Krav Maga is a self-defense technique that was started in the ghettos of Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the 1930's by a man to help protect the local Jewish community against the Nazi militia. It has since been adapted by the Israeli military and police as the preferred method of hand-to-hand combat. Because of the effectiveness with the military and the police, it has now spread world wide and is being taken back to it's roots to help civilians protect themselves against the unsavory elements that are found in most cities.
I have always wanted to learn a martial art for self defense, especially as I started working in schools. I wanted to be able to know that while I have never been in a fight, if something went down at my school between some students (or by a student against me) that I would be able to protect those involved until more help could come along and get the situation settled. I don't know if Krav Maga actually counts as a martial art, but it will definitely help in a bad situation. The main point of Krav Maga is react to a threat, control the situation, counterattack (if necessary), and disengage from the situation - all within 3-5 seconds if possible.
I realize as I start to travel more in less developed countries, that I am a bit of a target. While I am learning how to fight (for the sole purposes of getting away from an attacker) it has made me so much more aware of my surroundings and has started to prepare me for a possible attack. I see the possibility for situations turning bad much easier and I'm much more aware of not putting myself in bad situations.
The great thing about Krav Maga, at least with the group that I'm learning with, is that when we learn new techniques, we are then put into fairly real situations to see how these techniques work. I've been accidentally hit in the jaw by people in class, kicked in the junk, and I almost always come home with new cuts and scrapes. But tonight was probably the most "real" it has ever been in class.
After we learned some techniques for breaking a choke hold that someone might put you in, we were put in a real situation, repeatedly, so we knew how it would really feel if it actually happened to us. The situation was that someone knocked us to the ground and as we were lying on the ground, they were trying to get a choke on us while we were on our back. We were to fight it and they were to do their best to get the choke hold on us. Now they weren't really choking us, but they were holding our necks fairly tight, so we had to really fight to get out of the situation.
No one really got hurt, but I actually felt like what it would be like to be attacked by someone, because no one was holding back. I have never been in a fight and I hope to keep it that way, but I'm starting to gain the confidence that I would know what to do if something did go awry and that I would get away and not become another statistic.
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