IKM Grading System

In 1964 after completing his military service Imi initially started teaching civilians in military shirts. Later, Imi adopted Judo Kimonos and the Judo belt system, so for a long period, 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 for high ranking instructors. In 1987-8, the names of the grades were changed and the Judo uniforms began to be replaced with T-shirts, sweatshirts and martial arts trousers. At this time some of the instructors, including Imi himself, stopped wearing belts and the judo uniforms worn previously.

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

The Grades are divided in 3 categories:

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 test also include the revision of the previous passed grading as mandatory requirement, so if you want to become a Practitioner level 3, you must also do the previous P1 and P2 test before performing the P3 test. An example of rank patches which are worn on the training pants uniform.

The black bars on the rank patches denote the level. Three black bars on the Graduate patch denote Graduate level 3 etc. 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. You can have students with Graduate level. Expert level denotes high ranking instructors, who generally have graded in Israel and tend to be instructors in the others 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. The highest categories of grades are the Master levels of which there are three. currently only the Founders of the International Krav Maga Federation have such rankings.