My thoughts on Krav Maga 

From the words of a true Krav Maga expert, while teaching knife defense: "You WILL get cut with the knife."

You kind of look like Saitama when he gets all serious.

I spent 10 years in the Foreign Legion and they taught a very important lesson when confronted with a knife. Get as much distance between you and the knife, remove your pistol and shoot at the knife holder until the knife stops moving.

"You're not attacking the right way" is the worst attitude anyone can have in martial arts.

Best knife defense practitioner I know: Usain Bolt.

I served in the IDF Krav Maga (literally contact combat) is taught in several levels. 1. In basic training they generally teach how not to freeze in combat. They do so by aggression exercises and simulation mostly to get you acquainted with the rush of dopamine and getting used to reacting in that situation. 2. Later on in advanced training they teach several basic yet useful technics for self defense using the riffle as a striking weapon. 3. Soldiers who go on to become officers and or serve in elite unites learn more advance technics which are comparable to MMA though with a bit more emphasis on real life situations. This training is highly effective. Not all instructors who teach 1. are actually trained in 3. and that is why in the Israeli army the Krav Maga instructors from basic training get often laughed at by soldiers. I suppose ppl who try "selling" Krav Maga in the US are actually knowledgable only about 1. and use 3. as a selling point.

First rule of any self-defense is avoid the fight.

In other words, most Krav Maga trainers are like CrossFit instructors. Got it.

I practice Glock-fu. It is the best way to beat a person with a knife.

*Getting mugged in an ally at knife point* "Ha! I know Krav Maga! You're going down!" *Stabbed in the side* "Hang on! I want a re-do! I wasn't ready" *37 stab wounds later...* "....YOU'RE NOT DOING IT RRRIIIIIIIIiiiigggggggghhhhhhttttt....."

In my Krav Maga class with regards to knife fighting my trainer always taught us to get out as fast as possible. He said you will always get hurt in a knife fight and we practiced basically protecting our vital organs and getting out of the situation as fast as possible, and he taught us to keep calm under intense stress by constantly drilling it into us until it was second nature. I completely understand what you're saying though, I'm glad I went to such a good guy honestly. It changed my life.

Anyone who has trained full force with rubber knives knows what you're talking about is absolutely true. Knives are terrifying, period.

In the army, we once asked the instructor for hand to hand combat. He answered: "You have a shovel."

I don’t often subscribe to stuff like this, but your honesty and grounded nature are refreshing . Much appreciated.

I took Krav classes for over a year and loved it, my instructor was a good one, with the knife takeaways he always emphasized that there is no easy way to disarm a guy with a knife and that the stuff he was teaching was only for a life or death scenario where you had no choice but to deal with a knife wielding guy. He always said, you will almost certainly get cut/stabbed before you can take it away, but his techniques were geared towards making sure you didn't get hit in your vitals in the process. It's actually easier in close quarters to deal with a guy with a gun, knives in close quarters are extremely difficult to deal with.

So glad to hear someone say how dangerous a knife is.

4:30 the least number of times I've been stabbed is six....VERY HUMBLE STATEMENT...won't be found in many places on youtube.

I've seen a few of your videos today. You are real, you are legit, much respect to you. I will mention your channel on mine because you deserve many more subs because you keep it real and that's a rare trait. Subbed

