Krav MagA gRADING sYSTEM
Brief History
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In 1964 after completing his military service
Imi initially started teaching civilians in military shirts
then later adopted Judo uniforms and the Judo belt system
as shown in the old photo at left of Eyal Yanilov (left) and
Imi Litchenfeld (right). So for a period of about 20 years
in the early days of Krav Maga the grading system went from
White belt for beginners through to Black belt levels for
seniors and red and white belts (as shown in photo) for high
ranking instructors.
In 1987-8, after Imi nominated Eyal as head of the Professional
Committee of Krav Maga and after years of development and
growth in the system’s curriculum, Eyal, with Imi’s
guidance, revised the grading levels in line with the new
curriculum. The names of the grades were changed and the Judo
uniforms began to be replaced with T-shirts, sweatshirts and
martial arts trousers.
This was the basis of the current grading system with at
that time the highest grade in this revised system being Expert
Level 5. At this time some of the instructors, including Imi
himself, stopped wearing belts an the judo uniforms worn previously.
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In the mid 90’s with the further spread of the system the
grading system was changed again, in line with the continued development
of the curriculum and the patch system as symbols of rank was introduced.
This way of depicting rank was seen as more appropriate for a system
such as KM, given that it is not a martial art but was developed
initially in the Israeli Defense Forces to deal with the reality
of today’s combat and street confrontations.
Grade Level Insignia
The present grading system for (Civilian) Krav Maga is divided
into four major categories. The first three are Practitioner, Graduate
and Expert. Each of these is further divided to 5 levels, each with
a specific curriculum and requirements. Grading tests to pass from
one rank to the next contain technical, theoretical and tactical
subjects covering self-defense and fighting skills. The highest
category of grades are the Master levels of which there are three.
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Those at Practitioner level are Krav Maga students
while those at Graduate level tend to be Instructors, if they
have undertaken the Instructor training course, denoted by
the Instructor patches shown below. You can have students
are Graduate level. Expert level denotes high ranking instructors,
who generally have graded in Israel and tend to be instructors
in the other Krav Maga disciplines such as Law Enforcement
or Military. From scratch it takes in general about 2 years
for a student to work their way through the Practitioner levels
and another two for the Graduate levels. Students at Graduate
level are not automatically instructors - they must undertake
and pass the Instructor course.
Examples of rank patches which are worn on the training pants
uniform, upper left thigh are shown below. The black bars
on the rank patches denote the level. Three black bars on
the Graduate patch denote Graduate level 3 etc. |
At this time, any instructor wishing to test for any Expert level
must generally do this in Israel as it requires a minimum of two
members of the Grading Committee (Eyal or any of the other Expert
Level 5 members of the Israeli Global Instructor Team) to be present
at the grading.
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Practitioner Level 1 |
Graduate Level 3 |
Expert Level 2 |
Master Level 1 |
Student and Instructor Insignia
The insignia for students, assistant instructors and instructors
are depicted by the colour of the IKMF logo patch that is worn below
the rank patch on the upper left thigh of the training uniform.
Examples are shown below.
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IKMF Assistant Instructor patch
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Law Enforcement, Close Protection and Military Grading System
The descriptions above only apply to the Krav Maga Civilian stream.
The Law Enforcement, Close Protection and Military streams of Krav
Maga not only have their own separate syllabus but also grading
system and Instructor courses. Instead of the Practitioner and Graduate
levels, these systems have Operator and Fighter levels. The syllabus
at each level has two parts, one a common one to all three specialisations
(generally with overlap with elements in the civilian syllabus)
and then a second part that is specific to that specialisation.
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