The Confidence Equation: How Krav Maga Changes The Signals You Send

I've recently revisited Grayson and Stein's landmark study entitled Attracting Assault: Victims' Nonverbal Cues. I first read this about seven years ago and found it quite insightful. I was at a loss for something new to read, so I dusted my old copy off and started reading to see if anything stood out the second time around.

One reference led to another, which led to another, and before long I was deep in a research rabbit hole on victim selection, psychopathy, and nonverbal communication. The implications were too important not to share - especially for anyone serious about Krav Maga, personal development, or raising confident kids.

When people think about Krav Maga, they picture powerful strikes, intense and sweaty training sessions, and brutally effective self-defense techniques. All of that is true. But one of the most powerful transformations that happen through training has nothing to do with how well one can perform a technique.

It has everything to do with how practitioners walk out the door afterward.

Confidence is often described as a mindset - something internal, emotional, even motivational. But confidence is also external. It is visible. It is expressed through posture, stride, eye contact, pace, and decisiveness. It is communicated long before a word is spoken. And research shows that those signals matter far more than most people realize.

In the early 1980s, psychologists Betty Grayson and Morris Stein conducted a landmark study on victim selection that is still extremely relevant today. They showed serial offenders silent video clips of pedestrians walking down a street and asked them a simple question: Which of these people looks like an easy target?

The consensus among the offenders was striking. They consistently selected the same individuals. Importantly, their selections were not based on size, physique, gender, or age. Larger individuals were sometimes selected. Smaller individuals were sometimes ignored. Men and women appeared in both categories. The pattern had little to do with classic demographic characteristics.

They weren’t choosing based on who looked physically weaker.

They were reading something else entirely.

What they were reading was body language.

Those perceived as vulnerable tended to display shorter or uneven strides, limited arm swing, lowered head position, and subtle hesitation in their movement. There was often a slight lack of rhythm - an inconsistency in pace that suggested uncertainty. Nothing dramatic. Nothing exaggerated. Just small inefficiencies in gait and posture that signaled discomfort or lack of awareness.

The conclusion was difficult but unmistakable: vulnerability is often visible. It is communicated through movement long before any interaction occurs.

Later research dug a bit deeper and asked a more unsettling question: Who was best at spotting it?

In a study conducted in Ontario, Canada, forty-seven inmates from a maximum-security penitentiary were shown short clips of individuals walking and asked to judge how vulnerable each person appeared. Inmate psychopathy was measured using a standard method, and the findings showed that inmates with higher Factor 1 psychopathy traits - characterized by emotional detachment and callousness - were more accurate at identifying vulnerability based solely on nonverbal cues.

In simple terms: those most inclined to exploit others were often the most skilled at detecting weakness.

This matters.

Because it means confidence is not just a personal benefit. It is a protective signal.

Even more compelling is what happens when someone who has previously been victimized learns self-defense. In subsequent research, participants were shown video clips of individuals with a history of victimization, individuals without such a history, and victims who had studied self-defense. Observers were asked to rate how vulnerable each person appeared.

Victims who had taken self-defense training were significantly harder to identify. They were rated as less vulnerable and less likely to be targets than both victims and nonvictims. Something had changed in how they moved, how they held themselves, how they occupied space.

The training had altered the signal.

Interestingly, even individuals higher in psychopathic traits - particularly Factor 2 traits associated with impulsivity and antisocial behavior - had more difficulty cleanly interpreting these self-defense-trained individuals. The ability to decode facial emotion partially influenced accuracy, but the larger takeaway remained the same: training changes presentation, and presentation changes perception.

This is exactly what we, as Krav Maga instructors, witness every day.

A new student often walks into the studio cautiously. Their shoulders are slightly rounded. Their movement is tentative. They are unsure how they will respond under pressure. Over time, through controlled exposure to stress, repetition of movement, and the gradual realization that they can function effectively when challenged, something shifts.

They stand taller. Their stride becomes more deliberate. Their reactions become cleaner. They make eye contact without flinching. They don't necessarily project aggression - but they no longer project uncertainty.

Krav Maga does not teach people to look for fights. It teaches them to remove the signals that invite one.

This is especially important for children.

Psychopathic and antisocial traits do not suddenly appear in adulthood. Research shows that callous and dominance-seeking behaviors often emerge in childhood and adolescence. Bullying is often one of the earliest expressions of that dynamic. And bullies, like adult offenders, rely heavily on reading vulnerability. They gravitate toward hesitation, poor posture, avoidance behavior, and lack of assertive response.

Children who carry themselves with uncertainty are not at fault for being targeted - but they are often selected because of the signals they send.

This is where Krav Maga training becomes profoundly important.

When children train in Krav Maga, they are not being taught to fight their classmates. They are learning how to regulate stress, how to maintain eye contact, how to set boundaries clearly, and how to move with balance and awareness. They practice responding instead of freezing. They learn what it feels like to be pushed and to recover. They discover that pressure is manageable.

That discovery is transformative.

The research suggests that self-defense training can meaningfully alter how prior victims are perceived. In practical terms, that means a child who once looked like an easy target may no longer appear that way. The cues shift. The posture improves. The hesitation decreases. And often, the targeting stops before it starts.

For adults, the same principle applies. Confidence built through Krav Maga training changes how you move through parking lots, sidewalks, workplaces, and public spaces. It changes how quickly you respond to proximity violations. It sharpens awareness. It reduces freeze responses. And most importantly, it removes the ambiguity predators search for.

The greatest advantage of Krav Maga is not that it prepares you for violence. It is that it reduces the likelihood of being selected for it.

Confidence is not an affirmation whispered in the mirror. It is a visible, measurable shift in behavior. It is the way you walk into a room. It is the steadiness in your voice. It is the decisiveness in your movement.

And it can be trained.

For adults, learning Krav Maga is an investment in how you show up in the world. For children, it is even more powerful as it interrupts the bullying dynamics before they solidify. It replaces fear with capability and it reshapes the signals they send during some of the most formative years of their lives.

As I have often said with regard to our Kids Krav Maga program, it's far easier to build strong children than to fix broken adults.

Everyone benefits from confidence. But confidence backed by skill and competence is next level.

This is what Krav Maga builds.

And that may be the most important self-defense skill of all.

About the Author

Cyrus is the owner and lead instructor of Spartan Krav Maga. A former Bay Street executive, he combines international experience in Krav Maga and Kapap - earned through training and teaching across Israel, Europe, the US, and Canada - with a deep understanding of elite performance under pressure. Cyrus has worked with civilians, law enforcement, and military professionals, and specializes in translating real-world self-defense into practical skills that build confidence, resilience, and personal accountability.