Author: Gus Bottazzi

I have been involved in the martial arts for over 20 years. Like most students of the arts, I have come to appreciate what takes place between two willing combatants in the ring, cage or octagon. The athleticism, speed, grace and raw power of each participant can be awe inspiring. A well timed strike that causes the knockout or a finely tuned joint manipulation that creates the submission is discussed by me and my students for days following the event. Yes, combative sports can be a really cool spectator sport. The more you learn at your dojo or studio, the greater the appreciation you have for the action.

What we teach at Israeli Krav Maga-CT, however, is not fighting, but self defense. My mission is not to train my students to become the next Jon Jones, GSP or Floyd Mayweather,. It is to survive an attack. Self defense, unlike what takes place in the ring/cage/octagon is NOT between two willing combatants. It is about you being at the wrong place, at the wrong time and trying to escape safely when you find yourself unexpectedly at the receiving end of potential violence. This, therefore, is an entirely different type of training.

While we must learn all the respective strikes, kicks and defenses that the professional fighters learn, our application is far different. We are not in that situation by choice, and unlike the pros, know nothing about what fighting skills our attacker has or what weapons they may have brought. For that matter, we don’t even have the assurance that we have only one attacker. In the ring/cage/octagon, we know who we are fighting. On the street our attacker may have a buddy waiting to pounce when our attention is diverted.

So what is my point. Self defense is not about winning a fight. Winning on the street is survival. Winning is about leaving the situation as unharmed as possible. As we look at an attacker in front of us, our mind must shift to what will be the quickest way to disable and then disengage. I have listened to instructors at other studios talk about the attacker engagement as if your goal as intended victim is to knock the attacker out, submit them or otherwise dominate them.

I say, be wary of this strategy. Once you have neutralized the initial attack and countered to the point of rendering the attacker hurt or stunned, your next mission must be to find a safe exit. The longer you attach yourself to this person through further combatives or submission holds, the greater the possibility that another attacker appears, a hidden weapon is drawn or they catch a second wind.

At the end of the day, your goal is to be able to escape a violent confrontation safely so you can get home and watch the pros showcase their talents on Pay Per View.

So you find yourself in a place where some beer-soaked knucklehead has decided to prove his alpha position by making you his punk….

Perfect….

What you’ll find with most unskilled fighters is that their first move is to push/shove you backwards. The purpose in shoving you is to intimidate you, throw you off balance and allow himself a full head of steam for that big hay-maker of a punch. I submit that the best strategy for a fight (other than to never get into one),is to make this person fight in their most uncomfortable position.

What am I saying? Most people have never trained to fight and a high percentage of those that have, have learned a style that prefers to have distance to work (Tae Kwon Do or Boxing, for example). In fact, the hope of your attacker is, most likely, that you will keep back-pedaling while they continue to launch their attacks at you. Fortunately you train Krav Maga! Our system’s whole philosophy is to step forward, close distance and take the fight to them.

“The closer you are to danger, the further you are from harm”, is an expression I learned in my years of training Krav Maga. Upon the identification of an armed or unarmed attacker, your goal is to burst towards them with simultaneous defenses and attacks. More to the point, once your hands have made contact with a part of your attackers body, you immediately control that body part. You are now at a pivotal point in the fight…what you do next is up to you. Once in this position, you have three options for your handling this attacker. You can:

Beat them up (first and best option for a safe escape)
Take them down (if for some reason you need to control their body within your escape path)
Walk them out (if you are responsible or have need for delivering this nefarious dude to a control point)

By beating them up, I mean you discharge all your combatives until your attacker no longer has the strength or will to continue to fight. You need to stay tight to ensure your elbows, knees and groin kicks are effectively received while staying too close for your attacker to respond.

By taking them down, I mean use your variety of sweeps, throws or wrist/neck control maneuvers to drop them to the floor. Again these techniques require you to stay close (hip-to-hip, as I say), to guarantee optimal leverage.

By walking them out, I mean take the arm/wrist/neck that you got control of earlier and apply the appropriate compliance hold and walk them out to the nearest security or police point. Needless to say, this can’t happen from afar. You must be in a position where the hold is creating enough discomfort that your attacker will have no choice but to walk with you.

As I hope you see, the strategies of Krav Maga are effective because they leverage our ability to close the distance (where our attackers are least comfortable), potentially take control of our attacker, in some manner, and then dispose of them effectively through one of three paths. In all of these circumstances, the common denominator is to stay close and take all the working space away from our attacker.