Krav Maga History

Krav maga is a relatively new martial art whose roots go back to Eastern Europe in the 1930’s. That said Krav Maga is generally recognized as being an ‘Israeli fighting system’, which is only partially correct as I’ll explain.

The term Krav Maga comes from two Hebrew words – Krav meaning battle and Maga meaning contact. So roughly speaking Krav Maga is interpreted as meaning hand-to-hand fighting.

 

The founder of Krav Maga self defence is a man called Imi Lichtenfeld. In the1930’s Imi lived in Bratislava (that’s in modern day Slovavia – or Czechoslovakia at the time). At that time the Jewish community in Bratislava was being persecuted by Nazi militia. Imi, himself being Jewish helped train fellow Jews to defend themselves. Imi himself had a background in both boxing and wrestling. The krav maga fighting methods that he taught was a hybrid of his boxing and wrestling techniques as well as local ‘street fighting’ skills that he had also learnt.

Fast forward a few years and Imi had relocated to Palestine and he is teaching Krav Maga fighting techniques to the Haganah. The Haganah were a Palestinian paramilitary organization (i.e. an underground army). And this is where the Israeli connotations start to surface.

In 1948, three years after the end of the second world war, the state of Israel was formed. And Imi – his reputation well established – became the chief combat instructor at the IDF (the ‘Israel Defense Forces’ school).  He served at the IDF for a total of 15 years. And it was in this period that he further refined, what had become known as Grav Maga, into a particularly potent fighting system.

 Throughout most of his subsequent life, Imi was to supervise the instruction of Krav Maga self defense to various groups, from the military, to law enforcement professionals as well as civilian needs.

It needs be mentioned that the IKMA (Israeli Krav Maga Association) was established in 1978. The IKMA continues till today and is recognized as being the central body that encourages and regulates the teaching and the spread or Krav Maga throughout the world. To quote the IKMA website, “to create, form, temper and upgrade an efficient method of winning and staying alive in dangerous situations”.

Today Krav Maga is taught worldwide from Israel to Europe, North America and Asia.

Click here for Krav Maga training videos.


Wilipedia has some good background on Krav Maga