Why Forge Instructors Still Train

If you spend enough time around Forge, you'll notice something that surprises some people.

Our instructors are students too.

On any given week, you'll see Forge coaches taking Krav Maga classes, training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, attending Dutch kickboxing sessions, working boxing fundamentals, participating in instructor development training, or preparing for certifications and testing. You'll see me doing the same. I take Dutch kickboxing classes with our students. I take boxing classes with our students. I train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu with our students. Every week, I continue training Krav Maga alongside our graduate students and instructor team.

That's not unusual at Forge. It's part of our culture.

The idea that instructors should continue training long after they begin teaching may seem obvious, but it's worth exploring why it matters. Continued training influences how we coach, how we evaluate new ideas, how we solve problems, and ultimately the experience our students have on the mat. More than that, it reflects a broader belief we have about self-defense itself: practical systems should continue learning.

Krav Maga Should Continue to Evolve

One of the things that originally attracted me to Krav Maga was its focus on practicality.

The question wasn't simply, "What works?" Plenty of systems ask that question. The more interesting question was, "What works for most people, in the shortest amount of time?" Krav Maga was built around the idea that ordinary people, with jobs, families, and limited training time, could develop useful self-defense skills without dedicating their lives to becoming professional fighters or lifelong martial artists.

That remains one of the things I respect most about it.

At the same time, I think that philosophy carries an important responsibility. If the goal is practical self-defense, then we should be willing to continue learning wherever useful information can be found. The world changes. Criminal behavior changes. Our understanding of violence changes. The way people learn changes. New training methods emerge. Other systems discover better ways to solve certain problems.

In my experience, meaningful progress often comes through refinement rather than replacement. The principles that made Krav Maga effective twenty years ago are still largely the principles that make it effective today. What changes is our understanding of them. We find better ways to teach them. We uncover details we previously overlooked. We gain perspective from experiences outside our own system.

One of the risks any system faces is becoming isolated from the broader conversation around fighting, violence, coaching, and skill development. A self-defense system doesn't need to borrow every idea it encounters, but it should remain curious enough to evaluate them.

That's one of the reasons Forge instructors continue training. Not because we believe Krav Maga is incomplete, but because we believe practical self-defense benefits from a culture of continuous learning.

Training Methods Should Continue to Evolve Too

It's not just self-defense systems that evolve. The way people learn evolves as well.

Over the last twenty years, coaches across self-defense, combat sports, athletics, and skill development have developed a much deeper understanding of how people acquire skills, make decisions, and adapt under pressure. Some of those conversations have fundamentally changed the way many coaches think about training.

Questions that rarely came up when I started training now seem impossible to ignore. How much repetition is useful? How much variability helps students develop adaptability? How do people learn to solve problems rather than memorize answers? How do we create training environments that develop judgment and decision-making rather than compliance?

These questions matter because self-defense isn't performed in ideal conditions. Real situations involve uncertainty, emotion, incomplete information, and constantly changing circumstances. The goal isn't to create students who can flawlessly reproduce a technique they've memorized. The goal is to help people develop skills they can apply when circumstances stop cooperating.

At Forge, we pay attention to these conversations because learning how people learn is every bit as important as learning the techniques themselves.

Better Coaches Stay Students

One of the biggest lessons I've learned over the years is that teaching and learning aren't separate activities. In many ways, they're the same activity viewed from different angles.

Some of the most valuable lessons I've learned about self-defense haven't come from advanced seminars or instructor certifications. They've come from teaching regular classes.

A beginner asks a question that forces me to rethink how I explain a concept. A smaller student discovers a solution that works differently than it does for a larger student. An older student identifies a detail that younger, more athletic practitioners often overlook. A visually impaired student requires an entirely different coaching approach. Every one of those experiences expands my understanding of the material.

That's one reason I've never lost interest in teaching fundamentals.

Many experienced practitioners become fascinated by advanced techniques, but fundamentals are where most of the important lessons live. Fundamentals are what people remember under stress. They're what survive fatigue, confusion, fear, and adrenaline. They're what hold up when conditions become less than ideal.

