In January of 2021, our owner and head instructor was inducted into the Israeli Martial Arts Hall of Fame when the Federation of Israeli Martial Arts named Auburn Krav Maga “The Best Krav Maga School in Alabama.”
Auburn Krav Maga is a family and your best choice for self-defense and martial arts training.
How Are We Different From Martial Arts?
Martial arts and combat sports are all great. Anyone who tells you that the art they teach is the best and all the others are worthless is either lying or completely ignorant, and you should stay as far away from them as possible. All of them are wonderful activities when used for their purposes. Unfortunately, that is where the lines start to get gray.
Jiu-Jitsu, Judo, Taekwondo, Karate, etc. are all traditional martial arts. Traditional martial arts are either designed for children or as sports with rules, weight classes, referees, points, etc. Kickboxing, Boxing, and Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) are purely sports that have been adapted for children, and like the traditional martial arts, they have rules, weight classes, referees, points, etc.
Krav Maga is not a sport and is not appropriate for children.
Krav was created as the fighting style of the Israeli military (the IDF). This is what the IDF teaches its soldiers for hand-to-hand combat. It is designed to be effective in real-life violent encounters when the attacker is bigger, faster, stronger, or armed with a weapon, not in a ring, cage, or dojo against friendly opponents of similar size, skill, and experience. If you used Krav Maga in a sporting capacity, you would likely seriously injure that opponent, which isn’t the goal in those types of events.
Krav Maga is also not appropriate for children. Krav teaches you how to defend yourself in the most dangerous of situations. This isn’t "stranger danger" or how to handle a bully that takes your lunch money. Instead, Krav teaches real-world self-defense for real-world violence. You will learn how to disarm an attacker with a gun, knife, or other deadly weapon. Krav teaches you how to escape from being pinned down or pinned against a wall, or escape from attackers who may have weapons. Krav teaches a woman how to prevent and escape rape attempts, grabs, and abductions. Krav teaches you how to strike powerfully, efficiently, and to the most vulnerable parts of the body that any attacker is susceptible to, and so much more.
Our society is pushing children to grow up way too soon. Teaching them that they need to be able to defend themselves against the violence that pervades the adult world robs children of the little bit of innocence our society still allows them to have. This is something we are not willing to do. Yes, some schools do teach a version of this self-defense style to children, but they water it down, remove everything that has the potential to hurt or kill, limit the material to age-appropriateness, and call it "Kids Krav Maga." Our focus is on teaching adults just like you how to defend themselves against the real-world violence lurking around every corner, not watering it down to make it appropriate to teach to children just to make a buck.
How Did We Get Started?
Auburn Krav Maga was formed when our owner, originally from Montgomery, Alabama, retired from an elite special operations team near Washington, D.C. Being a certified Krav Maga Black Belt and having been teaching Krav Maga for years at the time, opening a Krav school was a logical transition. With the luxury of doing so anywhere in the world, he chose to bring this self-defense system back home to Alabama, and the Auburn and Opelika area was the clear choice.
What We Do
Auburn Krav Maga offers adult Krav Maga and self-defense classes in Auburn, Alabama. Training is for adults only in a clean, professional, safe, and friendly environment.
Come learn practical self-defense skills from a globally recognized expert in Krav Maga and self-defense. You will learn what to do when violence strikes so that you can return home safely to your family.
Watch Krav Maga In Action
What We Teach
Auburn Krav Maga teaches authentic Israeli Krav Maga. That is practical, effective self-defense techniques that you and everyday people just like you can use to defend themselves from the dangers and violence of the real world.
But... it does not stop there.
Our instructor has a diverse background that gets incorporated into our Krav Maga program. With the authenticity of our Krav Maga and the addition of other related skillsets, it leaves you with self-defense training that cannot be matched anywhere.
