Step into many dojos today and you’ll see students moving through kata and floor drills with a kind of casual rhythm. Their stances are loose, their strikes lack conviction, and their eyes drift as if the mind is somewhere else. The movements are performed, but the spirit is absent. This is not how martial arts…
Tag: Self Defense
The Forgotten Pillar of Self-Defense: Situational Awareness
In the realm of self-defense, there is one skill so foundational, so universally applicable, that its neglect borders on malpractice: situational awareness. Yet in far too many training halls, this essential concept is treated like an afterthought, relegated to a brief mention before the flashier techniques take center stage. Why? Because it’s not cinematic. It…
Crowds Can Kill: Riots, Protests, and Panic
We’ve all been in a crowd, a packed concert, a highwaytraffic, a rush-hour subway platform. Usually, it’s just an inconvenience. But a crowd has a mind of its own, and when that collective mind turns volatile, it can become one of the most dangerous forces on earth. In these high-density, high-stakes scenarios, the difference between…
Shotgun or AR for Home Defense?
When it comes to facing the many choices available in terms of home defense, decisions can be difficult. What follows is only my opinion, agree or disagree, I am just putting this out there because I was asked. Handgun or Long Gun I would recommend the long gun in almost every home defense situation. With…
Old Dog, New Tricks
If you ever reach a point where you think there is nothing left to learn in your chosen field, you are only fooling yourself. I have spent decades in the study of self-defense/self-protection and this week I had an eye-opening moment during a presentation from a young instructor named Mike Pana, an instructor from the…
When Injury Takes a Toll
Through the years I have had many setbacks in training. I suffered some pretty serious damage to my knee in my early teens. This single injury resulted in several more injuries through the course of my life, and today I have what I call a bad knee, and a worse knee. Of course, the knee…
2A: Lessons from the COVID-19 Shutdown
My last post was about staying safe in the current situation with coronavirus and the shutdowns and all of the panicked buying going on, supply shortages, etc. As this thing is affecting all of us, I had hoped to assuage my beloved reader’s thoughts. This time around, I am looking at a specific action being…
EDC: Colt Night Cobra
When I first entered into the gun community, I knew next to nothing about firearms and the many different things to consider when purchasing a firearm. I bought a revolver that was too big to conceal, and then bought a full-sized semi-auto when I was looking toward a carry gun. Being an absurdly large human,…
The “Teach Men Not to Rape” Line
So, I was scrolling through my Facebook so-called newsfeed. When something caught my eye. It was a comment by a former student on a post shared by another former student of mine. Before we continue, I need to stress, nothing contained herein is an attack of any sort on my former students. They are wonderful people…
Gurkha Kukri
*Trigger Warning* If you are anti-knife, this post may traumatize you. This is not a butter knife we are going to discuss and ~gasp~ look at today. The Gurkha Kukri might be described by those who have little to no experience with knives as a “fully-semi-automatic-high-powered-high-capacity-military-style-assault-knife”. Proceed with caution. The latest addition to my collection…
Do You Have a Reason to Train?
There is a stark contrast between people who have a clear purpose for training and people who are thinking about training. I see it time and again. People say they would like to get in shape, or think it would be good to be able to protect themselves. But these people never have that follow-through….
Initial Reaction
A recent conversation prompted this post. There is a common saying for when things go wrong; “Sh*t got real”. There is a lot that happens at that moment when things “get real”. Whether the situation is a mugging, carjacking, active shooter, ambush assault, or riots (strangely called protesting by our modern media) your first reaction will be…
Escape, Hide, Fight: Is There a “Right” Answer?
As a follow-up and a way to answer some of the questions that have come in since I made my last post, I am going to look at the three main ideas of what to do in the event of an active shooter/terrorist shooter* situation. There are three standard responses taught regarding the bad guy…
Train in What?
The question comes up often, and I am sure I am not the only instructor who gets this question over and over. You say I should train to protect myself, train in what style? When I urge people to train, I am not suggesting that I am the only one who should teach them. I…
On Defense
If we listen to the news or spend too much time reading social media “newsfeeds”, we are hit with wave after wave of emotionally charged propaganda (and this is true regardless of which side of any particular issue you stand). I want to take a moment here and look directly and honestly at one issue…
Why I Stopped Being Afraid of Guns
There is a lot of fear-mongering going on right now, and I want to go ahead and share with you just a bit on my change in stance regarding firearms. I was raised to be afraid of guns. There are a lot of reasons for this. People only know what they know and experience. My…
The Free Course is almost here!
I have long promised a free online self-defense course, and the wait is almost over. The biggest issue was in finding the right platform, and once that was solved, the work began. After a lot of back and forth on the issues of what should be covered and what could be left out, I have…
An Interview with Pavel Macek, Sifu
In the continuing series, I present to you today an interview with Pavel Macek Sifu. He currently lives and teaches in the Czech Republic, in addition to teaching seminars in many different countries. I really appreciate the mindset that traditional training IS practical. Very knowledgeable and personable as well, he brings a lot to the…
The Useful Fiction
In looking at the many and varied approaches to self-protection out there, I did what is becoming ever more uncommon. I started thinking. There are a widely separated set of world views to choose from. But at the base, we see the world in the way that best suits our needs at the moment. Our world…
Protecting our Kids
I posted and removed an article on keeping your children safe. I posted it because I had a few moments of inspiration that day, and removed the article the next day because it was so incomplete. This new offering is hardly complete, but the subject is complex. I feel this one is a much better…
Five Things to Remember About Self-Defense
There are some factors in the subject of self-defense that must be remembered for any training or study to do you any good at all. Some of these factors are either ignored or given only the most basic mention in a self-defense class. In this article I am going to take a look at some…
Dangerous new game is spreading
There is a disgusting game that is spreading to different parts of the U.S. called knockout. It has existed roughly since 2005 under various names, “Point ’em Out, Knock ’em Out” and “Knockout King” Here is a news story on the subject: This crime is committed by kids who really should have better sense, and…
Self-Defense for Children: What to Teach and How much is too much?
There have been a series of emails coming in that have been asking questions along the same line of thinking. The main points being: What should be included in a children’s self-defense class? Where is the line regarding how much information the child needs to hear in a class, without crossing the line? In other words;…
Important and Ignored Self-Defense Topics
When we discuss self defense, there are a few things that must be kept in mind. In this article I am going to look at a few of these facts. A lot of what is sold as “self-defense” is not going to give most of this information more than a passing mention, but they are…
The OODA Loop and Self-Protection
Today I am going to take a look at the OODA Loop and the role that it plays in self-defense/self-protection. For those who do not know, the OODA Loop is the name given to the decision-making process. The term itself comes from Colonel John Boyd who was researching the mental process used by fighter pilots…
Road Rage or The Stupidity of it All
Yesterday I had a chance to see a road rage/traffic bully in action. In the photo above, you see the hood of my car and the black truck that tried to run me into the lane with on-coming traffic because he truly needed to be one car length further down the road than he would…
Wallace Smedley 