According to the proponents of Krav Maga, it is the ultimate survival fighting style. It offers a quick learning curve, puts the emphasis on preparing for real-life situations, incorporates mental toughness and street awareness training, and achieves maximal efficiency by utilizing simple, battle-proven techniques as opposed to fancy-looking jumping kicks and exotic hand-waving.
Whether Krav Maga delivers or not is a matter of framing the question. One way to put it could be: is Krav Maga a better choice for self-defense than traditional martial arts? Or a second one: is Krav Maga better than combat-oriented sports like boxing, BJJ, or Thai box? Or a third one: would a martial artist benefit from a Krav Maga training? My short answer to these questions is maybe, no, and probably, respectively. The rest of the post is the long answer.
I find that Krav Maga enthusiasts share many of the correct observations and misconceptions with those who believe in the superiority of the hand-to-hand training of elite military forces. Those who think Krav Maga is really the best there is usually have two broad arguments. One is that Krav Maga, with its emphasis on simplicity and no holds barred approach in the choice of techniques, produces more effective fighters. The other is that the weight it puts on mental toughness and attitude makes it better than the rest. In the following, we inspect both claims.
Technical superiority?
Krav Maga's basic approach to techniques is that the simpler the better and practice is preferred to theory. Take what works from anywhere, and ignore the baggage. Traditional martial arts make the mistake of deferring the teaching of actual fighting until the students have spent months, maybe years mastering the basics - how to stay balanced and well-grounded in different stances (most of which never come up in a real fight), how to execute dozens of different punches and kicks perfectly, and all the while practicing traditional attack and defense techniques against imaginary opponents. Krav Maga, on the other hand, gives applicable knowledge from day one. It doesn't matter if your elbow was two centimeters lower than how it's prescribed in the books if you took down your opponent. Time spent practicing simple, effective moves is time not wasted on endless repetitions of katas and fancy but unusable moves.
So far, nothing to argue with, but also nothing fundamentally different from the approach taken by mainstream combat-oriented sports. What makes the approach of Krav Maga to techniques unique is that it aims for usefulness in situations not bound by rules - but ones you can find yourself in a rough neighborhood: surrounded by multiple attackers, being shoved around, grabbed by the lapels, threatened by a much bigger opponent, etc. The employed techniques are accordingly brutal. The targets of attack are the nose, throat, eyes, groin, anything that hurts and can cause permanent damage. And while this sounds reasonable, if brutish, this is where the evidence is scarce. How do we know that these techniques really work?
Krav Maga demonstrations look not only amazing (not unlike those of traditional martial arts, by the way) but convincing as well. But so do fight scenes in the Bourne Trilogy and no one above 12 believes that Matt Daemon is really beating up the stuntmen, in 5-second bursts, two at a time. And now I jump on my hobby horse. The only way to be sure that you can execute a technique in a real situation is to have it executed many times before. Not against a willing training partner, but against opponents who do not comply.
And commendably, in many Krav Maga dojos (or whatever they call them) there actually are sparring sessions. But during those, to the surprise of not too many, those Bourne-moves never seem to happen. The sparrings suspiciously look like ordinary training fights in a kick-box club, if somewhat sloppier. Why is that so? Why are self-defense techniques so rarely seen in a real fight?
Let's try to explain it with an example, a typical move often seen in many self-defense or martial arts demonstration. The attacker steps forward trying to punch the defender in the face. The latter does three things at the same time: (1) steps forward into the attack (2) while brushing the opponent's arm aside so that it misses its target by a mere couple of centimeters, and (3) with the other hand launches a counterattack (hit in the face, eyes, throat, maybe preparing a sweep or throw). See here at 0:46-0:50 or here at 1:29-1:35.
What's the problem with this move? The problem is that no one can do it in a real fight against a fast opponent. You are moving your face towards a punch while trusting your ability to parry it at just the right time. Your hand moves a split second too soon or too late and you impale your face on your opponent's fist. Boxers, who practice nothing else but fistfights can't do this. You almost never see this in the ring and when you do, definitely not with that moviesque smoothness.
The reasoning above could be applied to an endless stream of examples. The non-practicability of most self-defense moves boils down to a very simple fact: employing them in practice would require superhuman reaction time and sense of timing. Catching wrists in mid-air, foreseeing the exact position your opponent will be in the next moment, moving just centimeters to avoid a punch, and the rest that is only possible in demonstrations. This is the reason why self-defense-oriented traditional martial arts, like Aikido or Japanese Jiu-Jitsu, don't work (yeah I know, Jiu-jitsu encompasses much more than self-defense. But this part doesn't work. At least, not very well).
