Friday, December 21, 2007

Krav Maga

At the last Prt.sc dinner I was talking about how cool Krav Maga was and how I thought everyone should learn it when I realized that only Andreia knew what the hell I was talking about.


Well, Krav Maga is a personal defense system which originated from Israeli self defense technics and was developed by Imi Lichtenfeld during World War II. The name in hebrew means Combat (Krav) Contact (Maga) which pretty much sums up what's it's objective is... Close, or contact, combat.

Despite it's origin, or maybe because of it, this method now serves as combat training for major armed forces (the SEALS are a notable example) as well as police forces around the world.

If you're in Portugal, you can go to the Portuguese Krav Maga Federation site, or follow this blog to know more about this self defense technique and were you can learn it (by the way, I highly recommend you trying to catch a Paulo Pereira's class). If you're not, and most *my* visitors tend not to be, well try googling for your local Federation or start here.

Here is a little demo Richard Douieb gave at Bercy's International Martial Arts Festival in 2003. Enjoy.


P.S : kudos go out to eduardo, who at 8, is the best student I ever had.

5 comments:

Kay said...

és querido! queres namorar comigo?

JP Antunes said...

love you!
by the way, do you have zoe's phone number?

:o)

Armando Alves said...

I guess i'll try Aikido first, for somthing a bit more lighter.

but i keep in mind Krav-maga.

JP Antunes said...

Hello Armando, welcome to my blog.

Aikido is a great martial art. I've tried it a couple of times and enjoyed it very much.

There are many differences between KM and Aikido, the biggest of which seems to be that Krav isn't a martial art, but a set os self-defense movements targeted at giving you the tools needed to respond to physical confrontation, but at no point you'll thrive at "enlightenment trough the path of the bushido".

As such, with Krav Maga it's easier to get from 0 to semi-hero in a couple of months training whereas with Aikido you'll have to practice for years before you'll feel comfortable about using it IRL.

Tiago Rodrigues said...

Ja tinha ouvido falar desta arte marcial por ser a especialidade do personagem do jogo (e do livro) Splinter Cell.