The more you teach those skills, the more depth you discover in them. A movement you've performed thousands of times suddenly reveals a new detail because a student asks a question you've never considered. A concept that appears simple becomes increasingly sophisticated the more people you have to teach it to.

Teaching doesn't pull instructors away from learning. Done well, it becomes one of the most powerful forms of learning available.

Why Forge Instructors Train Beyond Krav Maga

Forge is built around Krav Maga, and that hasn't changed. Our instructors continue training Krav Maga every week because it remains the foundation of our self-defense program and the lens through which we think about personal protection.

At the same time, our instructors also train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Dutch kickboxing, boxing, and Pekiti Tirsia Kali.

Not because we're looking for a replacement.

And not because we believe every problem requires a solution borrowed from another discipline.

What we've found over time is that different systems often illuminate the same underlying concepts from different directions.

A Dutch kickboxing coach may emphasize timing, distance management, and pressure. A BJJ coach may approach a problem through leverage, control, and positional dominance. A Krav Maga instructor may view the same situation through the lens of pre-assault cues, de-escalation, weapon access, multiple attackers, or the legal and ethical realities surrounding self-defense. A Kali practitioner may frame it through weapons, movement, and tactical decision-making.

On the surface, those approaches can appear very different. Look deeper, however, and you often find similar principles appearing again and again. Balance. Positioning. Adaptability. Timing. Pressure. Decision-making.

The more perspectives you encounter, the more clearly you begin to understand the concepts underneath the techniques.

That's one of the reasons our instructors continue training outside their primary area of expertise. The goal isn't to become less focused. The goal is to gain perspective while remaining grounded in the self-defense mission that brought us to Krav Maga in the first place.

Focus matters.

Perspective is invaluable.

Pressure-Tested Skills and Better Solutions

One of the less obvious benefits of continued training is that it exposes instructors to a wider range of people, problems, environments, and perspectives. Over time, those experiences accumulate. Certain ideas consistently hold up under pressure. Certain coaching approaches consistently produce results. Certain solutions work exceptionally well for one student and require significant adaptation for another.

Perhaps more importantly, you become increasingly comfortable with the reality that most self-defense problems don't have a single correct answer.

Students often arrive looking for certainty. They want to know the technique. The move. The answer. But real self-defense is rarely that clean. Context matters. Size matters. Athleticism matters. Experience matters. The environment matters. The emotional state of the people involved matters.

A technique that works beautifully for a twenty-five-year-old former athlete may not be the best solution for a sixty-year-old office worker. A response that makes sense in a crowded bar may be completely inappropriate in a parking garage. Even among experienced practitioners, reasonable people can arrive at different solutions to the same problem.

One of the most valuable things continued training provides is the perspective to navigate that complexity. Instead of asking, "What's the correct answer?" you begin asking a more useful question: "What's the best answer for this person, in this situation, under these conditions?"

That's ultimately what our students benefit from. Not constant changes to the curriculum, and not a never-ending search for the next new technique. They benefit from instructors who continue refining their understanding of the material, testing assumptions, and developing a broader perspective on what effective self-defense looks like in the real world.

Humility and the Responsibility to Keep Learning

At its core, this isn't really about certifications, testing, seminars, or cross-training. Those things matter, but they're not the point.

The point is humility.

One of the things I've consistently observed throughout my training career is that the coaches I respect most are often the most curious. Regardless of rank, experience level, or reputation, they continue asking questions. They continue seeking feedback. They continue putting themselves in situations where they can be challenged, corrected, and improved.

Not because they're uncertain in their abilities.

Because they're secure enough in their abilities to admit there's still more to learn.

At Forge, we don't view becoming an instructor as the end of the learning process. We view it as a responsibility to continue it. Our students trust us with their time, effort, and often their safety. Continuing to train, learn, and develop is one way we honor that trust.

That's why our instructors continue training. That's why they continue testing. That's why they continue learning from one another and from people outside our walls.

Not because we've rejected what we've already learned.

Because we respect it enough to keep building on it.

Because better coaches stay students.