Introduction to the School of Chinese Martial Arts in Parker, CO

October 17, 2010 by goshinman · Comments Off

Peterborough Martial Arts Videos

An overview of our first month

DVDs are a great way to have training on tap to back up your normal weekly training and a chance to see how other instructors do forms or interpret movements. You should also try to expand your knowledge and experience in your art and also get to know about other people’s art so you understand what is out there.

Some of the best bargains in martial art dvd’s and books can be found by clicking on a link below

Martial Art Videos and DVDs and Books

Chinese Martial Art Videos and DVDs

Karate Martial Arts Videos and DVDs

Judo Martial Arts Videos and DVDs

Aikido Martial Arts Videos and DVDs

Tang Soo Do Martial Arts and DVDs

Taekwondo Martial Arts and DVDs

Reality Based Videos and DVDs

Self Defense 101

November 29, 2009 by goshinman · Comments Off

Where to Start, What to Look For, What to Avoid, Who to Train With

First of all, I prefer the term Personal Protection or Protective Offense to Self Defense, for the former is proactive (placing you mentally in control of the situation) while the latter is reactive (makes you feel like a victim waiting for something to happen before choosing a response).

An article by Georges Z. Fahmy, Senshido Affiliate Instructor for the Greater Middle East Area.

“Like many people out there, I turned to Self Defense to avoid, escape, or survive violence (in my case, High School Bullying). To help you guys and gals avoid the hassles I went through, and save you time and money, I’ve decided to write this article to outline what you should be looking for in a Self Defense school/ system/ method.

Choosing to train in Traditional Martial Arts (TMA) schools, like Karate, Kung Fu, Tae Kwon Do, Wing Chun, Kali, Aikido, Systema, etc should not be your objective if you seek to learn Personal Protection (PP). Although the abovementioned styles and systems are beautiful, culturally rich and allow their users to become disciplined, these methodologies have remained fixed in time, not evolving with the rising tide of violence, or are found lacking in one or more aspects. I personally trained in Chinese Kung Fu while a child (from age 10 to 15) and am proud to say that the art has allowed me to be flexible, fit, as well as disciplined.

Sadly, it did not help me in learning effective and realistic PP.

Combat Sports like Muay Thai, Boxing, Kick Boxing, Wrestling (Greco-Roman, Freestyle, or Catch-As-Catch-Can), Judo, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ), Sambo, and Mixed Martial Arts (MMA, also called Vale Tudo), among others, are very beneficial in developing a fighter’s toolbox. However, these arts and systems while allowing you to dominate a single, unarmed opponent, do not fare as well against multiples or armed aggressors. Additionally, it lacks the crucial pre-contact (psychological, emotional, and behavioral) as well as post-contact (evasion, legality, revenge and other factors) aspects a respected Self Defense methodology must have to be complete. I personally favour and wholeheartedly recommend training in MMA, as well as BJJ and Catch-Wrestling, for they teaches an individual useful tools, covers striking, grappling, and submissions, conditions its aficionados to full contact full speed training, and provides a great workout.

The third category people encounter while looking for Self Defense instruction are Reality Based Self Defense (RBSD) programs. The name itself, as Richard Dimitri, Senshido’s founder, states, is an oxymoron: RBSD as opposed to what? Unreality Based Self Defense? Nevertheless, many so called RBSD schools are just TMA repackaged, without uniforms and belts. Others are taken from Military systems (Krav Maga, Kapap, WWII Combatives) and may not be applicable by civilians because of numerous factors (such as legal, use of force, etc).

How do you distinguish between the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly?

Well, for a PP methodology to be efficient, applicable by anyone (regardless of sex, age, build, strength%u2026), and realistic, it needs to cover the all-important trinity of emotional, behavioral and psychological training. Cover, not dabble in, not mention – fully cover.

These three elements have to be addressed across the three phases of combat, namely the Pre-Contact, Contact, and Post-Contact aspects.

Allow me to outline each phase in detail:

- Pre-Contact phase includes awareness training, fear/ anger/ adrenal management, evasion and escape tactics, understanding the criminal mind, tactical assessment of one’s environment, and much more

- Contact phase includes one’s ability to protect oneself and others from armed as well as unarmed assaults while covering the ballistic, kinetic, edged, striking, kicking, close quarters, grappling, and ground fighting ranges against one or more aggressors

- Post-Contact includes the legally of one’s actions, talking to the police, preventing revenge attacks, debriefing and analyzing the confrontation for enhancing one’s survivability, etc

For one to be ready to survive modern violence, I believe it is vital to train full speed, full force, with intent, while replicating realistic scenarios that induce an adrenaline dump similar to the one experienced in actual life. If what you do works under these conditions, then it is a realistic PP training methodology. If it doesn’t, then it isn’t and you need to change what you’re doing.

