Here’s a quick insight into what a typical class looks like, broken down, and why it’s built that way.
Easy to learn Difficult to master
Krav Maga is built off of natural responses and reactions, the instinctive motions made when you flinch, push, pull when the body seems under threat. Rather than building a completely new skill set, this makes it accessible for anyone and every one to be trained.
Learning how to do a palm strike or an elbow can take minutes. Doing it well under pressure is a different question. That takes situational awareness, context, quick recognition and ideally, the ability to defend and counter at the same time instead of freezing. This is what seperates students from day one and year five. There’s always another layer to work on, and this is why we train. No two days are ever quite the same.
The Warm Up
Our warm-up phase is a short section of the class, but one of the most important.
We ensure the body is getting ready for class by:
- Elevating the heart rate and priming the nervous system through some light cardiovascular activity.
- Stretching and moving the body’s joints for the areas that take the most load for the lesson.
- Strength training in the form of power drills or body weight exercises that transfer across to your training.
- A drill or game that highlights the lesson’s focus.
Technical and Tactical
We teach to be efficient and straight to the point. Krav Maga Global’s approach to teaching follows a handful of core principles. Whilst this list is not exhaustive, something as simple as defending and countering simultaneously allows the principle to carry across almost any situation.
Techniques are systemised into a simple learning format, utilising natural reactions to help you absorb skills faster.
Through ongoing progression and training, there is deliberate pressure added to make you comfortable in uncomfortable situations.
We offer tools and skills and teach best practices to apply to the context of each situation.
- For beginners, students are taught how to:
- strike/counter with both upper and lower body limbs
- deal with common strikes (punches and kicks) and grabs (shirt grabs, strangles and headlocks)
- recognise how a threat starts and progresses through timeline awareness
- safely fall and tactical ways to get up
- utilise common objects as defensive tools
- deal with edged weapons
Krav Maga is a self-defence system, it is our goal to educate our students on the tools, target and intention of using them.
Summary and Application
Every class ends with a scenario, or some form of summary drill — this is where everything from the session gets put to the test.
These moments work as much as a progress check as anything else.
They’re where you see exactly what you’re capable of that day.
By making it a normal part of every session, you always know where you stand and what to come back and train more of.
As you progress, the situations get more complex to keep you challenged and learning – the training variety is the point.
Some examples of what these summary drills could look like:
- Testing yourself against a single attack versus a mixed variety of attacks or problems
- Dealing with aggressors who don’t back down and keep coming back
- Managing a situation with one aggressor versus multiple aggressors
- A change of environment — dealing with the problem standing, seated, or on the ground
- Defending yourself, or defending a loved one who’s being attacked or provoked
