Choke! Gouge! Smash!

C’mon, choke me!” barks instructor Darren Levine to one of his students, a wiry lieutenant with the Los Angeles police department. The officer obliges and pays the price. Lightning fast, Levine breaks free and delivers a kick to his opponent’s groin. The officer doubles over, only to be greeted by a sharp knee jab to his face. While the exercise is a simulation, Levine’s students are nonetheless wide-eyed.

“When you’re fighting for your life,” Levine, 38, tells his class, “you’ve got to be as fast and as fierce as a wild animal. Your only goal is to save yourself using whatever you can and whatever you’ve got.”

What we have here is Krav Maga (pronounced krahv ma-gah), the brutally efficient self-defense system created by the Israeli Defense Forces and currently infiltrating America’s fitness industry. Even as crime drops in most big cities, Krav Maga (Hebrew for “contact combat”) is quickly gaining ground in urban gyms.

Used to be, if you were interested in becoming your own bodyguard, judo or karate was the way to go. But these days trendy, street-wary Angelenos jockey for mat space at Levine’s Krav Maga National Training Center in West L.A. Krav Maga classes are also offered in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston and Philadelphia, but Levine’s center is the most comprehensive teaching facility in the country, drawing not just students, corporate types and the Hollywood crowd but also soldiers and cops. (Charlie Sheen’s bodyguards are said to be versed in the ways of Krav Maga.) Institutional clients include federal agencies, SWAT teams and more than 100 police departments.

Students learn how to channel natural “fight or flight” reactions into swift defensive tactics meant to subdue the bad guy, summoning in a heartbeat what Levine calls a winning warrior spirit. They escape from choke holds and bear hugs, wrestle away weapons, fight on the ground and fend off multiple attackers. Anything goes, including groin kicks, elbow jabs, head butts, hair pulling, biting and eye gouging. “There are no rules,” explains Levine, an L.A. County prosecutor and the highest-ranking American instructor in Krav Maga. “If it’s illegal in boxing, we’re doing it.”

Levine, a onetime martial-arts student, imported Krav Maga to the West Coast in 1981, following a stint in Israel, where he learned from grand master Imi Lichtenfeld, the late creator of Krav Maga. Back home, Levine began teaching the system to a handful of Los Angeles students while he attended law school. When he opened his training center last year, he had an instant hit on his hands. Membership has shot past 1,000, and another branch is planned.

You don’t need the buff body of a Bruce Lee to take advantage of Krav Maga, although that may indeed be the end result. Training is open to all ages, physiques and levels of physical fitness, and many members attend primarily because Krav Maga offers a wallop of a workout. Scott Gutman, a wannabe Krav Maga instructor, trains at the center four hours a day, six days a week and says he has lost 35 lbs. in a month (all the way down to 245). Linda Siegel, 42, a nurse with a black belt in Taekwondo, says she comes for the fast-paced, hard-hitting workouts.

In an age in which fads blossom and wither within nanoseconds, some physical trainers remain skeptics. “There’s nothing new under the sun, and that goes for Krav Maga,” asserts Emil Farkas, a karate instructor. “They’re simply using the Israeli angle as a sales tool to pitch basic self-defense.”

Levine responds that most martial arts take years to master and are steeped in choreographed moves and ritualistic practices, none of which is likely to be much help against a mugger. The fundamentals of Krav Maga, on the other hand, can be learned in a matter of months. “I’m convinced Krav Maga is hands-down the best system going,” says Detective Brian Arnspiger, defensive-tactics trainer of the Burbank police department. “It’s saving lives and decreasing injuries to both officers and suspects by providing us with quick, simple ways of subduing suspects without having to resort to a weapon or excessive force.”

Besides, it’s a gas. “There’s nothing like it,” says Siegel, the nurse with the black belt. “I leave [class] feeling like I can take on anyone.”