I have searched for a methodology that fully integrates all these aforementioned crucial elements and am glad to have discovered Senshido in 2002. After comparing it to other, more technical RBSD approaches, I decided to train in it and one day become an instructor. This great honour was mine in December 2006 and became responsible for the Greater Middle East Area since that day.”

Take care and stay safe.

Georges Z. Fahmy
Senshido Affiliate Instructor for the Greater Middle East Area, spanning from North Africa to Indian subcontinent.

Do you have any questions, comments or are you looking for training and seminars in the Greater Middle East Area? Visit my site www.senshido.net , email me at [email protected], or call me on + 961 3 499 712 .

Senshido saying of the week: “Rather than provide technical aspects for people to use in specific situations, we provide analytical skills that will be useful in any situation”

Misreading a potential violence situation

October 23, 2009 by goshinman · Comments Off

I remember a story from a guy I trained with long ago, from when he was traveling in Thailand. This guy was a no-nonsense, get-straight-to-it kind of guy, and if it looked like violence, he’d be the first to get at it.

He was sitting in this cafe and every time he looked up, this tough-looking ex-pat was staring right at him. He tried to let it go, but after several minutes of this he figured if it was on, he was going to get it done first. So he pushed back from the table and got up to go after the guy–and noticed that there was a TV above his head with the sound off. The guy was just watching TV.

He sat back down and finished his meal in chagrined silence. Ever since that moment he always took the extra second, when given the choice, to be sure the threat was real before hurting people. And he always felt that it cut down dramatically on the number of bad situations he ended up in.

Chris Ranck-Buhr
www.targetfocustraining.com
PPS. I’ve been in restaurants where the seating and lack of decor is such that every time you look up, you’re staring right into the face of another customer. And since repeatedly looking at someone can be construed as aggression, this can lead to situations like this.

What-If Monkeys Guide By Marc MacYoung

October 5, 2009 by goshinman · Comments Off

What-If-Monkeys (a field guide to problem people in dojos/seminars/training)

I really like Marc MacYoung’s website at http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com and I have followed it for years as it is exactly as it says on the tin and a reservoir of great information. I read this web page tonight and I have enclosed a snippet here – you can read the full discussion at http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/WIMS.htm.

“Let’s establish something right up front. Engaging in violent conflict is dangerous!

Every time you are involved in violence, it is a crapshoot whether or not you will be injured, crippled or killed. You can do everything “right” and still get injured. If you cannot calmly and rationally accept this reality, then you have no business being in this arena.

Violence is extremely mutable. Those mutations occur from situation to situation and second to second depending on circumstances. As such, attempting to micromanage and have exact pre-planned responses to every possible scenario is unrealistic. Such an attitude hinders mental flexibility and inhibits the responder’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances. This inability increases the danger to the would be responder.

Let us further state, there is NO guaranteed, never-fail, ultimate method to keep from getting hurt. And anybody who tells you otherwise is lying to you — usually in order to get your money.

There are many instructors of so-called combat systems, reality based self-defense programs or deadly esoteric martial arts styles that will take your money in exchange for teaching you their ‘guaranteed system.’

The reason these con men exist is because there are people — who burdened with an over-active imagination — are trying to find a way to never lose. This obsession of theirs leaves them vulnerable to the lies and nonsense of the BS artists who claim they can make you invincible.

The raw truth is that when it comes to losing at violence, everyone gets their turn. Nobody always wins. When that happens, you have to pay the price. You need to know this going in. If you are afraid to take a beating then don’t try to stand up and fight, run away.

While that may stick in your craw, it is a far safer strategy. Violence is dangerous because it mutates so fast. Things change in the blink of an eye. But this is not chaos, nor is it random. It is:

a) the OODA loop (see later) being executed at high speed — by everyone involved
b) factors/conditions that existed previously, but were unknown to you
c) physics and results vs. what you intended (or hoped) would happen

These can be summed up as decisions, surprise and unintended consequences. All change what is happening. And they all occur really, really fast in violence. While violence may look chaotic and random, if it were slowed down, these points would be easier to identify and see the results.