It's really interesting to see somebody who is not a Krav Maga practitioner actually know about the struggle of being mistaken and/or having your practice's reputation tarnished by fakes and charlatans. I'd like to shed some insights on that and some of the other topics you mentioned including the military/civilian KM differences. Also I don't mean to virtue signal I'll just say it to give context and hopefully credibility to what I'm about to say: I have trained 7 years under both a direct disciple of Imi Lichtenfeld (KM's creator) and an ex-Israeli military elite division KM instructor and I do not proclaim to be anywhere near a master on it, however I do know a lot about Krav Maga and hopefully this will inform you or others about it. Firstly, KM was developed initially as a self-defense technique by Imi Lichtenfeld to defend against the fascist aggressions him and his jewish community faced during in Hungary on the onset of WW2, he developed the techniques by refining many techniques from several martial arts he knew by distilling them to the most "straight to the point" versions. It was only after he fled to what would later become Israel that he started teaching it to the military as a military focused technique. It was only way later in his life, at the 80s decade that he decided to start teaching it to the general populace. On his deathbed, Imi decided not to name a "successor" to the title of KM grand-master and instead assigned his 13 most talented pupils to disseminate KM all over the globe, as his lifelong dream was that if everybody knew how to defend themselves, nobody would have to. Among those 13 was Kobi Lichtenstein, the youngest, who started training KM at the tender age of 4 and who was the only one who left Israel and decided to come over to Brazil to teach here (and is the person I mentioned on the first paragraph). He and some of the other 13 decided to keep KM true to the teachings of Imi, refusing to make additions or changes to it, whereas others tried to add their own changes and developments to it. Some changed it into a more competition focused MMA-style version, others incorporated more diverse martial arts techniques to it, some invented their own new moves. So from this onset already, KM lost some of it's identity except for the disciples who chose to remain completely faithful to the initial form of KM (Kobi being one of them). That is one part of why you can look at the techniques of different KM practitioners and notice such great disparities between them. The second factor to that would be that given the success of Israeli military, KM became notorious worldwide, to the point where the a very large amount of military and law enforcement forces around the globe chose to adopt it as their CQC engagement techniques (although there are of course numerous notorious exceptions to this, the US being the most obvious one). So, depending on the country, either KM masters would teach law enforcement officers in short crash courses or many would fly to Israel to learn a thing or two about KM over a certain timespan and then teach their officers some techniques back at home. Many states would then, in order to save taxpayer money, assign their own officers to teach new ones, instead of paying for new crash courses every time. Many of these officers, or even their own students would later on proceed to open their own "Krav Maga" courses, which were, of course nothing like the proper Krav Maga, as it was being taught by men who not only took an incredibly short crash course on it, but also a crash course focused for law enforcement/military action, which is significantly different from what is taught to the general populace, mainly due to soldiers/military personnel having much different responsibilities, limitations and tools available. Since KM does not hold any competitions or an internationally unified association with uniform classification system to which every practitioner must belong to and each of the 13 disciples decided to start their own association, with no one being hierarchically superior to the other, it is extremely hard to ascertain any individual's qualifications when they claim to be a Krav Maga master, making it extremely easy for quacks and charlatans to proclaim that they're a master and due to it's notoriety many gullible people go to it, learn some completely unrelated nonsense and then go around spreading false rumors about it and tarnishing it's reputation. I'm certain the person claiming to be a KM instructor who gave you the knife combat "lesson" was one such individual, as from what you told in the video, that did not resemble at all how we disarm knives (mainly because in traditional KM we don't even focus on the disarming part, we focus on neutralizing the threat, first, disarming is literally the last thing we do after the aggressor is already under control). As for the military/civillian differences, you are partially correct. The basic recruits were only taught aggression and war-related moves, like defending yourself using your rifle, or disarming firearms but they didn't actually get to learn to fight properly. In elite units, or for soldiers actually pursuing a military career they would offer more comprehensive training (albeit still focused on war, obviously). However, this does not mean that the traditional KM taught to civilians is a direct copy of what is taught to military troops. For one, military personnel don't have to worry about excessive use of force in retaliation, whereas civilians do and doubly so if they are police officers who have even stricter guidelines to prevent police brutality. The list of differences is enormous, but were I to even try and list all of them, then that'd make this already wall of text comment seem like a tweet. I'd just like to end by saying that despite KM's reputation of being all about vicious brutality with eye gouges and groin strikes (and even bites, yes we do that too), we also and *MOSTLY* do learn how to defend ourselves and fight normally and even have techniques made specifically for defending against certain moves from other martial arts along with so many other things that don't even fall exclusively into moves, going from day-to-day behavior like learning how to detect someone wishing to mug you, to how to intimidate someone (if necessary) to prevent getting into a fight, to learning criminal behavior patterns, to anatomy and trauma phisiology and the list goes on and on. It is unfortunate that people immediately dismiss KM as dirty fighting and immediately label practitioners as unskilled cowards. Lastly, (and if you're still reading this) I'd like to thank Ramsey for this video and anybody who showed enough interest to read all this. Kida!

