Is Krav Maga a Martial Art or a Combat Sport?

Developed for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), Krav Maga is known to teach participants to act in real-world situations with efficient, fast self-defence movements.

There is often confusion, however, over whether Krav Maga is a martial art or a combat sport. Though Krav Maga takes cues and techniques from martial arts like aikido, judo, karate, boxing, and wrestling, it is also quite different from those arts.  

UMF Academy is here to answer the question once and for all: Is Krav Maga a martial art or a sport — or neither?

Krav Maga: A Quick Look

Krav Maga is the Israeli army’s official self-defence system. It is a hybrid hand-to-hand combat system, with movements characterised by: 

• Speed and aggression
• Instinct and intuition
• Strong mental focus
• Rapid counter attacks

Krav Maga was designed to get practitioners to a high level of proficiency in a short time. It does this by stressing survival above all — with no rules or restrictions on moves typically considered illegal, such as headbutts, groin strikes, eye gouges, and throat strikes.

Many Krav Maga techniques and moves are inspired by various martial arts and combat sports such as: 

• Karate: Punches and palm strikes
• Aikido: Empty-hand weapon defences.
• Wrestling: Take-downs and throws.
• Judo: Escapes from chokes and holds.

Is Krav Maga a Martial Art?

By definition, a martial art is practised for self-defence, competition, development, entertainment, or heritage. A martial art maintains important traditions passed down from previous masters. 

Like other martial arts taught here at UMF Academy, Krava Maga encourages its students to avoid physical confrontation — but the important distinction is that Krav Maga contains no rules. Instead, it trains you to improvise and incorporate versatile attacks and defences into your movements.

So, is Krav Maga a martial art? Not quite. While it takes techniques such as strikes from karate and boxing and take-downs and throws from judo and aikido, the actual teaching and movements of Krav Maga lack the codified nature of those martial arts.

One element of Krav Maga that contradicts this view is its grading system — many organisations use the coloured belt grading system based upon the Judo grading system. However, Krav Maga was not originally associated with belts or grading at its inception for the IDF — these were introduced to allow training and sparring between students of similar skill levels.

Is Krav Maga a Sport?

In contrast to martial arts, sports take on a competitive edge for the purposes of entertainment. In many combat sports, the contestant’s goal is to score more points than their opponent by either disabling them or attacking with a designated technique. Some common combat sports include boxing, Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, judo, and mixed martial arts (MMA).

One-on-one combat sports such as wrestling involve staying in the ring with your opponent for an allotted time, but the goal of Krav Maga is as far from this as possible. Though it takes some inspiration from wrestling, such as some take-downs, ground work, and escapes from chokeholds, Krav Maga training is about protecting yourself and others against violence, confrontation, and real-world threats.

Instead of following sports-like rules and guidelines, Krav Maga prepares you to act in realistic scenarios and develop a self-defence mindset that will empower you to protect yourself and others.

Defensive Tactics System

But if Krav Maga is neither a sport nor a martial art, what on earth is it?

In Hebrew, krav maga literally means ‘contact combat’. It isn’t an ancient martial art that takes practitioners decades of hard work to learn. Nor is it made for show and entertainment like contact sports and competitive fighting. Krav Maga is a modern and practical self-defence system that can be learned by anyone — and most importantly, is effective in real-world situations.

So, instead of martial arts or sports, an apt term to describe Krav Maga would be as a ‘defensive tactics system’, heavy on the ‘martial’ and not so much the ‘art’.

Learn Krav Maga with UMF Academy

Krav Maga is often thrown into discussions of both martial arts and competitive combat sports. But at its rawest, most natural form, it is neither. Krav Maga is a tactical self-defence system employed for survival against the dangers of the real world.

At UMF Academy, we don’t teach Krav Maga as a martial art or sport, but the defensive tactics system it was intended to be. Sign up for Street Edge Krav Maga to undergo Australia’s number one defensive tactics program, with a no-nonsense approach to real-world self-defence.