Today, we are facing an unprecedented level of violence. Criminals have become more brazen, targeting innocent civilians with alarming brutality, largely due to “no-bail” laws and “catch-and-release” programs. To make matters worse, if you defend yourself and injure your attacker in the process of protecting your life, you could face prosecution, while the criminal receives medical treatment and is set free.”
How can you Prepare?
Limitations of Traditional Martial Arts and Fight Sports
Traditional martial arts (TMAs) and fight sports are not optimally designed for real-world street violence, especially in scenarios involving weapons and multiple attackers. Their techniques often fail to address the complexities of unpredictable and dangerous street encounters.
*The Goal of Fight Sports / TMAs = train to win a contest
*The Goal of RBT = avoid, neutralize and escape to safety
Professional fighters, despite their training, are statistically among the most injured groups in street violence situations. Their skill set, which is tailored for controlled environments like rings or cages, does not necessarily translate to surviving violent confrontations (especially with weapons) outside of those contexts.
– exceptions:
there exists a small percentage of individuals (1%-2%) who, due to various factors like instinct, adaptability, or luck, are capable of surviving or effectively navigating such dangerous situations.
The Modern Approach
The modern approach to self-defense training, includes “RBT (reality based training) and/or combatives,” emphasizing flexibility and adaptability in learning, moving away from rigid alliances to single martial arts styles, and allowing practitioners to incorporate a variety of new techniques and strategies. From here on in I will refer too combatives as reality-based, this is because combatives is inching closer to RBT in form and substance.
Learn What you Need
Bruce Lee was quoted saying “Absorb What is Useful, Discard What is Not, Add What is Uniquely Your Own.” However, this was directed at intermediate students and above, not novices.
Utilize the Pareto Principle
The 80/20 rule. You don’t need to learn the entire constellation
of martial skills, just learn to defend yourself from the types of attacks you will be facing in your region – or the region you will
be traveling too. Two examples: South Africa and New York.
For South Africa
For example, if you moved to South Africa where murders are the norm – their data reveals that 12,734 people were murdered from January – June in 2024 – an average of 70 murders per day – this included mass shootings, robberies, carjackings, mob attacks, home invasions and assassinations.
How to Prepare
Having been to South Africa and being familiar with the dangers,
I would recommend training with 12-gauge shotguns, 9mm handguns, a Barrett M82A1 (home protection from a distance), machetes and knives. I also would install electrified fences and purchase a pair of trained Belgian Malinois attack dogs. I would also contact my neighbors to form a coalition for protection.
For New York City
Here are two common attacks that have been on the rise in New York during 2024.
1. Pushing Incidents in Subway Stations:
In recent years, there has been a series of disturbing incidents where individuals have been shoved onto subway tracks. These attacks tend to happen suddenly, often without warning, and victims suffer severe injuries or even death due to the dangers posed by trains and the train stations themselves. There were two incidents just this week.
How to Prepare
In the subways, be aware of your surroundings and suspicious characters, find a safe place to stand – on the stairs or behind a barrier, hold onto a structure, use OC spray, if you are grabbed use your weapon – yell fire…
2. Knife Attacks and Impact Weapons:
An exponential increase of knife attacks has been reported throughout NYC, these incidents involve robberies, racial crimes and random acts of aggression. Blunt force trauma, resulting from attacks using impact weapons, such as hammers, baseball bats and pipes, has also been part of the broader violent crime spectrum.
How to Prepare
Learn basic unarmed self-defense to be able to get to your weapon, seek knife training either from a reality based program or a Filipino martial Art (FMA) source, purchase slash-proof vests or coverings, carry a soft attaché case to deflect knife slashings, carry OC spray but be aware that it is not effective against everyone.
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How to Learn
There are two main parts to reality-based programs, 1. physical skills and, 2. the knowledge base. The knowledge base consists of essential components and directives that include awareness, avoidance, dealing with the stress response, neutralizing an attack, escaping to safety, self-trauma care and much more.
In this article we will discuss the physical skills and review the knowledge base skills in a forthcoming article. The learning approach for physical skills should focus on maximizing learning efficiency, engagement, and retention while minimizing time investment, and tailoring your lesson to your needs.
With over 30+ years of teaching self-defense, I have often been approached by individuals who want to master specific skills in a short period of time; either at seminars/after seminars or they fly in. They include military, security personnel and civilians. Most come for edged weapons and unarmed defense tactics. Having taught many academic courses at several universities I have brought many teaching protocols over to self-defense. The quickest and most effective results have come from the following methods.
