Shawn Kovacich asked: I just finished reading “Complete Krav Maga” by Darren Levine and John Whitman for the second time in as many weeks and I have to say that it is a very well done book covering the basic techniques needed to advance through the ranks of Krav Maga from yellow belt all the way up to and including brown belt. However, having said that, it should be noted that as the author so firmly states, “Krav Maga is not a martial art, it is a form of self-defense.”
I only have one small complaint with this book and that is that in one respect, it is no different from the vast majority of books out there that try and teach you too many things in one volume and don’t spend enough time on each individual technique. This one small detractor is greatly overshadowed by the sheer amount of good solid information that it does include, of which the importance of principles being stressed as far more important than technique itself is perhaps the most profound.
The authors have provided some very good basic information on the execution of techniques, although not as detailed as they should be, which is understandable in the context of what the authors were trying to get across to the readers. It should be noted though that this book is intended to be used as guide for the reader to learn and develop the self-defensive skills that they will be able to utilize effectively in a self-defense situation, not a certain number of techniques set in stone to advance to the next rank.
Although I enjoyed the vast majority of the material presented in this book, I personally liked the sections dealing with various ground fighting skills and defenses against various weapons the most. Another notable section of this book was the various training examples that were presented throughout.
Now I don’t know if I am going to offend a bunch of people here or not, but my personal take on Krav Maga is similar to that of Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do, in that it borrows those techniques from various systems that prove to be most effective and combine them with a central “core” style and then add an outstanding set of principles to create an effective means of self-defense.
This is a very worth while book to purchase if you are interested in learning how to defend yourself against a variety of attacks. However, as I stated earlier, if you want to really learn how to correctly execute the individual techniques, you will need to purchase some additional books.
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