Kinshoop

Hello, I am programming my first minecraft mod, so I am a beginner. I need to know how many ticks a key is pressed, for example the forward key. I found the pressTime variable in Keybinding but it is private so I can't use it. So I would like to know if it is possible to get pressTime or if not I would have to create the counter myself but I don't know how to do it. Thanks in advance.