We work both ends of the violence training spectrum and all points in between — we go from the simplest application that requires no more coordination than you got up off the couch and all the way up to techniques that are a marvel of balance, timing, skill and athletic ability.
What does this mean for you?
It means that no matter what your goal in violence training, we can get you there.
If you’re just looking for immediate, street-lethal ‘self-defense,’ we can do that in two days or less.
If you’re looking for professional-level hand-to-hand combat skills, we can challenge you, and keep you busy, for a decade.
Our seminars, videos and manuals are a distillation of more than 20 years of experience, designed not to impress but to actually teach you what you need to know to get the job done right now. We could have very easily chosen to make things needlessly difficult to make ourselves look good, to make you jump though all the hoops for 20 years just like we did.
So what is the information in our seminars and information products distilled from?
Our 10-year curriculum, as taught at the San Diego Center, consists of more than 1,500 coordination sets in writing, each one an example of striking, joint breaking, throwing, with and against various tools (knife, stick, gun).
Striking
The use of body weight as a battering ram to smash, break, rupture, or otherwise wreck vital anatomy so it doesn’t work anymore. When you combine the 58 target areas (that can be smashed with your bare hands) with the various body tools used in striking (fist and open hand, forearm, elbow, shoulder, hip, knee, shin and foot (blade-edge, ball of foot and heel)) and the various ways of employing them (straight and cross punches, hooks, uppercuts, backhands, forehand hammers; straight, side, back and crescent kicks) you end up with an enormous number of possible combinations. More than you could learn in a lifetime of study. Far, far more than you could ever conceivably need in a lifetime of violent action.
The use of body weight and leverage to break or tear out joints, deforming the limbs and denying him the use of the limb from the broken joint outward. This is crippling injury. When you combine the 10 discrete joints you can break with your bare hands (neck, spine, shoulder, elbow, wrist, fingers, hip, knee, ankle) with the six base leverages (the six degrees of motion that joints can move through, bending-twisting-rocking, both forward and back) you end up with 36 basic joint breaking techniques. (It’s important to note that not every joint can be broken in every direction — for example, we can only break the elbow in one direction, not six.) If we take into account that we can place our mass & motive force on either side of the lever — we can push it one way or be on the other side and pull until it snaps — we get 72 basic breaks. This can be further complicated (or, more correctly, expanded with more options) when we take into account the multitude of ways to set up, hang on to, and get it done (breaking the elbow with the legs instead of the hands and arms, for instance). Again, we end up with more possible breaks than you can learn in a lifetime.
The use of body weight against structure and balance, with the ultimate goal of smashing the brain against the ground. We’re looking for traumatic brain injury and/or a broken neck. There are five basic throws (leg sweeps, base-breaks, drop, hip and shoulder throws) which can be concatenated upward into innumerable techniques when you add variables like front and back, standing or on the ground, and all of the various ways to set up, hang on to, and execute the throws. This becomes another possible lifetime of study on just this topic alone.
All of the above can be done with tools — knife and stick. A knife becomes an extra handle for a joint break or throw; a stick becomes an added lever for both.
Our baseline assumption is that he’s bigger, faster, stronger, armed, knows everything you do (and is better at it), and brought his friends. Then we use crippling injury to make none of it matter. We show you how to move to put yourself on the outside of the group — and how to put people down as you do so.
On the Ground
Injury is injury, whether we’re all standing up or laying down. We do all the things that are forbidden in MMA competitions — eye gouging, groin crushing, finger breaking — the things that make grappling not work so well. Instead of wrestling or going strength-to-strength, skill-to-skill we go for that ugly, crippling injury.
All At Once
If you think that’s a lot, we haven’t even begun to combine them — striking into a joint break and then executing a throw; or using a joint break to drive a throw; or breaking a joint mid-air during a throw. Throwing the man and riding him down, striking him into the ground. While using a knife. Or a stick. From the ground. While he’s got a gun.
You are only limited by your skill and imagination.
For all that, all of those myriad elements are unified by a single overarching goal — injury. You don’t need to know how to do all those things, combined and practiced over 20 years to stick your thumb in someone’s eye. In fact, you know how to do that right now, just having read those words.
All you really need is one small injury to radically change the situation in your favor.
You can learn that from any of our information products, or, better yet, a hands-on seminar.
PS. If you’re lucky enough to live in San Diego and like the idea of hitting the mats — hard — three times a week and being kept busy for a year — three years — 10 years! of learning something new at every class — we’d love to have you join our training community. Please feel free to contact me at
for more information.
