Ranking in Krav Maga

Ranks Belts Merit etc.

In Krav Maga there should not be any belts, nor ranks. In a school however, there are positions such as instructor and assistant instructor.

In civilian and military organizations there are ranks that designate the position responsibility, authority and merit in terms of pay. When you go to college you get a Bachelors degree, and when you want to teach in a college you get a phd an become a professor.

In the Military, you have ranks that designate your level of respective training, accomplishments, responsibilities, and merit. In the IDF you can take Krav Maga training as part of your basic commando training, or take a Krav Maga instructor’s Course. Chief Krav Maga instructor refers to the person that certifies instructors.

When you look at a Martial Arts organization, you see belts. Belts originated in Judo. The idea was to create a ranking system to motivate young children to train and receive recognition. It also promoted a hierarchy of rank in the whole organization. Thus it created a lifetime experience evolved around the Judo. Judo then became a lifestyle.

The idea about Krav Maga is not to create a lifestyle, but to prepare the trainees in a short amount of time 9 to 21 hours to master the skills of self defense and Hand to Hand Combat.

Thus, you either know Krav Maga or you do not. Partial knowledge is insignificant and since the training time should be completed quickly, there is no point of ranking a person with the rank of a quarter students, half a student or a complete student.

In Krav Maga you learn how to defend yourself. You do not spend your lifetime improving.

Belts create social and commercial challenge to the students and contribute for retaining memberships more than to learning self defense.

- Extracted from Kravstation.com
- Posting by Mr. Boaz Aviram
- 3rd in line Chief of Krav Maga (IDF)

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*Self defense is a subset of Martial arts*
*Reality based self defense training cannot always be real, because there may be no one left to train with!* - Me
*Train for what happens most and you will be able to handle most of what happens -- Marc "Animal" MacYoung*