If you know me, you know that I love to challenge myself. My current KMG journey however is presenting challenges not only to myself, but to our school as well. One of those challenges unique to us in the U.S. is the rank testing protocol.
A Decision to Make
A couple months ago, I had a decision to make. I had skipped last December’s Graduate testing at Kore because my body was a mess from my Germany GIC 3 training and my trip back home (I truly hate FRA.. iykyk). We had a number of students who couldn’t test last December, so the option was on the table to run another G test around late Spring time. Tammy (E1) would be doing the grading and I already had received the “buy-off” from Jan Tevini to do this.
Even though I had this setup, a part of me didn’t want my “first official” KMG rank to come from “in-house”. (Technically speaking, my first official KMG rank would have come from me passing GIC 3 last November, but I was a G3 under the 2014 KMG curriculum we used at Kore.) Don’t misunderstand my feelings on this, Tammy would’ve put me through the wringer and she would’ve given me honest feedback and results. Tammy was brought up “old-school” KMG where tests were longer than a CVS receipt, and as long as you didn’t die, you had to keep going. In her wisdom, (and after Kore left KMG and KMG US folded) she started tweaking our testing approach at Kore to adapt to our wide range of students and their physical capabilities/limitations.
I have zero personal experience with “old-school” KMG, but I’ve heard plenty of stories from Tammy, Amy, Dan, and others to have the full picture painted for me. That approach works for people in the military and younger athletes, but it starts to fall apart as your students age. Somewhere along the way, KMG started to understand that. I don’t know when the shift started, but I’ve now trained with a number of KMG instructors and students who have limitations but they are still progressing through the system. Even so, and in line with “old school” KMG, I’ve heard the argument that no matter what age a student is, or what physical ailment or limitations they have, everyone should be held to the exact same standard. Well… I can agree on some parts of that, but if you did that for every aspect of every rank, your school will eventually only have students in their 20s… maybe 30s. It’s just life, and that thought process ignores the reality that if I ever need to protect myself or my loved ones, it’ll be in MY body as it is RIGHT NOW, not how it was when I was at my physical peak. Is KMG’s mission to only train “military-aged” men and women? Or is the mission to bring self-defense to the global population? (should be rhetorical if you know the history and why Eyal was given the mission to create KMG by Imi) Standards MUST be a thing, but it should be in the context that “100%” will always look different from any one human to another human.
So, I’ve seen that shift through my GIC process and I wanted to fully understand where KMG is right now in terms of testing students. That left me with only one choice, head to the EU or UK to test for G4. I chose the EU, and signed up for the May 15th 2026 testing at Learn2Fight in Adelsdorf Germany.
With a target on my calendar, it was time to “tick up” my training a couple of notches. In the months leading up to last weekend, I had stepped up my trail running (usually sprint/walk intervals like 30s/30s, 30s/60s, 2m/1m, etc..) in addition to my gym time. My conditioning (according to Strava and how I felt) was the best I’ve had over the past year. As the weeks crept closer and closer, I ramped down my training to be as close to 100% as possible for my G4 test. By the time I arrived in Germany, I was feeling pretty good (minus the jet lag.. 😣)!
G4 Test Day
I got to the testing site an hour before testing was to start. Mentally and physically, I was as ready as I could be. The outside temperature and humidity was perfect.
Like all of my overseas trips for KMG training, I didn’t know anyone (well.. GIC 1, I had worked with one instructor for a 500 Rising training weekend a few years before), but just like my other experiences, everyone was welcoming.
Everything started out going smoothly during my test, but then I noticed that my physical condition was just.. “off”.