I was in a krav Maga-ish self defense program for several years, and the first thing we taught them was if it's just your wallet, hand it over. But if it's your life, or they're trying to take you somewhere, fight for your life. You're likely going to get cut, but a cut on the arm is a lot better than a cut to the neck or torso.

I was in a knife fight once in my life. I had my book bag between me and him, I knocked the knife out of his hand with it and turned and ran like hell. Scared the shit out of me. It happened so fast at the time I did not even recognize the knife at the time, I just heard the clatter as I knocked it out of his hand. More my luck than anything else. A back pack or briefcase could be used as a shield, but don't rely on it.

"Hey, let me see if you can stab me with this before I can take it away from you." Ooooh boy, I knew exactly where this was going.

Krav Maga can suffer from an obsession with faux brutality at the cost of functional full contact training. Groin kicks and eye gouges are supplemental techniques not one size fits all delivery systems.

In legitimate Krav Maga, there is no belt system.

There is really only one difference when it comes to knife fights, and it's the location you bleed to death. The loser will die in the street, and the winner dies in an ambulance.

First rule of fighting for me...I’m only 5’5”. RUN AWAY if I can; cause simple physics dictates I’m going to be at a massive disadvantage no matter what. Only if I can’t run, then fight using my training.

your thoughts on tongue-fu ? the art of using your words to defeat your enemies, heavily practiced by lawyers, manipulative people, and con-men.

I have a black belt in the best knife defense system there is. It's called Run Fu. It involves a 48.89 sec quarter mile (when I'm in shape).

When I worked corrections, they would drill into our heads during defensive tactics "if you end up fighting an inmate that has a shank, *YOU'RE GOING TO GET CUT.* You have to accept that and keep fighting, never give up." I liked that approach, they didn't try and sugarcoat it and act like we'd be just fine.

IDF soldier after a 2-week Krav course: I am the danger.

Best technic against a knife; RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!!

As my Jiu Jitsu trainer once said.. realistic knife defence is grabbing a chair or anything to keep the knife away. Fancy disarms takes a LOT of practice to work

I’m a trained observer of witnesses for 47 years and you have all the traits of being the most honest man that I have ever observed. You are quite simply unique!

From someone who's trained Silat and Kali, people are usually very unaware just how brutally fast you actually get killed if someone has a knife and knows how to use it. Also, in the real world you'll never see it coming until it's inside your body.

Using your shirt. That's kind of brilliant. I'll remember that.

What Ive learned from krav maga videos: Groin Strike. Repeat.

This man is so professional, polite and grounded if he can't correct you, you can't be taught

Knife fighting is extremely dangerous, even if one is an experienced fighter the best thing is to run, if you're in a situation that makes running impossible, in an alley for instance, the next best think is to pick something you can use as weapon like a pipe, a stick, etc. And I'm so glad you spoke the truth because so many martial art instructors and movies propagate this idea that a person with a knife attacks by doing a slow arch motion with the arm, while even a untrained fighter with 0 experience will not do that, not ever. Instead it's an extremely fast arm thrust, and in quick succession, I mean I have 0 experience and I can do that, it's what makes it nearly impossible to defend, let alone take the knife of the attacker. In fact, police officers are trained to shot the assailant if he has a knife and trespasses the minimum safe distance between them and the officer, because even at gun point, if the attacker suddenly runs forward and thrusts the knife, the officer will get stabbed before the attacker drops from the gun wounds.

Just found this channel. This man needs more subs.

I remember the training we received in the Marines.Three ways nife fights end. 1. You die he is wounded. 2. He dies and you are wounded. 3. You both die. Vietnam veteran's advice. Use your gun. Don't get in knife fights. If you do. Sacrifice your arm to get in killing strikes and pray he is not trained.

