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The Best of Krav Maga (Yellow-Black Belts) by David Kahn
Rating: 4.8 out of 5(179 ratings)
828 students
Created byDavid Kahn
Last updated 7/2023
English

What you'll learn

  • Krav Maga's most effective defenses and counter-attacks against the most common street threats.

Course content

17 sections • 191 lectures • 22h 17m total length

  • Introduction to Israeli Krav Maga3:36

    Israeli Krav Maga

    The Krav Maga self-defense system can be summarized as the fierce, optimum orchestration of counter-violence designed to prevail against any aggressor. General principles are applied and customized to meet the needs of a particular situation. A few mastered “families” of krav maga tactics are highly effective against the overwhelming majority of threats and attacks. By design, krav maga defenses largely harness instinctive adaptable gross motor movements to contend with the unpredictability of an attack. Each defense combines deflections and redirections, evasive body defenses, and simultaneous or near-simultaneous counterattacks against vulnerable anatomy with extreme prejudice delivered to overwhelm an attacker. Most importantly, krav maga self defense is devoid of any rules. The system conforms to your strengths; you need not conform to the system. This is, in part, the genius of how founder Imi Lichtenfeld built krav maga. Grandmaster Gidon continues to improve the foundations of krav maga and evolve the self-defense and fighting system.

    Good tactical minds think alike. Whatever your martial arts or defensive tactics background, hopefully, the following material can add some additional defensive solutions to your repertoire. Our goal is to augment your capabilities—to add additional arrows to your proverbial quiver. In the interest of providing a concise approach, I have tried to summarize here many essential topics from my previous six books: Krav Maga (2004), Advanced Krav Maga (2008), Krav Maga Weapon Defenses (2012), Krav Maga Professional Tactics (2016), Krav Maga Defense (2016), and Krav Maga Combatives(2019).

    This book draws on materials from nearly every level of the curriculum. All the tactics you will read and evaluate are linked to our previous books and video materials. Notably, several weapon defense series photos provide a preview of the forthcoming book Krav Maga Weapon Defenses II.

    While my objective is focused heavily on presenting krav maga’s fighting insights, I believe providing access to short overviews of krav maga’s emphasis on avoiding and preventing violence is paramount. Furthermore, I believe it would be both unprofessional and irresponsible as well as fail to do the IKMA curriculum justice were I not to include a summary of Israeli krav maga’s approach to conflict avoidance, De-escalation Communication and Education™, and de-confliction, and escape. Violence avoidance and prevention are, without question, the best collective pre-conflict and post-conflict survival practices. Remember, the only violent battle you are sure to win is the one you avoid.

    Civilian Krav Maga Tactics

    Security-minded civilians master krav maga to construct a defensive shield against violence, not to develop an offensive capability to perpetrate violence. Krav maga training’s goal for civilians is simple: to deliver you from harm’s way using autonomic responses that both harness and hone krav maga’s instinctive tactics. The tactics become not second nature but first nature.

    The ultimate goal is that you never hesitate about resorting to overwhelming, optimized counter-violence in the face of an unavoidable threat or attack. When there is no other choice but to defend yourself, you may be compelled to maim, cripple, and even use lethal force against an attacker, but only if under the totality of the circumstances such defense measures are legally justifiable. In actual fights, the combatants, even if they have formal training, often dispense with any complex learned training and resort to primitive combative tactics fueled by anger and bloodlust. The depth of violence will largely depend on the participants involved and how quickly animal instincts hijack the situation. In krav maga, breaking bones, injuring ligaments, and destroying an eyeball are optimized and emphasized both tactically and strategically to end the attack—provided these debilitating tactics represent proportional force. Women are often victims of violence and crime because the assailant thinks he can get away with it without injury to himself. Krav maga is designed to exact a steep physical toll on anyone who will not listen to reason and is intent on harming you.

    In the basest, most primal sense, when faced with a life-threatening situation, the kravist understands how to inflict terrible, debilitating wounds on an adversary. There is no pity or compassion in a self-defense situation, but only if, once again, the counterforce is legally justifiable. In general terms, the party who significantly damages the other party first usually prevails, provided he presses the counterattack home to neutralize the threat.