Asthma and the American Muscle Car
I have athletically induced Asthma. I’ve had it my entire life. I almost had an ambulance called on me during freshman (American) football practice. It was the ONLY time in my life that I didn’t have my inhaler at any practice (football, basketball, baseball..) and I almost paid dearly for it. I heard someone once describe their chest tightness as if an elephant was sitting on their chest, and that is about as accurate as you could get, if the elephant’s weight was entirely focused a couple of inches below your suprasternal notch. It’s always been an extremely frustrating medical condition for me because I can’t exactly “train” my way out of Asthma as some people might think. Yes, I CAN improve my lung/heart/overall cardiovascular function and I do actively work on this. What most people also don’t understand, is that I need to work HARDER than most people do to get to the same conditioning level as them because of this. I put a lot of miles on my trail sneakers every year, but if my brachial tubes, for whatever reason, decide to restrict my airflow, then a point will come (much sooner rather than later) that it doesn’t matter how good my lungs are.. limited oxygen is reaching my lungs. It’s like taking an old-school American muscle car, throwing a dual cat-back exhaust on it, a huge air intake, but then getting the smallest throttle body and plenum you could get and slapping that into your car. It won’t matter how much air your intake can take in, how many cylinders you have, or how much flow you have through your cat back exhaust. The performance of that muscle car will be limited by that throttle body and plenum because it controls the amount of air that gets directed into the engine to support combustion. That’s me, and that’s the physical basics of asthma.
My Asthma can be tricky. Allergies, general body stress, humidity, and temperature all impact whether my asthma is an issue for me or not. Some days I’ll have a trail run and I have no trouble breathing. On those days, my legs limit me. Other days, I just can’t catch my breath. Allergies and general body stress are a little harder to identify sometimes, but it was a little warmer in the gym than outside and there was no fresh air flow. When I stepped outside during testing, I did feel better, but something was still off/irregular.
The Worst Testing Performance of my Life
At first, I couldn’t tell if it was just body stress/jet lag related (I had only been in Germany 48 hours and it was a brutal flight.. I didn’t sleep much at all), my Asthma, and/or something else. At one point, Zeev checked on me when I stepped outside and I noticed him looking at my face. I told him, “Yeah.. my face gets REALLY red/flushed when I’m having my breathing issues.” He said “Your face isn’t red. It’s pale.” That statement shocked me a bit. To this point, I didn’t feel sick or felt that I was going to get sick. My stomach was fine, my intestines were fine, no headache, no sinus pressure.. I was just “off”. Now I’m also legit confused as to why my face would be pale instead of flushed.
Our testing lasted a total of about 3.5 hours, which is crazy short for a G4 test (some were testing G5) but we slammed through a ton of the material. It was almost like having 3.5 hours of summary and stress drills. I had stepped outside whenever they gave us a minute or two and that was just enough for me to get through the test. I didn’t feel proud after it was done. I only felt relief. My stamina was garbage throughout the entire test and I know it showed. My reflexes were a little slower. My technique wasn’t as sharp. My power was missing. It was my worst testing performance of my life.
Feedback
Brutal. At least it felt brutal.. Some things that were flagged were things I’ve never done before in my life. Other things that were flagged were already “highlights” in my memory (F.. well that was a shit rep.. Oh look.. you were looking at me while I was executing that shit rep. Awesome.). In my mind, there was nothing for me to explain. These instructors didn’t know me and they’ve been doing this stuff for a LONG time. Am I really going to say “That’s not what you actually saw..” or “Yeah that rep you saw was crap, but the other 19 I did were good ones”? Nope. I KNOW I have things I need to work on. There will ALWAYS be things I need to work on, and I just got a brutally honest review of my testing performance.
Expelling the Demons
After all of the testing, feedback, and photos were done, I headed back to my hotel. I got in the shower and just let the water run over me for about 30 minutes (holy hell I missed my jet tub from home..). I got out and went down to the restaurant to eat (restaurant/hotel combo building). Food was really good, but shortly after I started eating my lower intestines started to “notify” me that I should hurry up and pay my bill.
Trying not to choke on my food, I finished up and went back up to my room. After I got to my room (now about 90 minutes after testing finished), I lived in the bathroom for a couple hours. It wasn’t pretty, but at least now I knew exactly why I felt “off” during my testing. I didn’t know it during that time, but my body was preparing to “expel” whatever demons I ate within the last 24 hours. (I felt like one of the people who had their soul sucked out of them from the movie Lifeforce. I was like 9 when that came out and it scared the crap out of me.. It’s probably cheesy as hell now though. lol)
I continued my training Saturday and Sunday and I felt like a completely different person. Zeev even commented that it was nice to see color in my face and when I left Saturday, I got a “much better today Steven” from Zeev as I was walking out.
Understanding the Shift
Beyond the rank test itself, this experience gave me the last pieces of information I needed to complete the “new” KMG picture.
