You can learn more about CWKM’s instructor here.
Hi, I’m Andrew Lau – a certified Krav Maga instructor with over 10 years of experience. I teach practical self-defence to help you feel stronger, safer, and more prepared for real life.
Whether you're after fitness, confidence, or self-defence skills, I’ll guide you every step of the way.
Training
London Krav Maga: 2008-2015; 2017-2024
Boxing: 2012-Present
The Institute of Krav Maga: 2013-14
Lee Morrison’s Urban Combatives: 2014-Present; Seminars in 2017, 2018 and 2025
Kevin Secours’ Integrated Fighting Systems: Seminar, February 2013
Bob Breen Academy (Jeet Kune Do) 2015-16
Precision Striking with Jason van Veldhuysen: Seminar, June 2017
Violence Dynamics with Rory Miller, Randy King et. al: Seminars, 2018 and 2022
Krav Maga London: Seminars, 2022 and 2023
Krav Maga Global Instructor Training: ongoing CPD and seminars between 2019-2024
Teaching
While some individuals may naturally possess high EI, it is also a skill that can be developed and honed over time. Strategies for enhancing EI in leadership include:
Bacon’s College: 2014/15
London Krav Maga: 2017-2023
Wapping High School: 2016/17
Hybrid Fitness Canary Wharf: 2021-2023
Aktiv Krav Maga, Gloucester: Seminar, May 2022
King’s College Self-Defence Society, 2022/23 and 2023/24
Martial Arts & Yoga, Earlsfield: peripatetic, 2022-23
Echelon Self-Defence: 2024
Canada Water Krav Maga: 2024-Present
Qualifications
Krav Maga Global General Instructor Course, June 2019
Krav Maga Global Kids and Teens Instructor Course, August 2022
I began training in 2008. Though I was pretty fit, I’d never done any sort of combat training before. I was working an office job in London’s West End, spending my evenings and weekends as street photographer, trying to capture spontaneous, candid, slice-of-life moments.Sometimes, this worked out spectacularly:
Bond Street Station, Autumn 2008
At other times, my subjects were less-than-pleased with the idea of taking part in the creation of my next masterpiece:
Chinatown, Summer 2009
This inevitably led to some friction on the streets, and I realised I needed to learn some basic self-defence skills because I had no idea what to do when things began to kick-off. Looking back, I also needed to grow in terms of understanding that what I was doing was the main problem, not the lack of combat skills to handle the consequences.
As luck would have it, London Krav Maga, the UK’s first Krav Maga club, was based a few minutes from my office, and so I began training there, just once a week. It’s important for me to explain that I started with quite a small time-commitment, as many of my students nowadays also do; I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that at all!
Things took-off in 2012, when I did my first grading; I began to get the bug.
With other students at London Krav Maga, instructor Mikey Husey and Master Ze’ev Cohen after completing my first grading, 2012
I started training outside of class with a partner, for the first time getting an inkling that I might have a knack for organising what we should be doing. I also started boxing at Double Jab ABC, which opened in New Cross the following year. Boxing has been my main secondary discipline since that time; I think it’s the most relevant skill-set for self defence.
Head movement vs Eddie, Double Jab ABC, June 2019
I started training outside of class with a partner, for the first time getting an inkling that I might have a knack for organising what we should be doing. I also started boxing at Double Jab ABC, which opened in New Cross the following year. Boxing has been my main secondary discipline since that time; I think it’s the most relevant skill-set for self defence.
Head movement vs Eddie, Double Jab ABC, June 2019
In 2013 I started working at nearby Bacon’s College in Rotherhithe. There were several perks to this. Firstly, I began running an after-school club for some of the older students there, teaching striking and self-defence skills. This had quite a big effect on their development; I know that three of them went on to fight competitively, with Amir (to my right) going on to compete successfully in MMA and coach BJJ himself. Self defence should be taught in schools; unfortunately, it very rarely is.
With ‘The Fight Club’, Bacon’s College, May 2015 (Amir gave me the lightsaber explaining that: ‘In another time, another place, you would be a Jedi’. Actually, thanks to him and the gang, I already was.)
But the main perk of working at Bacon’s was free access to their incredible spaces in the evenings and during the weekends. I linked-up with Mac, a friend from London Krav Maga, and we began to train together obsessively, doing four hours on Wednesdays and seven hours on both Saturdays and Sundays.
Sparring Mac in Bacon’s College, May 2014
Meanwhile, I was continuing to train with Marcos Lall of London Krav Maga at his infamous Acton classes on Monday evenings.
With London Krav Maga students after a seminar run by Marcos, 2013
Marcos was the first person to achieve Expert (‘black belt’) level in Krav Maga in the UK. A true master with over four decades of combat experience, he has been the most influential instructor in my career.
With Marcos after class, February 2024
Other weekday evenings were spent training with The Institute of Krav Maga, who were running Friday and Saturday classes, and who had an advanced-level class that I really had to try. I was obsessed, and wanted to spend every single day training. I learned so much from the team at The Institute: about safety in sparring, third-party protection, accuracy in kicking, use of voice, the role of fitness in fighting and the power of stance, amongst other things.
At a UC seminar in 2018. Lee used to teach out of an orange-painted community centre at the top of a steep hill in Southampton, which was a mission to get to early on a Sunday. It was worth it.