    Developing a personal defense strategy solely grounded in proven tactics is essential. While targeting your adversary’s vulnerable anatomy is always a key linchpin to winning a violent encounter, many situations require some specific defensive-priority and reaction stratagems. One indisputable self-defense tenet is to get off the line of an attack. Another crucial strategy is to optimally deflect or redirect a weapon for maximum control and subsequent confiscation. If you are faced with multiple (un)armed adversaries any coherent strategy can be rapidly taxed to its limit. In other words, any built-in margin for error is drastically reduced. Therefore, you cannot simply rely on what your untrained instinct tells you to do. Instead, krav maga dictates that you harness your natural instincts and training, and optimize your inbred survival mechanisms. To survive an unavoidable violent onslaught uninjured, you must internalize a few core interrelated and interdependent fight strategies. Your self-defense path must become first nature through correct mental and physical training.

    Best Use of Training Partners

    The importance of a determined training partner who is prepared to challenge and attack you cannot be understated. The reality is that committed attackers are not going to stop the attack until you stop them. Obviously, in training, one must not injure one’s training partner, so strict control of combatives and range must be honored. At the same time, the attacker does not give up until the defender correctly attacks using anatomical targeting that would debilitate the attacker.

    In large part, the difference between professional training and amateur training is the intensity and commitment of a realistic simulated attack. Note that when participating in a higher level of training, real attacks can be orchestrated, however using real knives and live firearms is neither recommended nor wise. The internet is replete with videos of the most common attacks, from the push to heinous killings. Realistic training examples include retracting the arm used in a punch or knife attack to immediately attack again, choking at 100 percent, swinging 100 percent at the attacker’s head with a padded glove or with a foam baton, and yanking back one’s replica gun-wielding hand as a gunman would, should someone try to disarm him (such as when a defense is initiated).

    Foremost, in learning krav maga, as skill levels permit, a partner mustsimulate the intensity and barbarity of a concerted attack. This is one of the first and most important lessons Grandmaster Haim Gidon taught me. This distinguishes the Israeli krav maga taught by Haim, his top instructors, and his students. In my opinion, the level of training in Haim’s gym is unsurpassed in the krav maga world.For sample videos check out Grandmaster Gidon’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/gidonsystemkravmaga/). There are myriad videos in the marketplace of people grunting and showing aggression, but the attack is often timid, uncommitted, and unrealistic. One cannot improve without realistic training and tactics that represent the realities of a determined attack. It is that simple.

    The Language of Krav Maga

    Once you understand the language of krav maga, you can better understand the method:

    Combative: Any manner of strike, takedown, throw, joint lock, choke, or other offensive fighting movement.

    Deadside: Your adversary’s deadside, in contrast to his liveside, places you behind his near shoulder or facing his back. You are in an advantageous position to counterattack and control him because it is difficult for him to use his arm and leg furthest away from you to attack you. You should always move to the deadside when possible. When executed properly, this will also place the adversary between you and any third-party threat.

    Kravist: A term I coined to describe a smart and prepared krav maga fighter.

    Liveside: When you are in front of your adversary and your adversary can both see you and use all his arms and legs against you, you are facing his or her liveside.

    L-parry: A defensive arm movement that leads a defense by delivering a mini-forearm chop to an incoming attacker’s arm. The defensive rotational arm movement is best delivered when the deflecting arm is bent 70 or so degrees to optimally extend the arm.

    Nearside: Your adversary’s limb closest to your torso.

    Off-angle: An attack angle that is not face-to-face.

    Parry: A redirection of an incoming strike.

    Retzev: A Hebrew word that means “continuous motion” in combat. The backbone of modern Israeli krav maga, retzev enables you to move your body instinctively in combat motion without thinking about your next move. When in a dangerous situation, you’ll automatically call upon your physical and mental training to a launch seamless, overwhelming counterattack using strikes, takedowns, throws, joint locks, chokes, or other offensive actions combined with evasive action. Retzev is quick and decisive movement merging all aspects of your krav maga training. Defensive movements transition automatically into offensive movements to neutralize the attack, affording your adversary little time to react.

    Same side: An arm or leg directly opposite that of an opponent when you are facing each other. For example, in this situation your right arm is “same side” to his left arm.

