waveman - "every position makes you vulnerable (in bjj)"...To What?
Like Rorion said, against multiple attackers you are screwed anyway, at least with Jiu Jitsu you have the best 1:1 self defense available.
And who said anything about pulling guard on the street?
1 0n 1 JJ fail. You try and arm bar me I'll bite your calf off same with most subs. You land in my guard i will grab you by your hair, ears poke your eyes your groin is always exposed. MMA is better than most but is still not reality. JJ is worlds behind. Roll with anything allowed you will see how redundant it is
in my first year of bjj i asked a brown belt about getting bitten in the back of my knee while breaking someones arm on the street. he told me that the arm will break in a half a second. if he starts bighting you can easily free one hand to thumb out his eyes.
i wouldnt normally be able to thumb out someones eyes, but give me the proper motivation and i will forget about it over a beer later.
you cant look at a sport fight and say, "oh, if i was in a fight like that i would just poke the guy in the eyes." listen fucktard, if that was in the rules the fight would look completely different. if you live near los angeles i will let you use any attack you want, and you can tell me how your keyboard warrior techniques stand up.
Krav Maga the way it is trained in Israel is effective and deadly. The mentality is to survive. What kind of work are you in? If you're a police officer you won't be able to use those moves. Probably get sued. Depends what kind of work you are in.
Krav Maga will incorporate weapons and striking, which you will not get from BJJ. A good Krav instructor should incorporate ground fighting (see BJJ) as well. There is no real utility in getting much beyond basic body control. I'd argue wrestling would be better for a "real" street fight than BJJ.
Krav drills basic techniques over and over with the idea being you act on instinct rather than thought. Do maximum damage, disable the opponent, and get out.
But yeah purely on the weapons and striking aspect, don't skip the Krav. You don't EVER want the fight to go to the ground in a non-ring environment. You're just asking to get stomped/shanked/etc by another attacker. The goal of most Krav groundwork is to get the fuck up to your feet as fast as possible however necessary (groin strikes are huge). The concept of arm barrinng someone in life/death situation is absolutely retarded.
I bought the VHS tapes years ago. This is my impression of what I saw:
I liked that it had a kickboxing element to it because regardless of what these H2H systems teach you there is a chance that you will end up in brawl. You can't always rely on the element of surprise or expect an attacker to just crumble from a groin strike or eyepoke.
The self-defense techniques weren't bad, and I liked that they try to keep things simple. Although, I prefer grappling defenses (with striking mixed in once you master the grappling principles) to those kind of defenses because you can actually practice grappling escapes "live" without blinding someone for life or crushing the small bones in their foot. Get what I'm saying?
The knife defenses were horrendous , and IMO, give the practitioner a false sense of security. As far as knife defense goes, check out Marc Denny's Die Less Often, Centerline gym's Red Zone, or Karl Tanswell's S.T.A.B. program. I heard Ray Floro's stuff is good, too. I actually think it's irresponsible for KM instructor's to teach that shit. It tries to simplify a knife attack way too much and IMO would get someone killed.
Put it this way. Most Krav Maga Schools incorporate grappling into their programs. This doesn't mean that you're going to be able to go against a highly trained BJJ practitioner and beat him on the ground.I take Krav Maga and Gracie Jiu Jitsu. I've found that for real life self-defense, Krav Maga does a better job because it trains you how to fight on your feet and on the ground.I would try them both and see which one works better for you. You can't go wrong with either one.
I do agree with the importance of finding a Reputable Instructor to do Krav Maga with.
Go to www.kravmaga.com and you can find instructors who are certified to be training people and not some jackass who is just using the name to sell some classes.
Training both is a powerful combination, assuming the KM school is a good one (I've spent a good time with both). To be sure that the KM school is a good one, inquire about the rank of the instructor and who awarded his belt. There are a lot of Karate/TKD guys out there who did a 2-month certification course and are now teaching KM-- hence why I believe a lot of people think that it is just karate/kempo with a make over (for me it was not).
(The correct answer by the way is that they possess most preferably a brown belt or higher, awarded from Darrin Levine, the National Training Center, or a prominent school/institution in Israel. Also be wary of guys who learned it in their basic training while in the IDF, these guys are no more "experts" in hand-to-hand combat than the majority of our own military)
If you can only train one, assess what your needs are. My personal opinion is that Krav is better for bouncers/law enforcement/military/living in the rough part of town where you might be mugged (especially in cases involving multiple opponents). BJJ is better for training for competition or MMA--though it is an awesome compliment to the former. BJJ is also a lot more effective for rough-housing your friends/school yard brawls if that's your deal, since its a lot easier to double-leg and transition to an RNC, than to knee your buddy/class mate in the nuts and then punch/elbow him in the throat :)
^truth^I teach Krav Maga and Purple in BJJ.Tactics taught in Krav Maga is about survival and bringing average joe up quickly to learn how to defend themselves.It's not MMA but close.Although living On strong Island,I like to keep it real as a result of growing up in the hood.Multiple attack = Nike defense with sticking and moving.