It was around this time that I came across Lee Morrison’s ‘Urban Combatives’. Lee is probably the best combat instructor in the English-speaking world, and I’m incredibly lucky to have been training and teaching whilst he’s been active. His use of dialogue, Geoff Thompson’s ‘Fence’, the environment, the headbutt, attached striking, safety equipment, offensive clinching and maiming techniques, as well as his overriding emphasis on mindset, have all been massively influential. I started to train UC with Mac in 2014 alongside Krav Maga, and have managed to train with him at about half a dozen seminars over the years.
With Lee Morrison after a seminar, Southampton, March 2024
2015 was a transitional year. I’d dislocated my shoulder at a grading at the end of 2014, so I needed surgery to recover. It was also a year that brought incredible stress at work. On a deeper level, I was burning-out from overtraining, and realising it and my focus on grading were an expression of something missing in my life.
Still off my head with anaesthetic after shoulder surgery, Guy’s Hospital, November 2015
I’ve come to realise that, very often, the biggest difference between instructors and students is that somehow we persist and keep going after these enforced breaks; we take time off, but we find a way to keep going!
I found a job at Wapping High School in 2016, and got married in the autumn of that year. I started training a Year 11 student there. His brother had left as a NEET (‘Not in Education, Employment or Training’) the previous year, and he was in danger of doing the same, with attendance of about 10%. I made him a deal: I’d hold pads for him every Tuesday evening if he came to school for the week. He ended up with five GCSEs and went on to train Muay Thai.
Slow-fighting with T, Wapping High School, autumn 2016. Some days, the light flowing into their main hall was magical.
I took advantage of my new workplace to start training at the Bob Breen Academy in Hoxton, which was just up the road. I wanted to learn more about sparring and hand-trapping, two specialities of his. It’s hard to believe now, but there were still few written or online resources focusing on how to spar well back in 2016; nowadays there are hundreds of videos on YouTube about the subject.
Alone, after the maelstrom of class at the Bob Breen Academy, Hoxton, July 2016. I pack slowly, so I am often the last to leave class. There’s always a strange emptiness to a dojo without its students; I’m sure the Japanese have a specific name for it!
The students at the Bob Breen Academy were incredible: dedicated, coordinated and welcoming. I learned of the differences between self-defence trainees and martial artists, and heaps about sustainable sparring. But by the end of 2017 I found myself wanting to return to a self-defence-focused system, and wanting to formalise my role as an instructor. I had realised that there were things specific to self-defence that demand attention in class, and the power of self-defence training to change lives. I returned to my alma mater, London Krav Maga, and started training there again, as well as assisting Mikey Husey at the club’s Tottenham Court Road classes. That was special; coming full circle, to where it began, and starting to teach in the same space that I began as a student all those years before. Mikey is a master technician, a prolific teacher, and possessed of both the most extraordinary power generation and the ability to completely psych-out would-be opponents by posturing alone; he was the first person to emphasise the importance of being able to hit as hard as possible from any potential position when I began my Krav journey.
With London Krav Maga instructors and KMG Chief Instructor Eyal Yanilov after his seminar, December 2018
In 2019 I undertook and passed Krav Maga Global’s General Instructor’s Course. A gruelling mix of combat training, lectures and teaching practice, it takes place over three separate weeks and demands tremendous sacrifice of its participants to complete.
With Ilya Dunsky, KMG Expert Level 5, and other trainee instructors at the General Instructor’s Course, Essex, June 2019
I started teaching at London Krav Maga.
Teaching defences against snatch attacks, London Krav Maga, autumn 2019
Little were any of us to know that the pandemic was just around the corner. We had to adapt to teaching on Zoom, which seems quite amazing, looking back on it now.
Teaching defences against snatch attacks, London Krav Maga, autumn 2019
As things got back to normality in 2021, I also started teaching for Hybrid Fitness in Canary Wharf:
And I gave a seminar in Gloucester!
Teaching a seminar at Aktiv Krav Maga, Gloucester, May 2021. I usually dislike having students standing in lines like this.
2022 saw me continue to train:
With other students from London Krav Maga and KMG Chief Instructor Eyal Yanilov, Harlow, May 2022
I completed KMG’s Kids and Teens Instructor Course:
With KMG Master Level 1 instructor Ze’ev Cohen, Kids & Teens Instructor Course, Glasgow, August 2022
Shortly afterwards I began to teach the King’s College Self-Defence Society. King’s College London was my own university, so to return and teach the young people there was an enormous privilege.
With the students of the KCL Self-Defence Society, Autumn 2022
I got to spend three more days training with Rory Miller, probably the world’s foremost writer on the topic of violence. I had already trained with Rory and his team in 2019, but this was another level of power generation, dirty clinching and principle-based learning.
With Rory Miller and Randy King after a weekend-long seminar, Essex, September 2022
With the other London Krav Maga instructors and Rory Miller’s Violence Dynamics team, Brunel, 2019
The year rounded-off giving a demonstration of Krav Maga to King Charles as part of the LKM team at its JW3 HQ.
Demonstrating Krav Maga for King Charles at London Krav Maga, JW3, December 2022. Credit: Blake Ezra Photography
Teaching ground-work at London Krav Maga, Autumn 2022
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