Boxing with a pro
So what works well? Let's demonstrate it with another example. Once I got in the ring for a training match with a world championship bronze-medallist kick-boxer. I was very new to kick-boxing, although I had ten years of traditional Karate behind me, which didn't help a lot. Although it was a very light sparring, it was obvious who had the upper hand. Whereas my opponent always seemed just a bit outside of my punching range, he could hit me frequently and easily. Which beat into me (gently but literally) the importance of one fundamental skill in combat sports which is not obvious or even visible to laymen: the sense of distance. Can I hit him from where I am or do I need to step forward? Am I outside his range? In which angle should I pivot to increase or decrease the distance? Is it enough if I lean back a bit or I should step back? An image is worth more the 10,000 words:
Together with rythm and timing - also not something ordinary people consider much when they think about combat sports - these are the skills that continuous practice of free sparring develops and are the decisive factors in a fight. Not the number of techniques one knows, or how eye-pleasingly he can perform them, or how brutal they are.
The other thing largely underappreciated by laymen is just how hard it is to throw a punch properly. I don't mean simply swinging your arm as hard as you can, but to land a punch where you want it with proper force and speed and without telegraphing it to the opponent in advance. Funnily enough, surveys have been actually made, and they show that most men think they can throw a punch. Most are wrong. It takes thousands of repetitions until a move becomes muscle memory, and a punch of a sportsman really is very different from the average guy's haymaker.
But I only want to learn to defend myself
Let's pivot back to the original question, to one form of it, at least. If I want to be able to defend myself on the street, should I visit a Krav Maga or a Thai box club? There is a quite common misconception that is worth addressing here. It goes like this: "But I don't want to be a fighter. I only want to be able to defend myself". To me, this sounds like a fisherman saying, "I don't want to be a very good swimmer, just be able to swim ashore if the stormy waves capsize my boat". Square that.
The implicit (and for hard-core Krav Maga fans explicit) assumption behind this idea is that combat sports and self-defense are two completely different skill sets. Not necessarily or predominantly in technique, but in mindset, which leads us to the second argument for Krav Maga's superiority.
Sport is unrealistic
The argument goes like this: combat sports with their artificial rules sterilize fighting. Sportsmen are used to controlled aggression, a limited set of techniques, fair play, and protective gear. None of them is available in a real situation. Therefore these fighters are unequipped outside the ring.
And there is truth in this observation. On the street, pugilistic skills are secondary. Situation awareness, wits, assertive behavior, the ability to keep your cool are much more important to avoid or defuse dangerous situations. Additionally, someone who is capable of disproportionate violence has an edge over "civilized" people. Everyone can imagine (or remember from the schoolyard) wildmen who gauge eyes, bite in the face, jump on the head - these people are extremely dangerous even for professionals. Not even Mike Tyson would mess happily with a genuine madman - because even if you win, you get hurt. If you lose, you get hurt really bad.
However, this ability for brutality is not something an average human will pick up by practicing Krav Maga twice a week. And even if someone is actually willing to sink his thumbs in someone's eyes, it doesn't mean he'll be able to. Hitting a throat or kicking someone in the groins is not as easy as they might seem, and who said the opponent can't do it to you first or just break your nose before you even try?
Situation awareness and assertiveness, on the other hand, probably could be practiced. With some limits.
Recently, I listened to an interview with Georges St-Pierre, one of the greatest UFC fighters of all time. At one point, GSP, reminiscing about his years as a bouncer said that being in a hairy situation in real life is a completely different world from the octagon. Among other things, you have to hit first, and without warning.
Krav Maga fans can jump on this remark mistaking a figure of speech for making a point for a literal interpretation. What GSP presumably wanted to say is that on the street where there are no rules and referees to enforce fairness, you can get hurt if you let your guard drop, even if you are a world-class pugilist. But he didn't say that he would bet on a street fighter against a professional.
I wonder whether those people who take these kinds of remarks literally - that is, "real" fighting and combat sports require two completely different skillsets - might sometimes contemplate the astonishing series of coincidences that it's GSP and the likes of him (that is, professional fighters) who end up working as bouncers instead of their neighbors.
Summary
To wrap it up, Krav Maga suffers from the same malaise as traditional martial arts. Without competitions, it lacks the feedback mechanisms that would separate the wheat from the chaff - both for dojos and individuals. By the relatively little emphasis on sparring, it focuses more on techniques than on developing basic skills and abilities (timing, distance, power, speed). I don't think someone with only Krav Maga training would be a match for a full-contact competitor of any style.
Having said that, I don't see why some Krav Maga training wouldn't benefit even a seasoned fighter. If even the great GSP thinks there are useful skills outside the ring, who can object to that?
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