In order to best navigate through violence one must have the ability to adapt, improvise and overcome — and do it quickly. Your plans and actions need to change as fast as the circumstances. And even then you run the risk of not being able to adapt fast enough. This is why there are no guaranteed ways to always ‘win’ or remain unscathed when it comes to violence. There is no system that cover every possible mutation or requirement.

However, there is a particular mindset; people who are both obsessed with the image of violence and a desire to micromanage it, who keep the hucksters of ‘guaranteed fighting systems’ rolling in money. No matter what is presented to them, such people’s fertile imagination always finds a bigger, badder boogey man and weakness with the information. It never occurs to them how often their fantasies of violence defy the laws of physics, common sense, odds, chances and disregards how violent people behave.

All they can see is their fear and their obsession with winning and not getting hurt.

We have a name for these people.
It is a name based on the question they are always chattering.
We call them “What-If- Monkeys.”

Or WIMs for short.”

OODA
OODA Boyd
It has become an important concept in both business and military strategy. According to Boyd, decision-making occurs in a recurring cycle of observe-orient-decide-act. An entity (whether an individual or an organization) that can process this cycle quickly, observing and reacting to unfolding events more rapidly than an opponent, can thereby “get inside” the opponent’s decision cycle and gain the advantage.

Getting stuck does not lead to winning, since “In order to win, we should operate at a faster tempo or rhythm than our adversaries–or, better yet, get inside [the] adversary’s Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action time cycle or loop. … Such activity will make us appear ambiguous (unpredictable) thereby generate confusion and disorder among our adversaries–since our adversaries will be unable to generate mental images or pictures that agree with the menacing as well as faster transient rhythm or patterns they are competing against.”

Boyd developed the concept to explain how to direct one’s energies to defeat an adversary and survive. Boyd emphasized that “the loop” is actually a set of interacting loops that are to be kept in continuous operation during combat. He also indicated that the phase of the battle has an important bearing on the ideal allocation of one’s energies.

Boyd’s diagram shows that all decisions are based on observations of the evolving situation tempered with implicit filtering of the problem being addressed. These observations are the raw information on which decisions and actions are based. The observed information must be processed to orient it for further making a decision.

Learning To Fight… Or To Dance?

October 4, 2009 by goshinman · Comments Off

Are You Learning To Fight… Or To Dance?

Why you should take a look at Target Focused Training

I saw a commercial for one of those dance instruction programs that guarantees you’d be able to dance as well as any member of the most popular boy-bands.

The program showed a group of students following the instructor step-by-step to learn some pretty complex moves, choreographed to perfection. The result was that by memorizing the steps and combining the moves you could mimic the formerly difficult routine.

It reminded me of watching a Wushu team practice their show. For those of you that aren’t familiar, Wushu is a Chinese martial art that is delivered via a stage performance. The fights are very elaborate and it takes a great deal of practice to put on a convincing show.

As I watched the team practice it was interesting to note that whenever someone wanted to screw around all they had to do was execute a move different from the routine. Literally you would be watching a fight scene you’d swear was pitting two highly trained fighters in mortal combat when all of a sudden one of the guys would move differently… maybe slap the other guy in the face like the Three Stooges used to do.

Everyone would laugh, then take a break.

But that slap also woke me up out of the dream state I was in as I watched the performance.

I realized that this was exactly the method in which most martial arts or combat sports are instructed.

Especially when they train “self defense”.

Basically there are set patterns you memorize in response to various staged attacks. Memorize those responses and you can look pretty impressive.

But what happens if you vary the attack?

Most students freeze.

Why?

*** BECAUSE THEY WERE NEVER TAUGHT TO FIGHT! ***

Nope, they basically were taught to ‘dance’ and as long as everything went according to the ‘routine’ you could do okay. But we all know things never go exactly as planned.

Fighting is no different — whether you are on the mat at your training center or on the street locked in mortal combat with the other guy(s). The only variation is that when you fight with your training partner you don’t actually maim, cripple or kill. You still target and simulate those exact strikes, just at a pace your partner can handle.

If, however, you’re operating in a ‘training’ mode where you are memorizing a ‘set’ response to an attack, you are learning nothing but a ‘dance’ move. In Target Focused Training such training is viewed as “coordination training” not fighting.

If you don’t know the difference, you can easily fall victim to the “now it’s for real syndrome”. That’s where you face an imminent attack yet hesitate… as your brain tries to accept the fact that “this is for real”.