I started point-scoring Karate, and after 4 years I realised its not the best, most practical art so I started Krav Maga. In retrospect, Karate was maybe the better choice, because as bad as it was, at least we did spar. In KM the "attacker" would do one slow motion attack, and I would "defend", pretend to unleash a dozen hits on him, and he would pretend to take those hits.

I just had a similar experience with a fellow who came to my school who was also a Krav Maga student. He wanted to learn Pencak Silat from me, and he tried to learn, but as you said, he couldn't fight himself out of a paper bag. He was so full of his Krav that whenever he couldn't do the techniques we were learning, he'd trash our martial art system and say, "Well in Krav Maga we do wouldn't do that. We do this." And he was horrible. I asked him to show me a Jab-Cross combo and he couldn't even punch right. His body mechanics were terrible. He had no stance. Awful. But the worst part was, he thought he was better than everyone else, including myself, and didn't listen to any of my directions. Anyway, I had to let him go. He was awful to other students, to myself and he had no skills whatsoever. Then he emailed me saying that there must be a reason for why there's a lot of Krav Maga schools today compared to seven years ago, as if that meant that Krav Maga was a superior art that's why its successful. Wow. Talk about self-delusional. When you suck at fighting and you claim you're the best, and you're ignorant, that's pathetic.

When I joined a school of real self defense (created by former policemen with a deep experience of the field) I was surprised they did not teach us about knives. One teacher told me "Krav maga is nice... in Israel. Here we are in France, with a different context and different laws. If someone comes to you in the street with a knife, it's to steal you, not to kill you. So we teach you to give him your wallet and keep silent. Handling a knife is only taught to advanced students who want to become teachers, because otherwise, you might believe you can do something and be tempted to react, but you will just be severely wounded, for sure. And we don't want to be responsible for that. We care about you safety". They are the only real self defense experts I had the change to work with. Everything was so different to what I had in mind. We learned the laws (they worked with an attorney) because self defense includes not going to jail for defending yourself, we learned to decode the processes of target evaluation and conflict escalation to disarm conflicts and avoid being in danger, how to rescue a wounded person, how to call the police and describe someone, how to deal with real life situations such as a man who beats his wife in public, your neighbors that are about to fight about the noise, someone that becomes crazy because you hit his car with yours, and so on. Many real life situations they learned from being coops. And clearly, self defense is not combat, it about creating an opening to escape and above all the rest : its about educating yourself to avoid dangerous situations. Teaching people to react once they are strangled to death is a non sense. There are always many things that can be done before facing this situation. Letting people believe it's not the case is really bad for them.

I did krav maga on and off for about two years or so. The best thing I can say is that the punching/kicking combos we practiced were fine, but even then, the "advanced" krav maga students still had orange belt level proficiency despite many of them having taken the classes for years. But that's on top of the fact that we were learning horrible groundfighting techniques and knife/gun disarms that would get you killed if you tried them against a real aggressor.

My Krav school was all about aggression, even when dealing in topics of self defense. It was counter the initial threat, then strike until they stopped being a threat.

I have trained KM for 2 years now. And I am more scared of knife attacks than I was when I started. I'd rather take on a gun man on close distance. The instructors also point out you WILL get stabbed in a knife fight. Better take it in the arm. Or just hand over the cell phone and bill your insurance company.

I love how people in every single type of activity get judged based on their abilities at defeating paper bags (or wet paper bags for Krav Maga). I knew a computer programmer once who could not write [code] herself out of a paper bag!

My whole thing with Krav, as a current practitioner, is that it definitely depends heavily on who's teaching it. My teacher always reminds the class the knife defense/disarms are not realistic and the likelihood of you pulling it off in a real situation is slim to none. He teaches sparring, grappling, and is absolutely legitimate, but my first time going to a krav gym it was a pile of absolute useless garbage. Much like the eastern martial art craze in the 80's, a lot of people teaching it have never fought, have never done anything practical, and are making money off of people who buy into the flashy stuff.

