A Krav Maga Reality Check

Thornton shares a personal experience with Krav Maga practitioners:

“I’ve had people come to my gym preparing for their higher-level instructor tests in Krav Maga. I’d put them on the mat with one of my blue belts—who, in BJJ, typically has two years of experience at most—and these blue belts would completely school them.”

Despite these Krav Maga practitioners training for years and preparing for advanced tests, they often struggled with basic grappling concepts. Thornton questions:

“Why are you even training that? You just aced a test after training with us for a week and getting wiped out by someone with less than two years of experience.”

He goes further, arguing that Krav Maga is essentially “bad MMA”:

“If you put two people in a cage who don’t know mixed martial arts, it’s going to look like two people trying to box, wrestle, and fight on the ground—without actually knowing how to do any of those things.”

The Case for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

When it comes to real-world self-defense, Thornton believes that BJJ, particularly schools that focus on its self-defense aspects, offers a more practical approach:

“If someone isn’t actively hitting you, you can usually get away. But in a situation where you’re grabbed or boxed in, you’re in a grappling scenario. That’s the bread and butter of Jiu-Jitsu.”

Jiu-Jitsu allows practitioners to control and neutralize opponents effectively:

“You can learn those skills to a point where you can be very successful and confident—without getting hurt or hit in the head, which is a huge benefit.”

Martial Arts in the Military and Law Enforcement

Thornton also touches on military and police training, emphasizing the effectiveness of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in these fields. He highlights Matt Larsen, who restructured the U.S. military’s combatives program around BJJ:

“Now, a lot of the higher-level operators—like Navy SEALs—are often purple belts, brown belts, even black belts in BJJ.”

However, he points out that police departments often lack sufficient training:

“Some departments are good about it, but many are not. In the academy, officers get very little defensive tactics training, and often none afterward—unless they seek it out themselves.”

He recalls an example from the Portland Police Department:

“One of my old students, Chad, was a purple belt. Whenever officers struggled to control someone—like a naked guy on meth downtown—they’d call Chad. He’d just roll up, take the guy down, and cuff him without escalating force.”

Some have even suggested mandating Jiu-Jitsu training for police:

“Andrew Yang, when he ran for office, said cops should be purple belts. I’d settle for blue belts. I’d settle for six months.”

Thornton’s perspective is clear: Krav Maga, while marketed as a premier self-defense system, often falls short when tested against trained grapplers. Meanwhile, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu offers practical techniques for self-defense, military combat, and law enforcement—without relying on unrealistic techniques.

For those serious about real-world self-defense, Thornton’s advice is simple:

“Train in something that actually works.”