Contrast this to the well-trained fighter who simply sees all this as merely fighting and proceeds to:

1) find his targets and
2) strike.

The only difference to the fighter is the fact he can now strike with full power.

That’s because the well-trained fighter never sees himself as ‘training’ — he’s always fighting. Understand this concept and you’ll always be prepared… no matter what the situation.

Until next time,

Read all about Tims stuff on his site: Target Focused Training

TFT Human Weapon Defense System
Live Target-Focus Training
TFT Striking
Using Your Bodyweight as a Sledgehammer!
TFT Throwing Series.
The Art of Head Trauma:Dumps, Drops & Throws

TFT Weapons Self Defence.
Discover secrets for destroying anyone attacking you with a weapon!
Surviving The Next 5 Seconds Of My Life!
The Survival DVDs
Surviving the most critical 5 seconds of your life!
The Survival Book

How To Really Protect Your Child From Predators

September 25, 2009 by goshinman · Comments Off

Protecting Your Child From Predators

Martial Arts is not the answer to this problem…!

“Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.” — Lois McMaster Bujold, 1991

Recently in the news we have seen another child fall prey to a predator. This time the little girl was at a carwash and the abduction was caught on tape.

Whenever such an incident occurs, my inbox is flooded with emails asking me to create a “Target Focused Training” program for children.

The sad fact is that teaching a child to physically fight an adult “predator” is woefully ineffective and very misguided.

If a hyena were stalking a lion cub none of us would expect the cub to be able to fend off the hyena. Yet we somehow wish that our children would be able to do just that.

More importantly, some ask that the child be taught to not speak to or even more unrealistic, shout out, if the predator asks them to leave the area with them.

We fall “prey” every day to some very effective sales people and advertising (just look around at all the useless exercise machines gathering dust in many of your houses!). These predators targeting children are some of the most effective “salesmen” when it comes to manipulation those young, trusting minds.

They appeal to very emotional triggers in children. But we somehow hope that these young developing minds can distinguish friend from foe. This type of thinking truly is EFFECT STATE in the highest order.

Effect State will not only get you killed — but also (tragically) those loved ones you are responsible for like children and elderly relatives. We’d like to think that there’s some special training we can give our kids that will relieve us from our responsibility should we falter in our vigilance…

— THERE ISN’T… it’s ours until they are past that vulnerable stage of life.

My clients realize that the physical fight training they get with “Target Focused Training” (one-on-one, hand-to-hand, multiple attackers, fighting with and against weapons) is the FINAL option. It is VERY necessary for an adult and TFT certainly provides the finest, most complete, and brutally effective program to handle LETHAL criminal violence.

But my goal is to keep that option from ever happening to my clients in the first place. And more importantly — that it never happens to those loved ones who can’t protect themselves. But that doesn’t necessarily occur from you applying one of TFT’s bone-snapping, lethal techniques on a “predator” who attempts to abduct your child.

The biggest deterrent to a hyena trying to stalk a lion cub… is a very alert lioness. Not one that is looking to kill hyenas… but one who is very aware of her cubs and her surroundings, constantly assessing possible trouble spots and keeping the cubs away from obvious potential dangers as well as the not so obvious.

If it comes down to her having to take action, then woe be to the hyena. But most times her living in CAUSE STATE is more than enough to send the hyena packing and off to a less vigilant guardian.

I have a young son who has yet to really receive any training from me other than the basics about dealing with adults unknown to him. There’ll be plenty of time, as he becomes an adult, to transfer the responsibility for physically protecting himself.

Until then it’s his family’s responsibility to protect him. Understanding and living in CAUSE STATE makes that job much easier for me.

Until next time,

Tim Larkin
Creator of Target-Focus(TM) Training
http://www.targetfocustraining.com
PS. In just one weekend you can learn to defeat any
attacker using the Target-Focus Training system. See how at:
http://www.targetfocustraining.com

Peterborough Martial Arts

Introduction to the School of Chinese Martial Arts in Parker, CO

Recommended Reading

Self Defense 101

Where to Start, What to Look For, What to Avoid, Who to Train With

Recommended Reading

Misreading a potential violence situation

Recommended Reading

What-If Monkeys Guide By Marc MacYoung

What-If-Monkeys (a field guide to problem people in dojos/seminars/training)

Recommended Reading

Learning To Fight… Or To Dance?

Are You Learning To Fight… Or To Dance?

Recommended Reading

How To Really Protect Your Child From Predators

Recommended Reading

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