Drift in Krav Maga

In Krav Maga, I often see canonical techniques applied in the wrong circumstances, or worse, altered incorrectly just to make them “fit.” This is where drift happens. Like the telephone game, the further the message travels without care, the further it moves from the source.

Imi Lichtenfeld built Krav Maga on principles, not just techniques. Those principles were designed to safeguard the integrity of the system. But when only the techniques are passed down without the methodology, mindset, and reasoning, the system begins to break down.

One of the most common causes of drift is a lack of understanding of the attack. If you don’t truly understand the attack, you can not truly understand the defense. Too often, I see unrealistic or nonexistent feeds used in training.

It’s important to note that the problem isn’t just about intensity. Making an attack more “aggressive” or “real” doesn’t fix the issue if the attack itself is the wrong one. Sometimes the feed being used simply isn’t the type of attack the technique was designed to address. That’s a different problem than realism , it’s a problem of accuracy.

When that mismatch happens, the outcome is predictable: people assume the original technique doesn’t work. So they modify it or force it to work, like jamming a square peg into a round hole. But the problem was never the technique itself. The problem was the misunderstanding of the principle, and the failure to replicate the attack correctly.

To keep Krav Maga sharp and effective, we have to return to Imi’s intent: train with principles, understand the attack, and let the defense grow naturally out of reality, not out of drift.

• Joseph Estee