unscripted krav maga
by Moshe Katz
CEO
Israeli Krav International

July 1, 2020, Israel

My first DVD, produced in Germany many years ago. For those who know IKI you can see that the techniques featured on the cover were discarded years ago.

Many years ago I was invited to Germany for my first seminar in that country and my first DVD series. Due to my lack of understanding of German I misunderstood the deal and ended up producing two DVDs for a local production company. The deal called for 4 but I managed to get it down to only 2. Sadly they are still on the market. I say sadly because those of you who know IKI know that we are constantly innovating, we are not content with "traditional" Krav Maga, we are not content with yesterday's self-defense techniques. We are inherently dissatisfied and seeking better methods. As long as there is violence in this world, against ANYONE, we must work hard to develop a system of self-defense that can be used by ANYONE. As such every few years we take our DVDs off the market and replace them with better methods. This first DVD series however, I have no legal control over. From my perspective it is only useful to see how far we have come from what we were teaching ten years ago. It is also nice to see what I looked liked ten years ago, younger and without the gray hair. 

The DVD was translated into several languages. So no, that is not me speaking German, French etc... I only did the English part. When the filming was over I was asked for the script so that they can give that to the translators. I was confused. "What script?" I asked. They had assumed that I had a prepared script for the DVD, I explained that IKI is unscripted. That is our way of working. We do not have a plan, we have an approach. Our approach is to be unscripted. This means we do not plan ahead because in real life violence you never know what is going to come, you need to train your tools, train your mind and body, and when the attack comes you will just respond, "like an Echo", as Bruce Lee would say. We are unscripted.

In that DVD I had a wonderful training partner, the one whom I did the techniques on. He is a professional full time martial artist and a master in many styles. He is an excellent actor, all I had to do was tap him and he went flying as if in excruciating pain, he played his part well. That is what professional Krav Maga DVDs look like. I pride myself on not being "professional". 

The other night we filmed our latest Vimeo Krav Maga session. I told my training partner, Baruch, to resist, and he did. There were times when I did not look so good, unlike my partner back in Germany for the first DVD, Baruch did not "comply" and never fell flat on his back in fake pain. As such the DVD will not look as good, it is not as professional looking. But it is effective. The truth is not always pretty.

That is how we want it, raw, real, truthful.

My father taught me the Bible does not edit out the "awkward" parts; all the mistakes and failures of our ancestors are recorded in detail. How embarrassing! The weaknesses of our ancient leaders are there for all to see. None come out looking like so called "saints". (a concept alien to Judaism). They are there to teach us that no man is perfect; man (and woman) is flawed by his very nature. We work daily to improve our character and behavior. If our Biblical forefathers were perfect, as my dad said, we would have nothing to learn from them. Their life stories would be irrelevant to us. But if they are imperfect, as we are, if they make mistakes and learn from those mistakes, then indeed we can learn from them. That is why the Bible is still the worlds' number one best seller. (Number 2 is another Jewish author, Anne Frank).

Our current DVD is imperfect, but all the techniques succeed. They may not always look pretty, they may not look polished, but they work, and they have worked in real life violent situations all over the world. Our style is the perfect style for imperfect people. The Bible is a record of imperfect people, it is not a Hollywood film circa 1930 with the perfect man and the perfect woman. We live in an imperfect society, in imperfect neighborhoods, this is where we must thrive. 

IKI DVDs

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