Elevate Your Game to Professional Grade Krav Maga Training and Charge Accordingly.
My hope in writing this article is to provide a kind of two-fold wake up call to Krav Maga instructors everywhere.
The question, “what are you worth” may sound like a loaded question, but for professions where your time is being leveraged, it is critical these professionals get this worked out logically. For private instruction, the question must be answered, and while you can answer this question a number of ways, I’d submit the following:
- Your worth grows with experience. Several books detailing the highest levels of skill suggest 10 years of training and practice is a watershed mark in developing skill sets that produce professional grade value. But, the truth is, each new experience can be utilized to generate value if you overtly use these experiences to better yourself as a Krav Maga trainer. In this regard, it’s my experience that Krav Maga instructors often under-price their time and expertise. Don’t be that guy (or girl).Here’s a good example of this concept: A woman vacationing in Europe runs across Pablo Picasso in a café. She’s overwhelmed, as she’s an art history major and a huge fan. The woman sheepishly approaches Picasso and asks to buy his coffee. She sits down and quietly begins a conversation. After a moment, she can no longer control herself. She asks Picasso to do a portrait of her on his napkin. He obliges. As he quickly finishes the sketch, the woman smiles and thanks Picasso. What do I owe you, she asks. Picasso says $10,000 USD. The woman is taken aback. She protests, saying the sketch only took 5 minutes. Picasso replies, the sketch took 5 minutes, but it took a lifetime to develop the skill to produce the sketch so quickly.
- Regardless of the time you’ve spent developing your skills, if your private training clients are not experiencing growth in their (a) movement, (b) knowledge, and (c) effectiveness, you’re not doing your job. This is a sad fact that’s found in many schools. Often, instructors who have substantial skills in Krav Maga, do not have solid skill sets in transferring knowledge. Knowledge transfer, as I see it, is about (a) diagnosing the problem – which requires deep knowledge of movement, platforms, weight transfer, and Krav Maga tactics at a minimum, and (b) prescribing the fixes which requires excellent communication skills and deep knowledge of the application of the aforementioned skills.In general, simply talking about how to do Krav Maga isn’t even close to sufficient in developing a private training client to his/her potential. Instead, each instructor must first be a dedicated student, then advocate, then instructor of Krav Maga – stretching skill sets and leveraging experiences.
The very best Krav Maga instructors can charge as much as $250/hour, and I think this is a bargain. After all, the client is getting the benefit of decades of experience across the entire Krav Maga system. In other cases, a beginning instructor may be worth $65/hour or less.
Whatever the case, use this one concept to guide your answer to the worth question: Be a great advocate for actions and opinions, and clearly identify how and why your hourly rate is a value to others. If you can’t do this, stay out of private instruction (really). If you can do this, you’re already on your way!
Mateusz
Very nice to see an article like that. It touches on a problem that a lot of private music teachers struggle with on a daily basis. I have been studying music since I was 5 years old, every day, for past 20 years. I have sacrificed many things in life to become better at playing and understanding it. It looks like professional musicians charge similar rates to the Krav teachers (50-60 for an hour with young teacher and above 100 for experienced teachers), which often make people taking lessons think that they are expensive. They never understand that this cost includes years of practice and training that can be a huge shortcut for their learning. That also creates unfortunate situations where they end up deciding to take lessons from amateurs who charge way less – the very sad thing is that most of the time those students end up with a bag load of bad habits that usually prevent them from becoming something more than just an amateur themselves.