I’m growing increasingly tired of the pretenders—those who sit behind a screen and critique self-defense content without the slightest qualification to do so. These “evaluations” of video clips and technique breakdowns are often laughably out of context, recklessly uninformed, and—if you know what to look for—expose a stunning level of ignorance.
Let me be clear: what we do as self-defense instructors is not entertainment. It’s not content creation. It’s not clickbait. We train people for real-world violence—life-or-death moments where hesitation can mean death, and failure is simply not an option. The stakes are too high to tolerate armchair commentary. Those who haven’t been deeply trained in the architecture, principles, and pressure-testing of self-defense have no business speaking on it. And yet, far too many people online are fooled by a clever quip or a half-baked explanation online.
For nearly three decades, I stayed quiet—focusing on teaching and growing my instructor cadre, preserving the integrity of what we do, and avoiding the noise. Why? Because early on, I learned the hard way: when I shared something truly valuable, I’d hear those same words parroted later by others—people who had no understanding of the actual application, using the language to describe something that completely missed the mark. They mimicked the vocabulary but not the substance. And to the untrained eye, it all seems the same. That’s dangerous.
Fast forward to the present day. Now, I’m helping shape the future of Krav Maga Worldwide. And the problem hasn’t gone away—it’s worse. Pretenders are louder, more confident, and more dangerous because the public still can’t tell the difference. Even as I write this, I know my words may be borrowed and misused to build a thin veneer of credibility.
Here’s the real issue: most online commentary about Krav Maga defenses operates at the surface level. These critics don’t understand the system. If I asked one of them to build a better defense, they’d start the defense itself. That alone proves they don’t understand. Focusing on optimizing a single defense—in isolation—is a fatal error. That mindset leads to the development of a disjointed catalog of techniques that collapse under pressure. It creates cognitive overload when you need clarity. It’s paralysis at the moment of truth.
Second, these critics don’t operate inside time-tested principles. They don’t know what true self-defense principles are—much less how to use them to construct techniques that hold up in chaos. Third, and most telling, they misread danger entirely. They fixate on the primary threat, ignoring the secondary and tertiary dangers created by their own defense architecture. Their “solutions” might delay the damage by a second or two—but that’s not a solution. That’s a death sentence delayed by the snap of the fingers. It’s catastrophic.
I won’t say more. I’ve already said too much—more than most pretenders deserve. But I’ll end with this:
Do your homework. Think critically. Ask intelligent questions. And when the answers are vague, recycled, or evasive—you’ll know you’re dealing with a pretender.
If you want to learn from those who live this, breathe this, and have pressure-tested it for decades—train with Krav Maga Worldwide instructors.
And, if you really want to get serious, come see me. I’ll shoot you straight.
