- Posting by Mr. Boaz Aviram in an email
- 3rd in line Chief of Krav Maga IDF
The ideal option for those who want to learn Krav Maga would be to choose a school that has two elements:
The Know How, and the commitment to provide the service.
Krav Maga became the magic word all over the world. Krav Maga Founders had the commitment to develop a complete training system to train soldiers and individuals to defend themselves with their bare hand or handy objects and win any Self Defense and Hand to Hand confrontation if possible.
While there are hundreds of other Martial Arts that somehow link themselves to the same purpose, Krav Maga was the first Training System that investigated all the related element and components and applied it successfully. Due to human nature, when Krav Maga hit the civilian Markets, Organizations multiplied exponentially.
In the IDF it was a matter of the best. In the civilian world it was a matter of maintaining a business. While many instructors do have the desire to teach people how to defend themselves, in the civilian world marketing is based on availability of clients, types of clients and what client need, and most of all what clients perceive they need. Another factor is limiting competition.
Krav Maga taught to Soldiers, was for the immediate skills available to the soldier and his increase of confidence. Krav Maga taught to civilians had the same effects, but since it mimicked the historical 5 year black belt program, it is taught less intensively and over much longer period of time. This enables the average citizen to fit Krav Maga as Fitness activity to his schedule, and obtain every kid’s dream and every adult’s kid within - a black belt!
The Dojo Belt System does maintain motivation and give a sense of achievement. It is like getting a college degree where you spend 4 years 8 hours a day in school and get a Diploma. Yet not all diploma getters in college have the same amount of success in life. While Universities have committees and sate boards that sit and decide on what to teach and what not to teach, success rates of graduates vary. There is an attempt to hire varieties of instructors from various background and schools to increase the chances that students in a certain institution will have good exposure to wisdom.
In the end it amounts to the time put by the students to close their knowledge gaps, the outlining of the expectations from the instructors, and their personal attention to the students and its nature.
In the fast pace life most people’s awareness for the need to be able to protect themselves and their families is put on the back burner. If it is convenient and close and it looks ok they will do it.
For those that strive for optimal results, I suggest they should be aware and look further into their expectations and find a way to fulfill them.
There are many Krav Maga Imposters. Those are martial artists that never took Krav Maga classes in their lives, but decided that they would offer it on their menu. Today, there are many innocent followers of these imposters that paid dearly to obtain certification. The program was drawn out of some Martial Arts instructor best imagination. And of course there is instruction available out there at various combinations of partial learning, not having the right gaps of knowledge filled, and over time passed from one instructor to a student it becomes exponential.
While naturally most people will receive training not from the source, but from an organization or an instructor that studied it from the source, we have to consider human nature again. Disputes and personal interests lead to separation and creation of new organizations. In a civilian organization, under the belt system, traditionally, a higher belt trains the lower belt and assists the instructor and therefore learns how to teach hands on. However in the Dojo System, where most of the time is spent on teaching the individual techniques in an easy pleasant way and designed to keep interest and fitness not to bore students, at times there is lack of time spent on understanding system. Most people do not want to be bothered with understanding the system quickly. It is recommended for higher belts who want to become instructors to take Instructor’s course, where you get experience how to teach and learn some extra theoretical teaching and training related subjects.
Unfortunately certain Krav Maga instructors completely changed their Training Program to create Fitness based activity to retain membership. In the same token, sometimes you notice a great instructor that takes the time and look for ways to serve better his students, but it just happened that he learned from an Imposter. So his dedication is being wasted on teaching useless techniques.
Do the best you can, and if fitness is what you need, find the place you are most comfortable with and consider other fitness based activities. If you are looking to learn real Krav Maga, or in other words a Genius Based Hand to Hand Fighting System, then you need to do a little more research. While you can learn tricks from almost any instructor, you want to learn those that will always work. While there is no state regulation on Martial Arts, it is the easiest thing in the world to put a sign in the next door space for rent saying Krav Maga. You never know what you get, unless you take control and look into it. You need to understand what Krav Maga is, and find a way to set your expectation and control your progress.
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*Self defense is a subset of Martial arts*
*Reality based self defense training cannot always be 100% real, because there may be no one left to train with! But do it real enough or else RBSD is just a bullshit term* - Me
*Train for what happens most and you will be able to handle most of what happens -- Marc "Animal" MacYoung*
