kung fu and krav maga

TJS · Black Belt

the age argument is really weak...like i said..i would rather base a stlye on how effective it's going to be for the first 60 years of my life..not the last 10 or so.

aznkarateboi · Brown Belt

i think this topic is getting a little off track. the question is which style is better for SELF DEFENSE

TJS · Black Belt

WC-Strayder · Orange Belt

The question is pretty lame itself, B-coz kung fu involves somewhere between 100 to 5000? diffrent styles/arts..... some of them very hard to learn.
The only style in kung fu I know of is wing chun, who is sort of like krav maga, direct and with no bull*** and very agile in a street fight. I also know that there is a lot of kung fu styles out there who is far more superior to both Wing Chun and Krav Maga, but it takes decades too learn and even more decades to master, so I stick with wing chun, the only style I know of that have ALL the tools I will ever need to defend myself with....

Yes, I know that most of you will not agree with that, but I said my self, didn't I????.....
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Thuggish · Blue Belt

having done kung fu i can say that to become good at it, it does take a long time. if you have a life that is busy or whatever, and you want to learn martial arts to just defend yourself in that life, krav maga would be more practical for you. it would be more geared towards self defense and you would be more effective quicker than in kung fu.
as for weapons- if you mean defending against them my response is the same- if you mean using them, the shaolin kung fu school i went to (look for grandmaster the if youre interested) taught at least 18 of the traditional weapons. again it takes a long time to learn one, and it can be difficult to get to a seminar/festival to learn one- but all those ancient weapons are there for the learning. im not sure about krav maga, but kung fu eventually would teach you some ground fighting, but any grappling art would be, again, quicker.
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cross · Black Belt

depends on the teacher

Drunken Monkey · Black Belt

ok, i hear a lot about how KM teaches you to use instinctive moves in combat/dangerous situations.

well, the thing is, as far as i know, when you are threatened, your natural response is to freeze or flounder.

it is because we freeze that we need to train in these martial arts to make the moves/techniques natural and familiar so that we DO NOT freeze or flap our arms about.

my point is, natural instinctive moves don't help you.
well trained, tested moves/techniques do.

in this respect, as long as you train properly, any style will work
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TJS · Black Belt

no that is completly worng.

you can be shown a choke break that works wonders when you are expecting it...you can do it time and again yet you are still going to instinctly do a certain thing..KM simply builds on that.

I would suggest you see some of the techniques before you say that instinctive natural movements dont work.

Drunken Monkey · Black Belt

so what is the instinctive reaction to a choke hold?
or any attack for that matter?

it certainly isn't to hit back.

and you may have noticed that i didn't actually mention any techniques/moves from any art because i was talking about instinct in general.

my argument is that you train in "non-natural" moves in order to make them natural and instinctive.
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GreenDragon · Orange Belt

Yes, but some movements feel more natural than others and are easier to train to the point of them becoming a normal reaction. In the small amount of Kung Fu I have seen, especially animal forms, many movements are very unnatural feeling. I know in MT, the stance is very natural, whereas the method of blocking is not. So I can see where if many of the moves in Krav Maga are more natural than the movements of whatever Kung fu style you are using to compare, then it stands to reason that the time it takes to train that freeze or flounder instinct out of you and make the moves of an art your new instict would be a shorter time frame with Krav Maga. Which simply goes back to what most people have already said, that Krav Maga is effective faster.

I have heard that KM has some very situation specific training for street encounters...someone attacks you from behind while you are sitting in a chair, how to disarm oppenents with various weapons, specific actions to take when attacked by multiple opponents at the same time, etc. This all sounds more like military or police training than a martial art, but also sounds very effective for self-defense.
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