Ground Fighting Articles

• Reality Ground Fighting
• Ground Survival
• Going To Ground - Ground Survival
• Going To Ground
• Reality Based Ground Fighting

All Krav Maga Articles

Krav Maga Ground Fighting & Ground Survival

The UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship), the first MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) major franchise/league demonstrated to the world how a fight could be one on the ground. For many in the martial arts world this highlighted a lack in their training methods, as many had believed that it was always possible to stay standing and avoid being taken to ground. As a reality-based self-defense system Krav Maga had always recognized the possibility of fights going to the ground, and had taken a multi-dimensional approach to training, not just incorporating ground-fighting into its syllabus but also adding in weapon and multiple attacker training when on the ground.

Reality ground fighting differs considerably from that which is taught and trained in combat sports such as BJJ (Brazilian Ju-Jitsu). In a competition, when a fight can be one by a submission, such as a choke, strangulation or armbar, performed on the ground there is an incentive for a competitor to follow somebody who has gone to ground, onto the floor, and wrestle/grapple with them there etc. In a real-life confrontation there is no such incentive for an attacker to start grappling on the floor with a downed assailant (who has either fallen, or been knocked/thrown there), when they can remain standing and either disengage or kick and stomp the other person, whilst remaining relatively safe. This means that in Krav Maga there is a larger emphasis on dealing with standing attackers when on the ground, than in combat sports such as Brazilian Ju-Jitsu and MMA.

Another significant difference between Combat Sports ground-fighting and Krav Maga is the environments in which you are likely to find yourself when on the ground. A sport aims to demonstrate the best abilities of its athletes and so creates a space/environment where they can best do this. This means in sports ground-fighting competitors are given a lot of open mat space in which to fight e.g., the UFC Octagon is 1600 square feet of clear mat space. If you compare this with the floor space in a bar/pub, where there are chairs, tables, people, and other furniture etc. reality ground-fighting tends to take place in confined and restricted spaces where there isn’t always the room and space to get certain techniques, such as guard sweeps and turnovers to work. From a Krav Maga perspective, fighting on the back seat of a car constitutes ground-fighting, and so solutions must be able to work in these situations as well.

In Krav Maga there is a differentiation between “Ground Fighting” and “Ground Survival”. Ground Survival is the practice and training of getting back to standing after finding yourself on the ground, whether against a standing opponent(s) or one who has followed you to the ground, compared with “Ground Fighting” where you are looking to finish your aggressor whilst on the ground. Ne main difference between the two approaches is that ground-survival has disengagement as its primary focus i.e., get up and get away, whilst this is not an option with ground-fighting, where an assailant has to be incapacitated to the point where they are unable to physically fight anymore.