “non-quitter mentality” in the trainee. By aggressively defending against violent attacks, it aims to neutralize the attacker(s) as quickly as possible.

“… it was either hit or run, I found the hitting more satisfying … You automatically end the fight by putting an end to your opponent …” Imi is said to have said to his students in 1976.

Imi’s pragmatic view and his experience strongly influenced his system. He worked until his death on the further development and optimization of Krav Maga, especially for the civil sector.

• Unkomplizierte Funktionalität unter Stress – aufbauend auf natürlichen Reaktionen und Bewegungen.
• Unfair – denn Selbstverteidigung ist kein Kampfsport.
• Kein starres System – es wird ständig weiterentwickelt und stellt sich dabei infrage.
• Angriffe nur zu verletzlichen Punkten.
• Hart gegen weich – weich gegen hart.
• Hand-Defense & Body-Defense zusammen = Totale Defense.
• Kein Block ohne Konter.
• Taktisches Mindset – fight, flight, never freeze.
• Using Common Objects – nutze alles, was du Nutzen kannst, insbesondere Gegenstände

Zusammengefasst zeichnet sich Krav Maga durch instinktive und möglichst einfache Techniken aus. Besonders die richtige Reaktion unter Stress wird fortlaufend trainiert.

Instead of a multitude of complicated techniques, Krav Maga focuses on simple and preferably universal principles. All techniques should be simple and easy to learn for everyone. The aim is to recall them under stress and thus build on natural behaviour, instincts and human reactions.

The orientation on these simple principles allows a flexible design of the training process and the choice of techniques. The focus of the lessons is always on the trainee, i.e. the person and not the system.

Although in Israel, depending on the organization, belts or patches are also given as “rank insignia” in Krav Maga classes, the system is sometimes erroneously categorized as a martial art or martial sport. In terms of goals and approaches, it is quite the opposite of a competitive sport.

Compared to Krav Maga, the martial art has mostly developed from traditional martial arts. In order to protect the athletes, some techniques have even been defused and protective equipment is usually mandatory. Further limits are set by adding sporting rules. Depending on the sport, for example, techniques against the genital area or on small joints, biting or even hitting and kicking as well as the use of weapons are prohibited. Even Ultimate Fighters fight in a cage in a Mixed Martial Arts event, MMA for short, ultimately in a controlled environment with limited possibilities.

Krav Maga can be learned by anyone, because you don’t have to be a top athlete to be able to stand up in combat. This is not only shown by the example of a beer-bellied but still efficient street racket or hooligan. However, a certain basic fitness is a very good prerequisite, for example, to be able to run away and not lose an inevitable fight because you lack the stamina to move fast for several seconds. Whereby we already come to the point here. Most real fights usually last only a few seconds until the winner is determined.

A good Krav Maga Instructor must first and foremost be well trained. The technical Krav Maga training is the foundation of his knowledge and independent of gender. Krav Maga is not a protected term. Therefore it is all the more important to recognize the difference. At best, a good instructor already has some previous experience in one or more martial arts disciplines.

So he was or is a martial artist, but one who likes to think outside the box and is therefore open to solutions rather than techniques.

If he is able to do so, it is not difficult for him to distinguish good training from bad. Furthermore, he is well trained by life and may have successfully completed several real threat and attack situations, professionally or privately. Because you cannot learn this knowledge from books.

So the good instructor is a good fighter, but an even better teacher.

The founder of Krav Maga (Hebrew for contact fight), Imrich Lichtenfeld, short “Imi”, was born in Budapest in 1910 and grew up in Bratislava. Imi was already a versatile sportsman at a young age through the support of his father, who actively participated in wrestling and boxing competitions. At the age of 18, Imi won the Slovakian Championship in wrestling and several national boxing championships. Imis’ father Samuel was an exceptional sportsman who joined a travelling circus at a young age and later ran a weight training school for wrestlers and weightlifters. In addition, Samuel was employed by the city police in the rank of a chief inspector and regularly taught the police officers in self-defense using stylized techniques from boxing and Jui-Jutsu. As a child, Imi participated in these training sessions and was also taught by his father in many areas of sports. He took part in countless sporting competitions and at that time was considered one of the best wrestlers in Europe in his weight class.

The young Lichtenfeld

In the mid-1930s, Imi and like-minded people joined a Schutztruppe with the aim of protecting Jewish residential areas against anti-Semitic attacks.

The young Lichtenfeld became a resistance fighter and organized the self-defense of the Jewish community based on his experience in wrestling and boxing. In doing so, he took part in countless street fights in defence of the Jewish quarters against the fascist mob and often had to fight for his life and that of his comrades. As a leading figure of the resistance he became the declared enemy of the anti-Semites and in 1940 had to flee Bratislava on board an old paddle steamer. He then served for two years in the Czech Legion under the command of the British forces in North Africa and the Middle East before being granted permission to enter Palestine. Upon arrival in Israel, he changed his name to Imi Sde-Or.