Self-defense vs. fighting: is there a difference and why do we train both?
Krav Maga is a system of self-defense and hand to hand combat. The two concepts are related and both need to be well addressed when training Krav Maga. What is self-defense? Self-defense is the act of defending oneself against an unexpected, violent attack from a single person or a group of individuals. The defender is usually unaware of the immediate danger until the attack is already in progress or is about to occur. The defender could be subjected to a variety of violent actions including being grabbed, choked, punched, threatened with a weapon, thrown to the ground and more. Depending on the awareness, timing and level of training, the defender can respond early by defending the immediate attack or by defending secondary attacks if the first attack has already landed. Therefore Krav Maga training needs to deal with early and late defensive responses, taken account the natural response of the defender, the behavior of the attacker(s), the surprise element of the attack, and the resulting position of disadvantage the defender has to deal with when responding to the threat.
Combat is the act of fighting against single or multiple attackers. Most people associate fighting with what they see on TV in the context of a sport, such as MMA or boxing. In this context there are two participants that are willingly subjecting themselves to a competitive bout following a certain set of rules and regulations that limit their combative behavior, usually with a third person arbitrating the event, ensuring the safety of the participants and the preservation of the rules. But the reality is that hand to hand combat of course is not just limited to the ring. For us as Krav Maga practitioners, combat is far different from a competitive bout, rather it is a response to the self-defense altercations we discussed previously. For example, if an unsuspecting victim was grabbed in a choke, he/she first has to know how to release the choke effectively, and then deliver decisive counterstrikes to disable the attacker and neutralize the threat to escape successfully. Hence our Krav Maga training has to teach the choke release, i.e. the self-defense portion, and the combat portion of striking, improving position, scanning for secondary dangers, etc. Fighting for us has to be done from various positions given the surprise element of the attack and the resulting position of disadvantage the defender has to overcome to gain the upper hand on the assailant(s). This means fighting from standing, ground, sitting, hands up, down, crossed and anything else you can think of that can happen on the street. Furthermore, attacks on the street are dynamic and are never static, with the attackers often changing the mode of their attacks during the altercation. For example as you go to release the original choke, the attacker tries to respond with a punch, which now needs to be defended before resuming counterstriking and effectively ending the fight. So for us as Krav Maga practitioners, training fighting should be just as important, if not more important than training self-defense techniques, as the latter cannot be successful without the first. Therefore at Impact Krav Maga in addition to learning self-defense techniques, we pay heavy attention to striking, sparring and full contact exercises, ground fighting drills, aggression/determination and conditioning drills, surprise attacks, and dynamic exercises that closely mimic the reality of a street altercation to better equip our students to deal with the element of street combat.
Many people assume that all fighting is the same, and learning how to fight in a ring will prepare you for the street. The truth is that you excel in what you train. Competitive fighters don’t train to overcome surprise attacks. They never train self-defense techniques that transition to fighting situations. Most of the fighting they do is done face to face with two ready participants fighting within the rules of their sport. Krav Maga practitioners on the other hand never train to get in an octagon, hence they will not do well in a competitive MMA match. Having said that neither will a seasoned MMA fighter know what to do if someone puts a knife to his throat in a dark alley, given that he never trained that scenario. You can find YouTube videos of professional and amateur competitive fighters getting into a street altercation against regular assailants and barely escaping with their lives because they didn’t know how to defend against certain weapons or they failed to notice a second and third attacker that was able to sucker punch them from behind. I personally knew a good boxer in NY who got into a street fight and came out badly injured because the guy he was fighting grabbed a bat and ended his competitive fighting career with one blow to which the boxer had no response.