Excellent. I've been training and fighting for 30 years. I was a bouncer for 15 years, along with much else. I've been a krav instructor for 10. I have a lot of respect for you and your perspective. Krav Maga is an excellent self defense system. Like all though, there are bad practitioner's and bad instructors. McDojo's are nothing new. I should note, there is major differences in various types of KM as well. An evolved organization takes the experience and evolves the system through failure. KM, like anything, must be practiced under extreme conditions. For instance, knife training in our school consists of shock knives and full contact gear, with full resistance. Much of it is done outdoors. Many of the km techniques people commonly see, such as wrapping up with all out knees, don't work. (rarely is it pulled off) For that matter, most any knife defense from any form doesn't work. Experience is the greatest teacher. People worry too much about if a system is legit. It's not the system, it's the teacher, it's the experience. All martial arts have something to offer. Not all teachers do.

I really hate it when someone uses the military as a reason why you should use a product, martial art or training method. I call it the military fallacy. Militarises have different priorities to civilians. Any time you hear this used as a selling point you should stop to ask WHY are they using this and do these reasons apply to you?

Your voice belongs in a biblical movie like 10 commandmants

In my Krav Maga class, the teacher starts every knife excercise with these words: "If you can run, run. If you must fight, accept that you're gonna get slashed and stabbed". And then we train to minimize the damage while trying to create an opening with grabs and hits to run the fuck away

I have been going to a Krav Maga school here in Baton Rouge for 2.5 years . I did a couple trial classes at first and one of the things that sold me was the aggressive mindset and the sparring that they do . Having been in a lot of fights over the years helped me to see that they were wanting to show folks how to defend themselves . 2 of the instructors are local Swat dudes / patrol . A couple guys also do a lot of BJJ . I've also seen a lot of vids of KM on line and have thought WTF are they doing ? I recommend KM to folks but tell them to check out the school a lot before joining up . Good vid man , earned a sub from me

Great - and informative - vid, Ramses (just kidding - you remind me of the dude who played "The Mummy" 😜). Krav Maga is just another sad example of how something pure was commoditized by greedy people. Smh

With all the respect, at the end of his life Imi Lichtenfeld the founder of Krav Maga handed out master diplomas and certifications for founding a school for almost everyone of his master students. There was some idiots among them, and that is why it is watered down a lot. In 2010 Imi's elder student Eyal Yanilov founded Krav Maga Global to purge those charlatans you are talking about and to maintain a higher level system and association to educate Krav Maga. So...Yes, a really lot depends on the instructor but at KMG the usual instructor requirements are very high and the mentioned idiots will hopefully fade away in time... In my gym there is a lot of sparring and wrestling and we always try to stick to reality as much as we can. For example we also keep in mind that there is no magic technique against a knife. There are three solutions in order: 1. Try to escape from the situation. 2. Keep distance, use objects if you have to fight. 3. Then comes the technique if you have to fight and you don't have any other opportunity, but keep in mind that you will hurt. But a cut on your forearm is way more better than a cut at your throat. So it is about survival. 4. (optional) It is not a must to disarm the attacker. Kick or punch him in some vital ponts, buy some time for yourself and then escape.

Haven't seen anyone mention that Krav Maga was designed to be done while wearing a soldier's full kit. That's steel or ceramic plates backed by a Kevlar vest, a helmet, boots, a couple hundred rounds of ammunition, water, rifle, maybe a sidearm, and possibly a backpack or rucksack. It's not really comparable to Muay Thai or BJJ, as it was never intended to be applied in the same situations. If you don't expect to be fighting while wearing 60+ pounds of bulky cumbersome equipment, Krav Maga probably isn't for you.

Here's what I do in knife Vs hnad combat: Be the one with the knife, works 10/10 times

I trained a really long time in Tae Kwon Do, and we're talking years. I'd get there after school and leave after the classes ended. Never got that black belt. Not because I wasn't good enough, but because I couldn't pony up 400 bucks for the black test (and an additional charge for the belt). It was trash. I was really into martial arts and I think I had a knack for it, buuuut money was an issue. And it sucks that happened.

"Oh, my five year old is a black belt too!" I know the feeling. I'm a submission wrestler, and a very amateur one at that. I do many facepalms when I tell others about my favorite hobby, then get the inevitable comments about hitting people with chairs, or knocking someone out in a barroom brawl. Right on when you say, "It's not the same thing!"