*But First – Let me Tell you the Absolute Worst Type of Training
Willingly Getting Injured is the Worst Type of Training
When WWII combatives gained popularity in the ’80s and ’90s, the approach to training often became excessively macho or “tough-guy” in many cases. The dominant philosophy of the time was that becoming effective in combat required intense, full-contact sparring and rigorous, sometimes grueling drills. This mindset was rooted in the belief that in order to be prepared for real-world violence, students had to experience a high level of intensity and pain during training to build toughness, endurance, and readiness.
However, this approach led to significant problems. Many students sustained serious injuries from the intense, high-impact nature of the training, and discouraged many people from continuing their training. You can easily learn self-defense without this approach – you don’t have to crash a car to be a race car driver.
1. Private Instruction
Private sessions are the most effective and efficient method for skill development. Since the instruction is personalized, it can be adjusted to fit the specific learning needs, goals, and pace of the students. Students can progress faster because the focus is solely based on their individual needs; It strikes a balance between providing depth and preventing mental fatigue.
2. Seminars
Seminars are a great addition to learning after gaining a few basic skills. Jon Bluming once told me that you can learn important skills, as well as things not to do, in seminars. Bring along a video camera and notebook to recall the lessons of the day.
3. Online Instruction:
Online classes can serve as a supplementary tool, but they are best for students who already have a foundational knowledge.
4. Scenario Training
Scenario based training is one of the most powerful techniques used in various fields, including aviation, and the military because it closely mimics real-life situations. This kind of training engages the brain in ways that make responses automatic, even when faced with unexpected or stressful situations. For example, pilots can practice landing during severe weather conditions or handle engine failures, both of which would be difficult and dangerous to simulate in real flights.
5. The VAK (Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic) Model
I have taught several private lessons where the student would state up front that they can only learn a certain way, either visually, auditorily, or kinesthetically. I never found these isolationist approaches to work well, it’s academic nonsense.
6. Spaced Repetition
Learning theory today has evolved to evidence-based strategies and active learning that blend the three modalities. Spaced repetition is another great way to enhance learning. Spaced repetition is the practice of reviewing information at increasing intervals over time. This method takes advantage of the spacing effect, where information is retained better when it’s reviewed periodically rather than cramming all at once.
7. Play-Based Learning
Traditionally, it was believed that children needed many repetitions to master a new physical skill. For instance, studies showed that when children practice a skill in a structured, repetitive environment they might need as many as 400 repetitions to learn it effectively. Research has shown that they can learn the same skills much faster in an unstructured and playful environment. In fact, it has been found that it may only take 10-12 repetitions.
Similarly, the same holds true for adults, although the numbers are higher. For a long time, it was widely believed that adult brains could not create new synapses, the connections between neurons that facilitate communication in the brain. This concept, known as neuroplasticity, was thought to be most active during childhood when the brain is developing rapidly.
However, more recent research has shown that the adult brain does, in fact, have the capacity to form new synapses and even generate new neurons in certain areas, a process known as neurogenesis. This was once thought to occur only during development and infancy. The discovery of neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus, a region involved in memory and learning, particularly challenged the long-standing belief.
Having experimented with this over the years, my results have shown that when adults learned self-defense skills in an informal and playful manner it only took them about 40-50 repetitions or less to master them; however if they trained in a militaristic martial arts e.g. some styles of karate, kenpo/kempo it could take as many as 600 hundred repetitions.
Coming Soon –
The Reality Based Knowledge Base
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Where to Learn
Many of my students are business professionals and travel,
in addition, people who have come across my site or have read my articles have contacted me for recommendations for training centers near locations they live or visit. Therefore, I have compiled this list of vetted instructors and schools that I have had personal experience with, or my peers have recommended them.
The lists below are in two categories, 1. Reality Based and 2. Fight Sports. 1. I have placed combatives in the reality based category because combatives has come a long way from yesteryear stormy practices. Besides focusing on physical skills many schools are also adding scenario based training and knowledge based content.
2. Why I added fight sports – I believe that there is a need for unarmed combat skills in case you are ambushed – you need to get to your weapon. There are many individuals who have practiced boxing, muaythai and grappling in the past that would benefit by fine tuning their striking and grappling skills.
A designation with a ⭐ means I trained with these individuals/groups.
