Our goal at Krav Maga Illinois is to offer students peace of mind through self defense training, to improve their health and fitness, and to provide a safe and friendly training environment. We wanted to create a camaraderie with and between our students to make everyone feel a sense of community. We are all fighting for the ability to survive. No matter who you are, you deserve quality self defense training, whether you are a beginner, advanced, athletic, non-athletic, short, tall, overweight, underweight. There are no rules when it comes to being attacked. This is why we need to train as if we are in the moment. We need to push ourselves when we think we can’t possibly do another thing. It is only through this pushing that we can become stronger. Through this pushing, rising above our comfort level, we become stronger, healthier. We enter an area that we have not been before, because aside from a real attack, how can we know? How can we know how strong we are if we quit as soon as it gets to hard.
With Krav Maga training your coach pushes you not to quit….to do just one more push up. One leads to two and three and so on. Now you are doing things you thought you could never do. You are doing it for your life! To be able to survive a violent encounter. To be strong enough to fight back and get home safe. We do it for this! The added benefit is that our health, strength, stamina all improves, simply because you did not quit.
It’s not enough to watch videos and talk about techniques. Of course you have to have that knowledge, but also the ability to know that you can defend yourself because you have been proving it to yourself in class. Though it is not a real situation, you continue to get stronger and stronger because you are trained now, and you know that if it gets easy, then you are no longer taking it up. There is no point in life when you can say that you know enough, or you have trained enough and you can sit back an not worry. Violence is chasing us everyday and we can choose to keep fighting it or give up and hope for a lucky break. But in the meantime, just look at what you have done in your training. You have become stronger, more aware, healthier and have made a few friends along the way. The techniques are only the framework, it is what is inside and what you put inside that makes them work.
I am copying a recent review that speaks to the above. This is why we do, what we do. Thank you so much!
“To say that KMI changed my life while dramatic would be a gross understatement. I initially started taking Krav Maga to learn how to defend myself and my family, and to get in shape. However, when I transitioned from another school to KMI about two months into training, I got so much more out of it than I could have ever imagined. When I began my journey, I weighed about 294 lbs (I’m 5’5″ by the way) and was a habitual smoker. So far, I lost almost 80 lbs from the intense classes and discipline that I gained from the amazing trainers. I also quit using tobacco thanks to the life confidence that I gained from the classes. In class, Sue encouraged me to dig deep and push way beyond where I felt my limits were and helped me discover just how much further I could push myself and my true potential. In addition, I’ve gained so many wonderful friends that I get to see a few times a week because my fellow students in the KMI community are amazing individuals. They along with the no-nonsense trainers push me to become a better athlete and better person each time I go. For anyone even questioning whether to start self-defense training or where to go for training, I would say that KMI will not only help you get in shape but will change and very possibly save your life in more ways that you might think.”