One of my masters once told me this: If you fight an untrained knifefighter you need 10 years of practice to survive (not to go unharmed) If he has 1 day of practice you need 10 more years for the same result. If he had 3 days you wound get old enough to get enough training. It may be a bit of a exaggeration but for me it´s a good picture to show how much respect you should have when fighting an opponend with a knife, no matter how much training either of you have had.

Master Dewey you are a breath of fresh air. And u are so correct my friend thank u for being on the road to open peoples eyes u are truly a wise wise man. And thank u

If I ever start a martial arts school I will have a rule that you cannot earn a black belt until you are at least 17. I figure that in olden days that was old enough to serve in an army.

First video I saw with this man. Awesome. Very reasoned, thoughtful, and respectful. No self aggrandizing bull crap. Much respect.

From what I’ve seen most martial arts are effective. The only thing that matters is the student and the teacher. Even the likes of Kung fu can be effective if used effectively, and taught well. The best art is the one that comes the most naturally to the person.

I'm a Krav Practitioner and I totally know where this stems from. A lot of Krav students think that because the art is so effective it makes them indestructible, I see this in my class, and many other martial arts as well. Unfortunately, I think it is the age-old "it's not the style, its the fighter" argument. In my class, I will say that my teacher is the highest-ranked Krav Practioner in Canada, and lives breathes and bleeds the art. He has a true passion for it, and always teaches us the most important safety skills and techniques. His class severely differs IMO because he teaches us a discipline of knowing to analyze the fight, and end it fast. Almost every technique we learn is blended with how-to properly stay safe in those situations, and ensure you're not walking in with a losing mentality. He often teaches us that walking away is always the safest. The most prime example I can think of is when we practised knife and handgun defence and were told to count how many times we got stabbed and/or shot. Really eye-opening, and he made sure to tell us that you never want to be in the situation where you would need to defend from these weapons, but its good to learn it some you at least know what you can do if in those scenarios. I def agree that a lot of practitioners and teachers are garbage and really make the art look laughable, but to say the entire art itself is flawed can be an unfair argument.

In a knife fight, the winner bleeds and the loser gushes.

I tell my students all the time "If you are in a knife fight, you need to expect to get cut or stabbed. Many people don't realize many cuts to your arms and what not can kill you as well. Knifefighting is one of the most dangerous areas of training due to the lack of complete knowledge of how to deal with those situations. my senior classmate who trained the local police and military here in San Francisco got hold of a prison tape of inmates training to knife fight. One of the most deadly strikes used was Horizontal pumping motion which almost always hit its mark. Because of that i went to filipino escrima schools asking how they dealt with this technique. one of them put a real knife in my hand (i questioned him on that) but he was ok with it, i then showed him before hand what i was going to do. I told him i would go slow, so he slapped down the first strike and when i came around the knife stabbed him deep in his forearm. I looked at their teacher whose head dropped low and said "they always knew they will get stabbed"..... suffice it to say, i sadly ended that guys escrima career that day.

I really resonated with your statement on Tae-Kwon-Do. I was a practitioner of TKD for 8 years under a very serious master and achieved my black belt in the process. Thanks to my black belt and demonstrated skill, I was eligible to be an instructor and took the opportunity. During my time as an instructor, however, reality crept up on me. I noticed how lax the school was in general, from patterns to kicking. Regardless of a students skill, belts were awarded regularly. A student’s movements could be extremely poor for their belt level yet, for being able to merely resemble the proper techniques in a mediocre fashion, they were allowed to advance. This deeply disturbed me, I didn’t believe these kids earned their belts in the slightest. So I took matters into my own hands and tried to implement tougher training for the kids to expand much further in their development. This initiative backfired. I ended up getting scolded by the school’s grandmaster for being too tough on the students. I hadn’t done anything unreasonable/absurd. I simply increased the duration/intensity of exercises that were done previously and became stricter on what actually passed as good technique. My master, who also worked at the school, told me about how he shared similar stipulations with the policies. Coming into the school, he was a honed fighter who had trained under many martial arts. The reason he came back to TKD was that it was the first martial arts he had practiced which had him grow a soft spot for it. I was one of his first students and he held nothing back when it came to my training. However, as the years progressed and the school gained popularity, he was taught to refrain from such strict training to lower the difficulty level. It was at this moment I came to realize that the TKD of my school was no longer a martial art but a business. It was appalling to me. Since then I have strayed to other fighting practices such as boxing but the TKD I first learned still holds a place in my heart. It definitely taught me many essential aspects that I integrated into my current fighting style but I strive to fill the many gaps in its teachings with other martial arts in order to become a well rounded fighter like my master. Taking all of this into account, it irks me whenever I see a young kid with a belt belt as I personally know just how dishonest that rank is.

