Krav Maga is a martial art system developed in Israel by Imi Lichtenfeld in the 1940s for the training of the Israel Defense Forces. The term krav maga translates from Hebrew as "contact combat".

Krav Maga is known for its focus on efficiency and effectiveness against real-life situations. It focuses on practical self defense techniques against weapons, holds, grabs, and how to deal with multiple attackers.

Krav Maga training defending a knife attackKrav Maga training defending a knife attack

The style incorporates techniques from other combat martial arts, and includes techniques taken from disciplines such as those used in aikido (weapon defenses, take-downs, throws), boxing (strikes), judo (take-downs, throws and groundwork), karate (strikes), and wrestling (escapes from holds, groundwork).

A variation of Krav Maga is Kapap. It similarly involves a close quarter battle system of defensive tactics, hand-to-hand combat and self defense. It is somtimes written as KAPAP, a Hebrew acronym for Krav Panim el Panim (literally "face-to-face combat")