Perfect techniques simply don’t exist. All techniques contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited, and it’s extremely easy to point these out and demonstrate them – possibly adding a tagline if you’re doing so on social media, such as, “good way to get yourself killed” etc., as if doing nothing was a better option. Any instructor and/or practitioner can easily demonstrate how/why a technique wouldn’t work; it really doesn’t take a lot of skill or knowledge to do so. The fact that someone is teaching and/or learning Krav Maga, or any other martial art or self-defense system is an acknowledgment that violence is asymmetrical and that they are starting from a disadvantaged position. The reason for leaning how to fight is that the individual recognizes and knows that they don’t know how to, and that they need to develop “skills” and learn “techniques” that will start to level the playing field for them in a violent encounter and hopefully give them an edge/advantage over the other person(s). Unfortunately, this often comes down to a belief in techniques as a set of “tricks” that allows an inexperienced person to become a successful fighter, and if your “tricks” aren’t good enough you fail; and there are plenty of people out there – especially in the Krav Maga - who will tell you why your techniques/tricks won’t work. By focusing on the vulnerabilities of other individuals’ techniques it allows them to not have to look too hard at their own, and every technique contains vulnerabilities that can be exploited. In my opinion it is better for a practitioner to spend time addressing these vulnerabilities – and there are ways to do this - than pointing out the vulnerabilities in another system’s techniques etc.

                I grew up practicing Judo, Karate and Boxing, before I started in Krav Maga in the early 1990’s. All of these systems have techniques but there is an acknowledgment within them that you need to develop skills in order to get them to work e.g. in Judo you need to learn how to grip and take a person’s balance; if you don’t have the skills to do these two things, you won’t be able to throw someone. A boxer needs to learn how to generate power in their punching/striking, if they are going to be able to knock somebody out. Unfortunately, there are those in the Krav Maga community who believe and/or like to present the idea that Krav Maga techniques due to their simplicity don’t require any skills or abilities to get them to work; they are “tricks” that can be performed with minimal rehearsal and training. Some believe that the magic/secret ingredient to get these techniques to work is aggression, and that this is a substitute for skills. Developing the skills that are necessary to get a technique to work is one of the ways to address its vulnerabilities.

A punch, such as a jab, has a number of vulnerabilities, and people inherently know this, which is why when they initially start sparring, they are often hesitant to make an attack i.e., they have a lot of doubts about landing it successfully. They know that as they step forward to throw it, they are also committing weight; two things that can be exploited. A step can be exploited by a sweep, loading weight onto the forward leg means that if a person counters with a low-roundhouse kick to it, all of the kick’s power will be absorbed etc. An experienced person/fighter recognizes these things and knows not to make the punch when the other fighter is in a position to exploit these vulnerabilities. It’s not that punches don’t work, it’s that they need to be thrown in a way that compensates for their inherent drawbacks, and this involves developing skills and abilities, around striking/punching. One of the most common vulnerabilities I see in sparring is a slowness/lateness in recoiling strikes, whether they be punches or kicks etc. It is this phase of the strike that is often exploited. It’s not a problem with the technique, it’s an issue with the skills of the person performing it.            

Are there bad self-defense techniques? I would argue that there aren’t if the person performing them has the skills to do so successfully. I know an instructor whose solution to having a short-barreled firearm pointing at him, was to do a crescent kick, to knock the gun out of the person’s hand. I’ve seen him successfully do this, before a person could shout bang, and attempt to retain the weapon etc. I can – and I’d hope anyone reading this article – could immediately point out any number of issues with this technique/solution, and why they wouldn’t do this. However, the ultimate reason this isn’t a solution I would ever use is because I lack the skills to do so. I also don’t teach this as a solution because I believe that it would take an extremely long time to develop the skills necessary to address the vulnerabilities inherent in such a solution. However, for those who possess the skills to make it work, it’s not necessarily a bad technique/solution. All techniques have vulnerabilities and developing skills can help address these.

A technique that contains a vulnerability(s) doesn’t necessarily make it a bad one, as if this was the case all techniques would be bad ones. When teaching, I’ll sometimes say that I don’t particularly like a technique but that it’s the best solution I have for a threat or attack etc., for a number of reasons e.g., it might address the most likely response an attacker could make, or the most serious. In understanding how an assailant might respond, it’s important not to “rely” solely on the technique itself, but to develop the skills that minimize your ability to use it. It is in this skills development piece that many Krav Maga practitioners have a blind-spot, believing that Krav Maga techniques don’t need fighting skills in order to get them to work, and so engage in a “comparison” as to why their techniques are better than someone else’s without recognizing that all techniques are subject to vulnerabilities.