Thanks man. I’ve been doing MMA for awhile, used to box as an amateur and its what i love doing. My fiancé is looking at trying to join a krav maga gym because i’ve been encouraging her to practice some type of martial art and i told her a lot of this stuff that you’re saying but you explained it a lot better. Because i’m well aware of the Mcdojo approach most of these krav maga gyms take when marketing this as a way of “self defense”

Krav Maga and TKD actually great money cranking machines. I studied Kyokushinkai when in HS and in our school, you’d be lucky to get a black belt in five years of heavy continual training. Many of my classmates got “black belts” in Take One and Dance in 18 months... There was, of course, a “testing fee” and a “promotion fee”...

It’s kind of like the reverse of Antonio Inoki. Everyone thinks he’s a fake pro wrestler, but he’s well trained in Catch Wrestling and he was friends and training partners with the best BJJ exponent of his day- Ivan Gomes. Maybe one of the toughest guys in his day.

How to defend yourself from knife attacker Tell him to stop attacking knives

You have a sort of poetic intensity to you my friend.

Good points man! Pugay! (Respect and honor) As for knife survival (unarmed vs knife) it is always an uphill battle as a Kali Instructor i always tell my guys to avoid a knife conflict. If you can’t be sure you are counter-attacking while your opponent is attacking you to get his attention away from the weapon. Pain is control. Hard reality that people in reality based martial arts always neglect to consider is that against a trained knife attacker almost impossible to defend from especially if he is hell bent in finishing you off. Hit and run is always the best course of action.

agaisnt knife bring a sword! always be a step above the opponent

The thing about Krav Maga is that it is NOT a "traditional martial art", or a "combat sport" either. It was originally a very BASIC hand to hand combat system with some BASIC moves that could be taught in WEEKS, not years. To compare that to a serious MMA fighter would be like comparing somebody who played flag football to a NFL veteran! (That's NOT meant to be insulting to Krav Maga. Just pointing out the huge difference in skill level and experience.) I totally agree with what you said towards the end of the video: it's more about training a few moves quickly, and the offensive MINDSET needed for battle.

I've been practicing Krab Maga for a little bit now and I think I can say that most people who know how to do it will kick your ass if you try to rob them. The people who can't fight their way out of a paper bag are the ones (and at this point may include me unfortunatley) that want to learn krav maga because it seems to be the stuff that keeps you the safest. The problem then becomes a mentality of fear when in an actual hot situation, where none of your training comes to mind. EDIT: I have spelling errors, i don't care

I'm 70 years old, bad left knee, bad left shoulder, my reflexes are not what they were 50 years ago. I have practiced judo (really a sport) TaeKwonDo, one belt away from black belt 40 years ago under the Korean system and I have boxed. What I like about Krav Maga is it's practical application. Defuse the situation and get away if you can but fight like hell if you can't get away. Amazing how hard it is to fight like hell for 60 seconds even if you are in average shape. Every martial art I have studied has some fanciful aspects, TKD being one of them. Today TKD American style is like dance class in pajamas. If you hang around 3 years, learn the Katas *{a Japanese word, not Korean) you might be granted a black belt. Sure you will be able to kick and punch and your flexibility will be improved. The fact of the matter is that at that moment in time when you have to react, what will you do?

There is also a big difference between a sport, and a combat system. A sport teaches you to get points on a mat in front of a judge. A combat system teaches you to survive if you're attacked on the street.