    Stepping off the line: Using footwork and body movement to take evasive action against a linear attack such as a straight punch or kick. Such movement is also referred to as breaking the angle of attack.

    Tai sabaki: A 180-degree or semicircle step executed by swinging one leg around behind yourself. Often used to create torque on a joint to complete a takedown or control hold.

    Trapping: Occurs when you pin or grab the adversary’s arms with one arm, leaving you free to continue combatives with your other arm.

  • Anatomical Targeting1:44

    This clip serves as an introduction to Israeli Krav Maga as taught by IKMA U.S. Chief Instructor and seven-time award winning Krav Maga author David Kahn.

  • Three Levels of Kravists3:12

    Three Levels of Kravists Principle (Yellow Belt)

    Level I: Still reactionary and defensive (beginner)

    Level II: Capable of simultaneous defense and attack (advanced)

    Level III: Capable of recognizing an impending attack and preempting (usually with a kick, though other combatives may be used, of course) the attack (expert)

  • Simultaneous Defense and Attack7:33

    Simultaneous Defense & Attack (All Belt Levels)

    Each defense combines deflection-redirections, evasive actions, and simultaneous or near-simultaneous counter-attacks with extreme prejudice to dominate the opponent.

    Combine your defense and offense into one complete strategy

    In short, you’ll attack the attacker.

  • Combatives Summary2:44

    Combatives Tactical Summary

    A kravist’s violent intent governs his violence of action. True self-defense or counterviolence focuses not simply on survival but rather on how to optimally injure, cripple, maim, and—if necessary and justified—kill. If you begin with the intent to injure and neutralize your opponent, a trained paroxysm of counterviolence is more likely to favorably conclude the situation. Use the closest weapon to attack the closest target. Your goal is to achieve traumatic injury in the shortest time using the most opportune route. Target the opponent’s vulnerable anatomy, damage that anatomy, continue to damage it, and capitalize on debilitating him to move on to the next anatomical target as necessary. Inflicting injury obviously affords the opportunity to impose more injury. For example, delivering a debilitating side kick to an adversary’s knee usually immobilizes him, exposing him to your further onslaught. In short, a kravist’s rapid infliction of successive damage, mutilation, and wounds epitomizes the optimum use of counterviolence.

    Attack the Attacker: Anatomical Targeting

    To stop an assailant, krav maga primarily targets the body’s vital soft tissue, chiefly the groin, neck, and eyes. Other secondary targets include the kidneys, solar plexus, knees, liver, joints, fingers, nerve centers, and other smaller, fragile bones. The professional also immediately recognizes that an assailant might also target these same targets and, accordingly, takes measures to protect one’s own vital anatomy. A protective posture or stance is integral to krav maga training. In addition, krav maga teaches you to disarm assailants and, if necessary, turn the weapon against them. The system differs from other systems that may rely primarily on targeting difficult-to-locate nerve centers.

    Forging an awareness of your own personal weapons and an adversary’s vulnerabilities is essential to fight strategy and tactics, especially when he is armed and you are not. There are no rules in a fight, particularly in the life-or-death struggle of combat. This lack of rules distinguishes the system from sport fighting.

    Krav maga, initially developed as a military fighting discipline, employs lethal-force techniques. Lethal force may involve crushing the skull, cutting off an aggressor’s oxygen supply or blood flow, severing the spine or major arteries, or stopping or penetrating the heart, along with several other slower-acting methods of inflicting trauma. Founder Imi Lichtenfeld was resolute that these techniques remain confined to military and professional security circles. While these techniques are integrated at the highest levels of the IKMA curriculum, trainees who are exposed to them are highly vetted.

    In both defending and attacking, recognizing the human anatomy’s vulnerabilities is essential to fight strategy and tactics. The human body is amazingly resilient. Therefore, an adversary may only be stopped when his offensive capabilities are put out of commission by nonlethal concussive force, joint dislocations, bone breaks, or cutting off the blood supply to the brain, resulting in unconsciousness. If necessary, krav maga also employs chokes and “blood” chokes to render an adversary unconscious or worse.

