How Effective is Krav Maga
By Moshe Katz
CEO
Israeli Krav International

January 4, 2018, Israel

How effective is Krav Maga? This is indeed a tough question.

I feel we must first define our terms; What does "effective" mean? and what does "Krav Maga" connote?

I will start with a different question that I used to hear quite often: Now that you are a black belt, (second dan? third dan etc) how many street thugs can you take on at one time?

I consider the question to be stupid, and to only come from pure ignorance of reality. If anyone ever attempts to actually answer this question it is a sure sign that you are dealing with a true fraud. No honest person can answer this question.

The reason we cannot answer this question is because there are no guarantees in life and there are no guarantees in war or in fights. There is no way of knowing.

That is precisely the reason that gambling can exist. If anyone could be sure who would win a fight, or a face, or a war, there would be no grounds for gambling. The very nature of gambling depends on the doubt.

However, the bookies do give us odds; some fighters and some horses are more likely to win, based on past performance and other factors that they analyze.

Thus, I cannot tell you "how many thugs I can handle at one time" and neither can any other instructor or student. We all meet our match at one point or another and that is why very few mafia guys live to be very old.

How effective is Krav Maga? We can only answer this in general terms and in comparative terms, i.e. how effective is it in comparison to other styles. But first we must define what is Krav Maga.

You can walk into "Krav Maga" schools around the world and find: Kicking boxing, Thai Boxing, Aerobic fitness, various forms of Jujitsu and many different styles that call themselves Krav Maga but yet are quite different. You will also find former IDF guys (Israeli Defense Force) who took a three week crash course while in uniform and now create their own organization.

So "Krav Maga" can mean many things. Buyer beware.

I cannot speak of other styles I can only speak of our style, IKI Krav Maga. I can say that during the years I have been teaching I have heard countless stories of how Krav Maga has changed peoples lives and of numerous cases of real life self defense.

The effectiveness of our style is not only in the physical techniques but also in the life transformation. It is impossible to really measure "effectiveness". There is no way to say a style is 97% effective. this simply cannot be gauged.

I can say that people from all walks of life and all professions have shared with me stories of how IKI Krav Maga techniques worked for them on the street, in the office, and in their own homes and bedrooms. From these stories our success rate is 100% effectiveness.

But no statistic is accurate as this cannot be measured. What interests us at this moment is not our past successes but the future.

Your success will depend on many factors and this is unpredictable. Success depends on: time spent training, intensity of your training, your natural abilities, circumstances of the event, your level of awareness. All we can say with certainty is that the more you train and the more often you train the more the odds improve in your favor. What will ultimately happen is always an unknown, that is the nature of life.  All we can do is stack the odds in your favor and we feel we are effective at that.

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About the author

Moshe Katz