Krav Maga for Beginners: A Step-by-Step Guide to the World's Easiest-to-Learn, Most-Effective Fitness and Fighting Program Book

This book makes clear distinctions between Krav Maga and martial arts. There is no spiritual component to Krav Maga, no manipulation of qi or prana. Krav Maga is a highly evolved system of self-defense originally developed for the Israeli military. The goal is to neutralize assailants and get on down the road.

This book is a strong 3.5. The warm ups, the mental and physical conditioning exercises are easy to follow. There is well explained theory throughout, and later in the book when they cover attacks and defenses, there's a FAQ for each move which is pretty cool. I got some great pointers on stance and punches, but this book is better suited as a supplement to a live class than as an instructional manual.

The essence of Krav Maga is training a practitioner to fend off armed and unarmed assailants from a neutral stance. To do this, you have to practice with multiple training partners to learn to identify the primary threat but remain aware of other potential risks. The more you train, the easier it is to overcome all the fight, flight, or freeze stuff happening in your brain during a potentially violent encounter.

Even though I'm a traditional martial arts kind of girl, I appreciate the brutal efficiency of Krav Maga.