    With proper body positioning, an adversary on the ground can be pummeled severely while giving him little defensive recourse. Logically, in both standing and ground fights, it becomes difficult for an adversary to fight effectively if his hands or limbs are broken, and rendering an adversary unconscious quickly ends a fight. Every type of lock requires moving the joint against its natural articulation with breaking pressure. While we teach certain core arm dislocation positions, once you have an understanding of the biomechanics, you can apply the principles to many situations. This is especially important in the fluidity of a fight. Optimally, you will use the entire force and weight of your body to apply pressure against an adversary’s joint. This is the key principle to joint locks. Remember that a joint lock, however decisive and quick, still ties you up momentarily, exposing you to a second adversary—or multiple adversaries—attacking you.

    Injuring versus Hurting

    Pain may stop some assailants, but others have enormous pain thresholds. Therefore, an opponent may only be decisively stopped when his offensive capabilities are put out of commission by joint dislocations, bone breaks, or by cutting off the oxygen or blood supply to the brain, resulting in unconsciousness.

    Spinal reflexes govern the body’s physical reaction to damage. While physically resilient, the human body is affected by structural injury in a somewhat predictable manner. Therefore, a kravist can generally predict how his counterattacks will affect the assailant’s subsequent movements or capabilities. Strategically, inflicting a first-salvo injury against an adversary opens the door to unleash subsequent injurious counterattacks. As another example, when an attacker is hit in the face, usually his head will jolt backward, exposing his throat and neck to attack while also forcing his pelvis forward to expose his groin for further attack. As emphasized, the optimum way to end a violent conflict is to injure the opponent rapidly and repeatedly as necessary.

    Deadly, concerted, one-on-one, up-close-and-personal violence usually lasts no more than a few seconds. Adopting a simple survival mind-set is inadequate; you must not get seriously injured or maimed. One usually does not cleanly win a violent hand-to-hand combat encounter. One survives it, subject to an injury scale. Krav maga, at its core, does not reflect “fighting” prowess so much as the ability to damage the adversary. In a fight, experienced combatants understand that specific defensive tactics rarely work or are applied. Rather, it is your offensive capabilities that are paramount. In a fight, a well-timed, decisive pre-emptive attack creating anatomical damage followed by additional combatives usually prevails. In other words, the victor is whichever fighter first successfully exploits an anatomical vulnerability of his opponent with a well-placed debilitating combative and, then, who continues to serially injure the opponent through retzev continuous combat motion.

    When there is no choice but to use counterviolence, a kravist is compelled to maim, cripple, or—provided the circumstances are legally justifiable—kill an assailant by, say, breaking bones, disabling ligaments, or destroying an eyeball. In short, and in an animalistic sense, inflicting terrible, debilitating wounds on an adversary—maiming an assailant—balances power in the kravist’s favor.

    It is axiomatic that the party who significantly damages the other party first usually prevails if he presses the counterattack home to neutralize the threat. Once again, there is no pity or humanity in visceral self-defense or hand-to-hand combat provided the ends justify the means in the correct use of force. Survivors do not waver in believing they will impose their will on an aggressor to alter the outcome.


  • Use-of-Force Considerations1:47

    > You must be able to legally articulate what you did and why you did it à objectively reasonable.

    > Rules govern the proportionality of permissible counter-force.

    > Self-defense may be defined as reasonably necessary counter-force to protect yourself from suffering potential injury or death.

    > You must not use force that is likely to cause seriously bodily injury or death unless you reasonably believe that you will be maimed or killed.

    > Use more force than is necessary, you lose the privilege of self-defense.

    > Legally, self-defense is an affirmative defense that you were not the aggressor.

    > Apparent necessity, not actual necessity will suffice for a sustainable self-defense explanation.

    You will have to articulate why you had no choice but to use counter-violence:

    1. Intent (stated or evident goal of harming you)

    2. Capability (has the prowess or tools to harm you)

    3. Opportunity (proximity)

    4. No preclusion (retreat was not available to you)

    • You recognized the difference between normal movements versus attack movements à well-known threatening attack movement patterns.

    • Your goal and intent was to stop the threat, not to cause wanton injury.

    • Your pre-existing learned knowledge of threats.

    • Aggressor presents counter-measures against your initial safety measures.

