Krav Maga

[Jacob(smooth)]

Never done km, however I do have experience of goju karate, San shou, tkd and kyushinkai jiu jitsu.

My advice is to forget about Street combat situations Unless you are a professional doorman, (in which case KM is a terrible idea). If you want to learn to fight, I'd suggest something were you get punched in the face a lot. It's amazing how your careful drills dissappear in that situation. However, you're vastly more likely to be injured learning a martial art than on the street! If you want to learn something to keep you safe, psychology is a better bet. If you want to train for fun, shop around until you find an art which suits you.

Yeah, KM would be a poor fit for a doorman/bouncer (but a godsend for the customer's lawyer).

My background is Kenpo with a smattering of Wing Chun and Ninjutsu. I'm not interested in martial arts as sport; I want to train street-effective techniques. KM seems like it might be a good supplement to what I've studied in the past.

Your point about psychology is well taken and should be everyone's first line of defense, always. However, I live in a fairly dicey part of town, where muggings and random attacks are not unknown. I'd rather have the tools in place in the event they are needed.

Your other point about training in situations in which one gets punched in the face a lot is also excellent. However, I'm a bit long in the tooth to start training boxing seriously. Perhaps I can find a local gym where they wouldn't mind beating up on Grandpa once in a while.

Well, from personal experience I'd heartily recommend jiu jitsu for that. One of my sensais is a police officer and has a history of door work before he joined the force. He's an amiable fellow of middle years and expanding girth who speaks at length about how the techniques he's using are the opposite of fighting because he's far to old brittle and nice to want to put someone's eye out or crush their windpipe. Besides, as he said, if you get into a fistfight with someone it always ends badly for both people one way or another. However all the techniques are simple, flexible and applicable. It really is, to quote Bruce Lee, the art of fideing without fideing

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I spar with the best opponent I can find.
Sometimes I train with all kinds of items like knifes etc. The goal should be to be able to kill anyone with anything, anytime, anywhere.
But usually I don't use any equipment to make it more challenging. I often go up bare handed against knives, swords and guns.

Hmm. That doesn't seem a very good goal for a self defense scenario. Where you're up against a pissed up accountant who swings at you cos you spilled his drink, rather than a hezbollah insurgent I mean.

Going bare handed against guns sounds handy, however I'm not sure how relevant the training against swords might be. Did the idf cover that as part of your basic training on do only the SF do defence against swords? Did they spend a lot of time on that?