My whole life I’ve been training in martial arts and various methods of survival and shooting with the main motivation simply being to be able to look after myself and my loved ones, regardless of the situation. Its not about being paranoid, but prepared!
It wasn’t until I had to use what I’d learnt on the job that I realised how important it is to separate classical martial arts training from functional survival training. The fact is, both are great, both have their place.
But then it's up to each individual to be able to make things work when it counts and what I can say from experience is that the differences between the ‘dojo’ and the street are vast!
No one cares about rank or lineage or style names. No one cares about traditional names for techniques or where they come from and no one is going to stand there and let you do your fancy move.
Trust me, I learned this the hard way!
To survive working on the doors we had to make training relevant to the situations that we were encountering and that was more often than not dealing with aggressive, non-compliant and multiple threat situations.
Again, completely different to what you see in a traditional martial arts training environment! You don’t know what’s coming, when, where, or even sometimes who from and this is why we first look at training the senses, more specifically situation awareness and communication skills.
I guarantee you, most people haven’t had to deal with violence on a regular basis so this is not something that is covered in your average self defense class, let alone a martial arts class.
I’m a huge believer in self development and even striving for self perfection and this is why I still train various arts including Catch Wrestling and Brazilian Jiujitsu but these are my hobbies. They are fun, they are great, but there’s nothing fun or great about a chaotic situation involving a group of drunk guys relentlessly trying to punch your head in.
They’re not trying to pull guard on you or fiddle with your lapel, they will not say “hey, go easy, no striking!”, and most of all, they wont even give you a chance to think, let alone warm up!
So again, the priorities are simply different and this is why my training has become some of the most sought after in the world as it is based on logic and function, not theories and rules.
I started the online learning center in 2009 and I am humbled by the fact that we have had thousands of members sign up and the large number who've stayed the entire time. I have made this my life’s work - to continuously develop each program and the drills within along with constant improvements in quality.
In 2017 we started to re-film many things with in 4K to ensure that we can get as many ‘easy to read’ views of the fundamental drills as possible.
You will also see that there are many things that people talk about but never do, like not only pressure test skills in sparring and the like, but also cutting testing with meat and various other objects to show the effectiveness and or lack of effectiveness in techniques.
This is something I am truly proud of and forever grateful to my staff and team for their support in our continued work. See you online !
Train Hard, Fight Easy!
Keep it Raw !
