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 Protection
What is Missing
I’m not here to preach. I’m just an old martial arts instructor who’s seen a lot, too much. Maybe. I’ve watched generations grow, stumble, rise, and fall. But lately, something feels different. Not just in the dojo, but everywhere. In schools, online, in the streets. There’s a kind of emotional chaos that’s hard to ignore….
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…
Empowering Teens through the Martial Arts
I had a wonderful student years ago, and for our purposes here, we will call her Lisa, but that isn’t her real name. Lisa was not a bad kid by any stretch of the imagination. She did have some trauma in her life before she became my student. She also had some odd choices in…
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…
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…
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…
Revisiting the Terrorist Threat
A while back I took a look at the threat of terrorism from the standpoint of personal safety. I said what I had to say on the subject, and I really had no plans to address the issue further. But attack after attack, and some of the attacks come close to home for me, living…
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…
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…
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 