Krav Maga Tactical Survival. Gershon Ben Keren

      Assume your de-escalation/interview stance.

      Step/slide forward with your left foot, turning your hand in, and start to raise your elbow. Your rear hand should start to pull back in order to come back and guard your head.

      Keep raising the elbow in a circular fashion toward the target.

      Once it hits, continue to drive it upward, while at the same time pulling your hand back behind your head.

      In this and the next photograph, you can see how the body turns inward to add power to the strike.

      If you were square-on to your aggressor, your elbow will have now come directly to your assailant’s center line; i.e., directly between their guard.

      By continuing the upward arc of the elbow after it has connected, you will cause the head to be driven backward, and the elbow will be scraped upward into your assailant’s face.

      Combining Hook Punches with Hammer-Fist Strikes

      The outward hammer-fist can also be thrown as a second strike after a hook punch or slicing elbow—it works especially well if either of these short-range strikes have missed—either because your attacker pulled their head back, or because you misjudged the range and distance (something which can easily happen in a dynamic situation).

      If your assailant moves their head back to avoid one of these strikes, immediately turn your body back and extend the arm, throwing a horizontal outward hammer-fist at your attacker’s head or neck. It is probably best to err on the side of caution and strike a little deeper than might be necessary to reach the target. This way, you will at least make contact with your forearm if your attacker pulls their head away again.

      As you throw your hook punch, your attacker may pull their head back to avoid it.

      If you have already committed to the strike, your hook punch will miss. So long as you don’t swing the punch wildly, your attacker won’t have the opportunity to attack your back.

      Bring your arm back across your body in order to deliver a hammer-fist or forearm strike.

      Transferring your weight forward and taking a step forward will move you toward your attacker. As you do this, unwind your arm from around you to deliver either a forearm strike or a hammer-fist strike, depending on the range.

      Even if your attacker has their hands held up to guard their head, the power generated by your body unwinding and moving forward is likely to crash straight through them, hitting the target regardless.

      Continue to drive your strike into your attacker as if you are trying to use it to cut off their head.

      This should see them concussed, with their balance severely compromised. From here, you can either disengage or continue to deliver strikes until your attacker is no longer able to continue fighting, emotionally and/or physically.

      It may be that you connect with the hook, and this moves the person’s head back, which sets up the hammer-fist strike. If you strike in this rhythm, with both strikes occurring in quick succession, you may knock your assailant out, as the brain will receive a “double shake,” being quickly moved one way and then the other. It is worth pointing out that knocking your assailant out is something that may happen in the course of striking, rather than something that you should aim to do. If you spend your time chasing/looking for an opening that will allow you the chance to knock your aggressor out, you will be wasting time that could have been spent delivering multiple strikes, which might have totally overwhelmed them and caused them to emotionally crumble, removing them from the fight much earlier. During your blitzing assault on your assailant, you may “get lucky” and physically knock them out, but don’t waste your time looking for that one opportunity. You should lay down your strikes like a machine gunner, not a sniper.

      Defending Against Punches with a Punch

      One of the foundational principles of Krav Maga is that attack should follow defense at the earliest opportunity. One way to do this is to combine an attack with a defensive movement, such as using the same punch to both attack your assailant and at the same time defend against their punch. This particular technique works well against a circular punch when you are already in the fight. If you are “sucker punched” and taken by surprise, your natural reflexes will take over and you will perform a 360 defense; i.e., you will end up flinching, and bring your arm up to block.

      You should only ever attempt to defend a punch with a punch when you are sure that your attacker doesn’t have a knife, broken bottle, or other such implement in their hand. The trick to being successful with this is to ignore the punch that is being thrown by your aggressor, as the movement will draw both your attention and your strike away from its intended target and toward your assailant’s attack. Instead, all of your focus should be on executing your own punch, and letting the movement of your arm perform a blocking action.

      As your assailant begins to throw a circular punch toward you, start to raise your elbow upward while at the same time driving your fist forward toward your attacker’s face.

      Keep raising the elbow up as you deliver the punch forward. Your fist will be corkscrewing round so that thumb is pointing toward the ground, rather than up.

      Continue this rotation of the fist so that the elbow is lifted high. This means that your attacker’s strike will be blocked by your punching arm.

      Continue to extend your arm and drive your fist into and through your attacker’s face. You can then follow up on this, using your left arm to deliver further strikes.

      Be aware that this is not a “power” punch as such, because you will be connecting with the smaller, weaker knuckles of the hand—you should instead think of it as a “jabbing” punch that interrupts your attacker’s assault and rhythm, and allows you the opportunity to set up further strikes of your own.

      Other Attacking Tools

      Biting

      A real-life fight is a dirty thing, and as such, nothing can ever be ruled out. If you are fighting for survival—and this is the only reason you should be fighting—everything