How Long does it take to become a Krav Maga Instructor

Nobody aspires to be second rate Instructor so start out right…

5 Day “Krav Maga Instructor Courses” are highly profitable.  They are easy to sell, quick to churn out and importantly – highly profitable for who ever runs them. I recently saw one charging £1500 for 5 days – with 20 participants – thats £30 000 for the week.  Everyone’s a winner right…

Let’s take a look at the 5 day instructor phenomena and take a moment to view the underbelly of the martial arts industry – All is not what it seems…

Mininmal quality assurance, recognised only by the people running them and We get a lot of people asking how long it takes to become a Krav Maga Instructor. Some see certifying Krav Maga Instructors as a license to print money. Set up a short course, award an instructor certificate at the end of and triple the price.  5 days, every one passes,

British Krav Maga offers a 200+ hr Basic Training course attended in 9 Day phases with a coaching and school development programme between phases. Each intense 9 Day phase is a stand alone block of training and new Instructors can begin teaching after successfully completing phase 1 – as long as they attend phase 2 within 12 months. This is similar to most of the major Krav Maga organisations.

Even with the best will in the world, it is simply not feasible to achieve the same standards in a 37 hour course as 200+ hour course. Course duration is a clear & reliable indicator of the expected final standard for Instructors.

Course duration remains an accurate and consistent indicator of course quality.

Neither the Israeli Defence Forces nor any of the large, credible Krav Maga organisations offer 5 Day Krav Maga Instructor Courses.  If the main sources of Krav Maga wont certify an Instructor after 5 Days – you need to ask serious questions about quality organisations that will.  This being the case, you need to ask your self why organisations sell 5 Day courses.

Whilst Krav Maga is indeed a simple and direct method of training, becoming an efficient practitioner is a vastly different proposition to becoming a competent professional Krav Maga Instructor.

Whilst there are transferable skills from coaching thai boxing or MMA etc, coaching Krav Maga is a separate and distinct skills set. The Krav Maga coach has a wider range of issues to address than a conventional Martial Arts Instructor.  To put this in perspective,  you wouldnt expect a Tennis coach to coach a rugby team, in theory it’s simpple – both ball sports.

In addition to the normal variables such as such as stand up and ground fighting, the Krav Maga coach has to take into account multiple weapons, multiple attackers, working within high risk environments, specialist law enforcement or military tasks, protection of a 3rd party, use of improvised weapons, adrenalised training scenarios and so on.

Some organisations will try and obscure the issue by claiming they only teach ‘highly experienced martial artists’, however the reality is that most organisation require the same thing – 3 years training or previous experience.

Another common tactic is to claim that Krav Maga is simple and direct system of training and does not really need that long to learn. This ignores the fact that even the Israeli Defence Force, recognised masters at training Instructors quickly, take over 140 hours to train an Instructor who is already a skilled Kravist from basic training – and that’s with an entire army to cherry pick from.

It also overlooks the fact that the credible Krav Maga organsation takes 15-24 days to certify an instructor.

The most significant take away fact is this:

Short Instructor courses need significantly lower standards than full courses for candidates to be able to pass them.

In simple terms, short course instructors wont be of a comparable standard.

In summary, if you have taken the time to read this:

1. Do your homework, find out about the organisation providing the course.

2. Look for longer duration courses 15 days or more

3. Don’t be misled about the difference between basic training and ongoing training. Basic training is the core of what you teach  and should take at least 15 days.

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