Just discovered your channel and your videos. It’s incredibly refreshing to hear real life experiences. Your points on knife fighting and just how dangerous even the most inexperienced person with a knife can be is absolutely on point. I look forward to watching more of your videos and thank you for your time.

Always train at a Krav Gym that does MORE THAN JUST KRAV. You need multiple skill sets combined with Krav to be a competent fighter.

GREAT video Sir.

Do you think you can show us the cloak n' dagger technique? Specifically how we can apply this to modern day?

I'm with u on this Ramsey. I watched a show called universal soldier challenge and IDF took on US Airborne paratroopers in a knife fighting competition. The IDF were supposed to be edged weapon defense experts and the US Airborne guys smoked them lol

I already tried Krav Maga and I quickly stopped when I saw that there was no advanced sparring.. And the worst part is that everyone finds it normal. I was told "that sparring is sport not real, that Krav is too violent to do sport, etc" Yet I tried to explain that without sparring there is no way to test the theory, and that it is absolutely necessary to fight hard to know how to manage the enemy and manage yourself, which is very different than hitting in the wind for 1 hour.. The only people who had a correct level in Krav classes were people with a past in Thai boxing and wrestling. The rest of the people who never did anything other than Krav Maga were weak and would be taken down by anyone. I was clearly told "if you want to fight, sign up for boxing". No logic.

My dad got attacked by a home invader with a knife, My dad tried to catch the mans hand as he came with the knife, He almost lost two fingers, they were reattached with micro surgery. My dad managed to throw the man out of the house down the stairs he had to come up to get into the house. I consider my dad as a tough guy but never fuck with people with knives is my take away from that whole situation. This video has cemented that for me haha.

Ramsey, I like you, you seem honest, smart and humble. , At 60 i took up krav maga, I Think it's quite a good way of keeping fit and also learning some preemptive striking techniques or even some imperative ground work etc. But I am not under the illusion that a knife defense technique is going to work. I think it was Bruce Lee himself who said 'from any system You study choose a few techniques that you like and feel you can master, and discard the rest'.. Or something like that. I keep to this principle and never trust any teacher completely, lest I become a hypnotised follower.. Peace be with you!

This was my first time watching you and i think your spot on finally some realistic self defense advice.

3:40 --> A good exercise we did to show off how dangerous a knife is, was to train with white board pens (caps off!) and white t-shirts. It will become VERY apparent to the practitioner that you WILL be cut. Regardless of your skills. And that is even if we werent trained in the usage of knives. Never fight vs a knife!

Ramsey can u please do a video about Mike Tyson in MMA or kickboxing

Genuine KRAV MAGA, a genuine practitioner, tough, practical, makes sense period. It’s not a sport, you can’t compare it to BJJ, MMA etc, it works end of

The US army ww2 hand to hand combat manual stated you should't throw your knife at an opponent as you will lose your knife

Adam West?

I am distracted by your abs. I swear I saw one move all the way around your other abs!

Now that I know I keep closing your videos like a testimony. Lolol Right at the end I'm like "and I say these things humbly..." you know the rest. I seriously love this channel twice as much now!!!

Reminds me of my own experience with krav. I had a fair amount of TKD as a foundation, followed by a few other forms over the years, and krav sounded like a nice addition. The other students seemed like they were in some high school gym class, and only one of the three or four instructors gave me any impression of being a fighter (he was a bouncer, and his punches actually impacted well with little effort on his part). I went there for only a month or two, and left with a sour taste from it: the lessons and techniques struck me as being something that someone who'd seen martial art movies might think up in their basement without researching or testing them.

From what I gather, Krav Maga from longest to closest range techniques go: run-> ball kick -> eye gouge -> bite

Knife fights - only two outcomes, both bad: one goes to cemetery, other goes to emergency room. Pursuit of Truth - :) Well said.

I used to know a scary arnisador; he said, 'accept the cut'.

Missed that one but totally agree like usual. My take on Krav Mags it either gets you in hospital or more rarely in prison. There are good KM artists out there but it's become rarer...