Reddit reviews Krav Maga: How to Defend Yourself Against Armed Assault

This is basically the South Park style of arguments, which boils down to taking the worst of your opponent's arguments and lampooning it with your own words put into their mouths (quite literally here). Especially when kiai "arts" aren't Aikido at all but you lump them in together. Is Aikido flawed? Yes, since it's the unarmed component to Japanese sword combat in a world where people don't carry swords. Is it no-touch mystical shit? No.

Plus isn't that the US Army Combatives manual? You're not only arguing against the wrong martial art, but you're doing against something originally published in 1852. I'm not going to One True Scotsman that high kick against knife, though it kind of goes against your "everything goes" argument to say that a martial art that famously looks down upon high kicks would teach that. It's certainly not what comes in the mostly-official book.

Every instructor from KMG and it's global affiliates can trace their lineage to Eyal Yanilov. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyal_Yanilov

He was one of the last of Imi Lichtenfeld (founder of Krav Maga in Israel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imi_Lichtenfeld students to receive a black belt from the founder himself. He spent 35 years as the Chief Instructor for the Israeli Self-Defense Force. He also wrote one of the first books for civilians on the Krav Maga system to be published in English. However, a lot has changed in the system in the past 15 years since its publication (and different orgs teach different things).

http://www.amazon.com/Krav-Maga-Yourself-Against-Assault/dp/1583940081

I trained at a KMG place for about 8 months before switching to an IKI associated place. They are more of "contact school" variety. We spar with an MMA ruleset and pads. Although we go very softly with knees in the clinch because we're all friends here. The place I attend also teaches Kickboxing, Bjj, Kali, and Wrestling. Two of our guys (who do not do Krav) are training for amateur MMA fights. Our Krav instructor can trace his lineage and wants us to do the same -- he was very intent on having us meet his instructor in both KM and BJJ. A lot of our techniques in KM are MMA techniques but "simplified" -- a 4 count drill instead of an 8 count. Changing a punch to the face to a palm strike or punch to the throat.

the book that helped me personally the most to understand what Krav Maga is really about, is this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Krav-Maga-Philosophy-Application-Fighting/dp/0557248469

and for training purposes i can recommend those books by David Kahn, they're like a step by step programm for beginners with training schedules on the last pages

part 1:
http://www.amazon.com/Krav-Maga-Essential-Method---Self-Defense/dp/0312331770/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332353525&sr=1-1

part 2:
http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Krav-Maga-Fitness-Self-Defense/dp/0312361645/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

and for weapon defenses this is one is excellent for beginners

http://www.amazon.com/Krav-Maga-Yourself-Against-Assault/dp/1583940081/ref=pd_sim_b_3

have fun training !