There was a progression through the KMG GIC process and it all came together during this rank test. All of my GIC tests were about 5 or 6 hours long. GIC 1 was mostly one on one work, but we did Third Party and we had a final drill with multiple attackers (although they only attacked one by one). GIC 2 stepped that up and added more of the ground and grappling work into everything we did. GIC 3 had all of that but overall had even more “holistic” drills, combining multiple topics like striking, grappling, and takedowns in one drill, and increased the number of multiple attacker drills. My group was even “lucky” enough to have a 5 on 1 attacker drill at the end (class numbers weren’t even for our group to be 4 on 1). Fast forward to this rank test, and pretty much everything we did ended up with us having multiple attackers with or without weapons, and/or having us work through multiple disciplines (striking, grappling, ground work, weapons, etc..) to solve the problem.
As I mentioned, I only heard the stories of “old-school” KMG, but I paid enough attention to see some high profile KMG Instructors peel off and start their own “brand” of Krav Maga. I haven’t met any of the instructors that did this, but I follow them on social media. One in particular has embraced this more “hybrid” approach to training and I’ll admit, it spoke to me. To truly get it, you have to understand that in the US, BJJ and MMA are gigantic cash cows and they are the default arts that people flock to. Krav Maga is basically unknown and if it is known, it has a “bad” name (could be its own post..).
Self-Defense systems need to stay current with the issues of today’s society to be relevant. From outside KMG, I saw that struggle to adapt to the changing landscape. (With that said, and to KMG’s defense, being “Global” means that you have to look at your entire population, not just what’s happening in one country, or one continent.) Change will always be slow in a gigantic organization like KMG but I do think we are coming to KMG at a good time. They HAVE evolved the curriculum and the instruction of the curriculum to address the naysayer’s biggest holes in Krav Maga. I’ve seen these changes in the seminars, instructor updates, and weekend trainings that I’ve been a part of and it excites me!
In the End, I Got What I Wanted
In the end, I got exactly what I wanted from this test and the first weekend of training for my trip (yes.. there will be more!); an unbiased review of my Krav Maga AND my G4 rank. This testing and weekend will stick in my mind forever, but for differing reasons. On one hand, it was my worst testing performance ever. Plain and simple..nothing else to add to that. On the other hand, I was operating at about 65% capacity and I still passed. F@#% yeah.
Wrapping Up
I do want to take a moment and speak to the hospitality I’ve seen at every UK and EU event I’ve been to so far. Every time, I’ve walked in as a stranger, but left with friends. That speaks to the overall community that KMG has built. It’s a community that reflects the morals and values that we have at Kore and that alignment makes me feel “at home”.
Matthias, you have an awesome gym/training area and props for keeping it as clean as you had it! I know how much work that takes. Thank you for your hospitality and thank you to your wife (I’m assuming). She had checked if I needed anything a couple of times and I’m guessing that she opened the upper windows to the gym (I did notice that). It was much appreciated.
Zeev and Joni, neither of you knew me and I came in with a blank (literally) KMG passport. Thank you for the chance, that’s all I wanted. I’m sure at one point (or multiple points) during testing, you were like “wtf is up with this guy?”. That wasn’t the start of the weekend that I was looking for because I know first impressions, especially “bad” first impressions, can be hard to shake. Hopefully your memory of me will be along the lines of.. “Remember that guy who came over from America to test? I thought he was gonna die.. multiple times.. but he didn’t.. He kept fighting and then he came back to train all day Saturday and Sunday.” I’d take that. lol
A big thank you to Alex for taking a chance on me and agreeing to be my testing partner. I know it can be a roll of the dice when picking testing partners, especially someone that you’ve never even seen or met before. I am abysmal with names, but thank you to Stefan, CJ, and the rest of the G testing crew for pushing me beyond my limits while also respecting the struggle I was experiencing. None of you ever made me feel like a bad partner to you. Thank you.
Of course, I can’t leave out the GIC 3 crew that made it Saturday and Sunday! Adrian, Nadine, Sebastian, Sandra, Billy, it was so great to see you all again and to train with each of you. My GIC 3 experience will always be special for me and you all were a big part of that. I truly enjoyed meeting your family and friends that you brought out as well. Hopefully someday I’ll see you all on my side of the pond.
