We are proud that we can confidently say our Auckland Krav Maga Club is the leading full time Combative Self Defence training centre in New Zealand. We are completely independent from any of the global Krav Maga franchise organisations; this is a conscious decision we made at the very beginning of Krav Fighter’s formation, for a number of reasons.
Sometimes we get asked wouldn't it be easier to have a global 'mother ship' to take direction from and simply replicate their operating model locally. We would get access to global branding and marketing material, branded clothing and equipment without lifting a finger, and focus all of our energy on getting the membership and paying our franchise fees instead. There are no hard decisions to be made, no responsibility in terms of what you teach and how, because it is all well prescribed for you and all you need to do is to follow the syllabus someone else designed, without having to think whether what you teach is actually working.
The answer is yes, of course, this would be far easier, if we were only interested in profits rather than the lives of the people we train. The ease of running a Krav Maga club following someone else's systems without thinking on your own comes with a huge problem when it comes to Self Protection & Defence. What if a person who trains with us gets hurt on the street because what we trained them wasn't effective against the real violence they had to face? What happens then? Would we be able to sleep easily knowing that our Krav Maga principles and techniques have no answers to the aggression of the motivated attacker who will stop at nothing to rob, violate or murder someone?
One of the principal reasons we chose to be affiliated with the progressive Krav Maga and Close Quarters Combat organisations instead of belonging to a global Krav Maga franchise is that we didn't want to train Self Defence principles and techniques that have no relevance on the street, in real life confrontations. We wanted to train people intelligently, not provide a set of defensive moves to be memorised like robots, but to teach people how to solve authentic violence problems and do it in real time, under pressure.
When we started Krav Fighter, our main goal was to train the best quality Krav Maga Self Defence in the Auckland region and to share the knowledge and skill we gained through training with the best operators in the field of Self Protection & Defence with ultimate security, law enforcement and hand to hand combat backgrounds, with the people of Auckland and New Zealand wide. We operated our Auckland Krav Maga training centre under a different brand our first year, and even though this was never the franchise type of arrangement that certain global Krav Maga organisations are well known for, this experience only confirmed that our decision to be independent was the right one.
Having our own brand - Krav Fighter - means we have complete control over how our Krav Maga club develops, from who we train with, which techniques we train, the intensity of our training, over to the online and social media presence that reflects who our Krav Maga & Self Defence instructors and members are, not only as Self Defence professionals & students respectively, but also as human beings.
In our quest to offer the people of the Auckland region the authentic, realistic Krav Maga & Self Defence training that cannot be matched by any other Krav Maga out there, we set our sights high. Our Krav Maga Training Programme is based on Protect Krav Maga and Combat Krav Maga, enriched by the Close Quarter Combat elements from Integrated Combat Systems.
Protect Krav Maga has been developed by Dr Itay Gil, who has an extensive Martial Arts & Combat Sport background and experience from the years spent in active service in the Israeli Special Forces unit YAMAM. He can be seen on TV shows BBC ‘Special Forces: Ultimate Hell Week’, and History Channel ‘Human Weapon’. Dr Gil's unique Krav Maga Self Defence techniques and principles that we train are the result of his lifelong study of criminal behaviour and experience in dealing with hardened criminals, especially when it comes to defences against knives and dealing with firearm threats.
Combat Krav Maga was founded by Lior Offenbach, who also has first hand experience with violence through his career as a Israeli Police Detective, as well as considerable Martial Arts & Combat Sport expertise. Lior's Krav Maga is an honest, no-nonsense fighting system that makes you not only a survivor, but also a better fighter.
Peter Sciarra founded Integrated Combat Systems, a Close Quarter Combat training programme that is a hybrid blend of various Martial Arts and Combat Fighting styles focusing on practical and time tested approaches to fighting used by military, police, and even MMA fighters.
Having a wide base of skills acquired through training with these experts enables us to tailor our own Krav Maga training programme to be able to provide something for everyone. From less co-ordinated and not so fit people, smaller builds, women & teenagers over to fitness buffs, we have solutions that will improve their chances of survival if confronted by real-life violence.
The point I'd like to make is that Krav Maga is not something you can learn once and then ‘know’. Good Krav Maga is constantly evolving and needs to be trained all the time, with the solutions constantly changing unlike that of some Krav Maga "Masters" who seem stuck in time. Nothing in life is guaranteed, just knowing the mechanics of a technique that used to be taught 50 years ago, is not enough to be prepared to face real violence. We must keep training, exploring, innovating and constantly testing ourselves under realistic pressure.
This is one of the things that sets Krav Fighter apart from the global Krav Maga organisations: our instructors keep actively training after being certified, not just with each other but with the world's foremost experts in counter terrorism, law enforcement, close quarters combat and combat sports. We train with the best to keep evolving our skills and to be able to share what we know with the people of Auckland, as well as New Zealand wide. We are not ‘Masters’, we are eternal Students, we are Fighters, we are Survivors!
We welcome all people of good character interested to learn Krav Maga – click HERE to book trial a class.
