Krav Maga lesson in paratrooper school in Israel, 1955
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Focus | Hybrid |
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Creator | Imi Lichtenfeld |
Parenthood | Boxing, Wrestling, Aikido, Judo, Karate, KAPAP |
Olympic sport | No |
Krav Maga' (/krɑːv məˈɡɑː/; Hebrew: קְרַב מַגָּע [ˈkʁav maˈɡa], lit. "contact-combat") is a military self-defense and fighting system developed for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israeli security forces (Shin Bet and Mossad) that consists of a combination of techniques sourced from Boxing, Wrestling, Aikido, Judo, Karate along with realistic fight training. Krav Maga is known for its focus on real-world situations and its extreme efficiency and brutal counter-attacks. It was derived from the street-fighting experience of Hungarian-Israeli martial artist Imi Lichtenfeld, who made use of his training as a boxer and wrestler as a means of defending the Jewish quarter against fascist groups in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia in the mid-to-late 1930s. In the late 1940s, following his migration to Israel, he began to provide lessons on combat training to what was to become the IDF.