    • An aggressor develops proximity and ability to attack;

    • Given the totality of the circumstances, why you reasonably believed you faced imminent and immediate physical danger.

    • Why an attack was not just possible, but, it was probable

    • There was no reasonable preclusion (retreat) was available.

    • In stopping the threat, you recognized the probable outcome of not stopping the threat (suffering a fractured eye orbit or broken nose, having your head smashed on the ground, being stomped, etc.)

    • For this point, you may have provide answers to such representative direct use of force questions as:

      • Why didn’t you summon the police?

      • How did you know or prove the other party was going to attack you?

      • Didn’t you intend to purposefully injure the other party?

      • You train in krav maga to injure people, correct?

    • Using a retzev counter-attack will invite acute legal scrutiny.

Requirements

  • None

Description

NOT ALL KRAV MAGA IS THE SAME. THIS IS THE REAL DEAL KRAV MAGA FROM THE WORLD'S LONGEST-STANDING AND ORIGINAL ISRAELI KRAV MAGA ASSOCIATION (GIDON SYSTEM).  These  self-defense strategies and tactics are battle-tested and street-proven.

This 22 hour Mastering the Best of Krav Maga Course was developed and is presented by David Kahn, the IKMA US's Chief Instructor and award-winning author of seven Krav Maga books.   The instinctive tactics presented in this course are easily learned and retained.  A few core strategies and tactics will defeat the majority of street threats and attacks and may be mastered by anyone regardless of size, strength, gender or physical abilities.

In addition to his training thousands of civilians, David has, on an official basis, trained and received commendations from more than 250 law enforcement agencies and all five branches of the U.S. military including the:

  • US Navy SEALs

  • Army Green Berets

  • Air Force Special Operations

  • Marine Corps Special Operations Command

  • Royal Marines

  • FBI

  • US Secret Service

  • US Marshal Fugitive Task Force

  • DEA

  • ATF

  • DOD Police

  • NYPD

  • NJSP

  • Philadelphia PD

Trained by Israeli Grandmaster Haim Gidon, David has produced the most expansive and complete Krav Maga library in the world. This video course is supported by written excerpts and training drills excerpted from David Kahn's books.  

This Best of Krav Maga Course derived from the yellow through blackbelt levels of the Israeli Krav Maga Association includes:

  1. Krav Maga mindset and core principles.

  2. Essential movements, stances and positions.

  3. The most effective upperbody combatives.

  4. The most effective lowerbody combatives.

  5. Takedowns combatives.

  6. Throw combatives.

  7. The most effective upper- and lowerbody combative combinations and retzev (continuous combat motion).

  8. Defending the most common upperbody attacks.

  9. Defending the most common lowerbody attacks.Choke defenses.

  10. Grab and clinch defenses.

  11. Bearhug defenses.

  12. Takedown defenses.

  13. Ground survival.

  14. Multiple attacker strategies and defenses.

  15. Impact weapon defenses.

  16. Edged weapon defenses (including complex attacks such as grabs and combined combatives).

  17. Firearm defenses (including complex threats such as grabs and professional distancing).

David received his advanced blackbelt teaching certifications from Israeli Grandmaster Haim Gidon in Israel. David has authored six best-selling and award winning krav maga books for both Macmillan Press and YMAA Publications: Krav Maga (2004), Advanced Krav Maga (2008); Krav Maga Weapon Defenses (2012); Krav Maga Professional Tactics (2016); Krav Maga Defense (2016) and Krav Maga Combatives (2019) and Krav Maga Fundamental Strategies (2021).

David developed a national krav maga school affiliate program with over a dozen  affiliates. For the NFL, David created specialized event de-escalation and football tactics training. Mainstream media regularly feature David including Men’s Fitness, GQ, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, New Yorker, Penthouse, Fitness, Marine Corps News, Armed Forces Network, Special Operations Report, Militarycom, CBS News, Fox News, Discovery Channel, Combat Camera, Police Magazine, PBS and the BBC. David also produced the Mastering Krav Maga DVD series, Volumes I-IV that became Amazon’s Choice® along with the Mastering Krav Maga Online program.

Who this course is for:

  • Anyone with an interest in Krav Maga and Self-Defense

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