07.11.2023 My client’s ninth hour of self-protection training brought us back to soft skills work. We looked at the post-fight and covered all topics from the double tap through to the Black Dog. This training was all completed online with discussions on judgement calls regarding first aid and also tangents onto the complexity of humans: good people are capable of doing terrible things and bad people are capable of doing extremely good things. Services
29.08.2023 Tuesday’s final lesson was teaching my children’s self-protection methods as a means for instructor development to Hostlebro Taekwondo Klub in Denmark. This is preparation for my “When Parents Aren’t Around” seminars that will be taught over there later this year and also ahead of the new “Animal Instincts” children’s self-protection teaching programme. Tonight we went through an overview of self-protection. We covered definitions, separating self-protection from martial arts. I used Iain Abernethy’s Martial Map, Mo Teague/Peter Consterdine’s personal security/self-defence […]
18.01.2023 My teaching consultancy course for Drum Kempo Ju Jutsu and Fitness focused mainly on better establishing self-protection principles and habits in young students. The Teacher/Parent/Student Triangle is not a revolutionary tool. It’s very commonplace in education and has long been set as the most obvious way a student can get support for his or her learning needs. However, it doesn’t have a long tradition outside of compulsory education. The martial arts world, which is the birthplace for most self-protection […]
12.10.2022 Hour three of my anti-bullying teacher consultant course for Drum Kempo Ju Jutsu and Fitness. As previously discussed, the course that my client is teaching falls within the broad age range of 9-14 year olds. Fortunately, this is roughly where my “When Parents Aren’t Around” book is targeted (as well as their parents/guardians). During Wednesday morning’s lesson we followed on from who bullies with how people bully. Given that bullying is a type of abuse of power, there are […]
05.10.2022 The continuation of my Anti-Bullying Teacher Consultation broke down how to present the concept of bullying to 9-14 year olds. However, before we explored this topic with Drum Kempo Ju Jitsu and Fitness, we had another re-examination of our teaching landscape. This is best explained in my “3 Tribes” vlog on the subject, which can be found here. I was impressed by the work DKJF do in intervention and mediation. They actively work not just with victims of bullying but […]
27.09.2022 My new client is employed in close-protection work and wanted to improve his CPD with specific hard skills. Tuesday night saw hour one of his course. Having discussed the fundamentals of personal security (attitude, awareness and legal), we covered the concepts of the fence. First of all, we looked at ways to best hide lining up a potential threat. This included using an angled posture to adjust attitude and to create a positional advantage. Next, we moved onto weapon […]
11.05.2022 My teacher client from Drum Kempo Ju Jitsu picked up my self-protection course on the subject of post-incident First Aid. Here we discussed training body check behaviours in students. It’s important for students to have an awareness of new injuries and problems both in their regular training and in a self-defence scenario. We also covered how bleeds are important to locate early for obvious reasons but that certain bleeding can give the appearance of being far worse than they […]
09.03.2022 Wednesday’s first lesson – an online teacher consultation for Drum Kempo Ju Jitsu in Ireland – brought us up to pre-emptive striking. We discussed the tactical reasoning for pre-emptive striking and I described why it is important for students to test the effectiveness of this tactic or rather the ineffectiveness of blocking at conversational range. It is too easy for teachers to find themselves inside an echo chamber that takes the effectivness of this tactic for granted whilst preaching […]
02.03.2022 Wednesday’s first lesson – an online teacher consultation for Drum Kempo Ju Jitsu in Ireland – brought us up to a list of useful options in a crisis situation. The list wasn’t exhaustive. We discussed how to teach avoidance. This is wide subject touching upon all the other options that followed. It includes simply avoiding situations that our awareness has alerted us to or avoiding certain places that intelligence has fed back has a bad reputation. However, it also […]
09.02.2022 Wednesday began with the second hour of my client’s teacher consultation course on my basic self-protection course. My client at Drum Kemp Ju Jitsu in Ireland raised a very important point regarding my distinction between asymmetrical and symmetrical violence dynamics. Rolling on from the Hard Target course I taught for Mo Teague with assistance from Al Cain back in 2010, he noted my definitions were “social violence” and “predatory violence”. Although these are very important distinctions to make, “predatory […]
10.11.2021 My two afternoon lessons on Wednesday were a continuation of my self-protection course for teenagers at Kingham Hill School. We shifted our focus onto the regaining the initiative stage. This is the first stage of reactive fighting from a hard skills perspective. Here we are beyond preemption and we have been preempted. I always make a point of stating how much this stage needs to be avoided. Whatever happens here on in, is reliant on a degree of luck. […]
03.11.2021 My two self-protection lessons for Kingham Hill School looked at the hook (power slap) and the offline (rear elbow/hammer fist) strike. These are both circular strikes delivered pre-emptively but under different conditions than the straight strikes. The hook might serve as a preferred variant on the straight strike some people, but these days I tend to teach it from a more sophisticated set-up such as the invisible fence or with a deception. We also trained it from a restrictive […]
13.10.21 My two self-protection lessons at Kingham Hill looked at understanding fear and further developing hand strikes. Training included a look at the reasons behind flight/flight responses, the importance of good training to develop good behaviours under stress and a few tips to handle nerves and emotions. We then continued work from the fence onto the focus mitts, progressing on with removing obstructions and hunting the target. The classes were finished with some pre-emptive strike pressure-testing. Services
29.09.2021 Wednesday’s first two lessons were a continuation of my current course with Kingham Hill School. Today was mainly hard skills based, but with all the underlying soft skills previously covered. We looked at reinforcing the strike when personal space is breached by a confirmed threat reaction. This was performed as a target familiarisation drill and layered onto focus mitts. Having established the importance of boundaries we looked developed a concept of protecting these with the fence concept. This was […]
22.09.21 Kingham Hill School’s self-protection course for two groups continued. Soft skills focused on situational awareness and defining an immediate human threat. Hard skills included exercises to promote tactical escaping and recovery. We also tested pre-emptive striking, covered target familiarisation and layered this onto focus mitts for impact development. Services
02.03.21 Work continues in my teacher consultancy regarding the progress of sparring/pressure-testing for grades, especially but not exclusively to child students. As my progressive and proactive client suggested, we began at the beginning and looked at where and how sparring should be introduced. Key things to consider would be that gradings would not be a test for everything. A club does not have to have sparring in the first grading and yet students by this stage can be accustomed to […]