An expert, certified instructor, and black belt in Krav Maga that teaches authentic Krav Maga is hard to find. However, when you add that to the other training we include, it becomes impossible to match. Those added dynamics include legal considerations, urban escape and evasion, firearms training, situational awareness, tactical medicine, wilderness survival, escaping restraints, enhanced striking with Dutch Kickboxing, enhanced ground fighting with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, old school KAPAP, Escrima, and Kali, and more.
We are also in the planning stages of launching a class devoted strictly to Dutch Kickboxing.
Other things we teach include Corporate and Organization Self-Defense Seminars, Women’s Only Self-Defense, and Private Self-Defense classes.
Come join us, see what all the buzz is about, and learn the most effective and popular form of self-defense in the world.
We Are Growing
On October 18, 2021, Auburn Krav Maga opened its doors for the first time. We started with just four members that night and have been growing slowly but steadily ever since.
After a year and a half, we outgrew our original space and recently opened a new, larger, state-of-the art facility that is ready to offer everyone in the greater Auburn and Opelika areas the opportunity to learn the lifesaving skills that Krav Maga teaches. We welcome any responsible adult, man or woman, big or small, strong or weak, to come join us and experience the peace and freedom that only come from knowing you can defend yourself or your family in any situation.
History of Krav Maga
Imi Lichtenfeld, a Hungarian-born immigrant to Palestine in the early 1940s, is credited as being the father of Krav Maga. Although Imi was an influential pioneer of the art, he was not solely responsible for its creation.
As antisemitic riots threatened Jewish communities in the 1930s, Imi, a champion boxer and wrestler, gathered other men with fighting skills in an attempt to defend their Jewish communities. They quickly realized that Jiu Jitsu, boxing, and wrestling skills, even at an elite level, were useless in a street fight and in combat.
Under Imi’s guidance, these men began pulling the most effective techniques from different martial arts and changing them to be effective in a real fight. This was the very beginning of what would later become Krav Maga.
When Imi immigrated to Israel, which was Palestine at the time, he joined forces with the Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary organization protecting the Jewish people from 1920 to 1948. Imi’s fighting ingenuity was quickly recognized, and in 1944 he began teaching his fighting style to the Haganah and Palmach fighters.
Four years later, Israel became a sovereign nation, and the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) was formed. Imi was tasked with creating a fighting and hand-to-hand combat system, which he named "Krav Maga." Imi was then named the IDF’s Head Krav Maga Instructor, a position he held until his retirement, which came in 1963, according to Israeli and Krav Maga historian Noah Gross."
From 1948 until his retirement, there were no ranks in Krav Maga. Being a military hand-to-hand combat style of fighting, belts were impractical. Belts and rank systems were only introduced in 1971, when Imi opened the first Krav Maga school for civilians at the Wingate Institute in Netanya, Israel.
Ranks today follow different systems of designation. Some follow a belt system similar to other traditional martial arts introduced by Imi at the Wingate Institute. Others follow a patch system instituted by Eyal Yanilov, one of Imi’s most advanced students, in the latter part of the 1980s. Still others follow a combination of the two. Finally, other Krav Maga organizations have developed their own ranking structures.
Imi’s belt system is based off of a Judo structure starting with a white belt, which is then followed by yellow, orange, green, blue, brown, and ending with a black belt. Eyal’s patch system divided the ranks into three categories (Practitioner, Graduate, and Expert), with different levels within each category.
Krav Maga was not introduced in the United States until the early 1980s. This was thanks mainly, if not solely, to Darren Levine, who traveled to Israel and trained under Imi as a part of a delegation of 23 U.S. members at the first ever International Instructors Course. When he returned, Darren began teaching Krav Maga in 1982 near Los Angeles, California. In 1999, Darren formed Krav Maga Worldwide, which is largely responsible for the growth and also the commercialization of Krav Maga in the U.S.
Krav Maga is an evolving system and was designed to be that way to account for the modern weapons and tactics used in modern day violent attacks. As a result, your training is never outdated or based on ancient practices and traditions.
Call or text us at (334)707-2678 or Click the “Get Started Now” button below for more info.
