personal safety

Go Home Safe To Your Family!

Self Defense w/ Jiu Jitsu Martial Arts Training

No matter what your line of business, your number one job is to Go Home Safe to your family! I’m a paramedic in NYC who’s experienced more than one close shave; they scared me enough to want to pursue self defense training, which I believe has saved my life more than once in my, over ten year, 911 career. Details of my experience are noted in My Story.

Are you an EMT, Fire Fighter, Paramedic, Nurse, Social Worker, or just an ordinary Joe or Jane on the street, who’d like to have an added element of security, confidence, and control? Jiu Jitsu Martial Arts is one of the most effective tools in mastering Self Defense. Why? Because Jiu Jitsu doesn’t rely on size, strength or athletic ability, but on using an attacker’s energy against him.

I have specially designed classes to teach the basic elements of jiu jitsu self defense to the beginner, intermediate and advanced student. JOIN US by clicking on the >> Join Us << link, or on the “Classes” tab on the top right side of this page.

Or, if you have a question, or need a little more information, please >> Contact Us << at your earliest convenience.

Published by: Dave Heuthe, American Kobe Jiu Jitsu Federation Black Belt & Certified Instructor. Dave provides group personal defense classes where lessons are taught in various locations, privately, at Bob Malvagno’s School of Self Defense, and through in-house work programs (e.g. -Fire Department, employer, churches & synagogues, community centers, etc.) in the Nassau County and Sufflok County, Long Island (LI), NY area. Dave’s business is to provide programs that help his students (adults, seniors, teens & children) master self defense. BECOME A CLASS MEMBER TODAY!

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Can the sight impaired be taught martial arts?

Feb 11th, 2010

by admin.

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Anyone Can Be Taught Jiu Jitsu Martial Arts Training

By Dave Heuthe

In the 70’s TV show Kung Fu one of the masters in the temple was blind. In fact he seemed to be Cane’s primary teacher and mentor. There was such a bond between the two that years after he left the temple Cane traveled to meet master Po for his birthday. There was also a TV show, Longstreet, in which the main character was blind. In one episode Bruce Lee was a guest star who taught Longstreet Kung Fu. Is this just TV hype or can a sight impaired person be taught and more importantly effectively perform martial arts. In my experience they can.

First of all let’s remember that being blind or sight impaired has a legal definition. The continuum is from those who are legally blind, in regards to driving a car, to those who have no sight at all. Given this span the degree of ability varies greatly, but with time, patience and properly tailored instruction they can be taught.

One concept is this: Every weakness is a strength, every strength a weakness. What does that mean? We all have strengths and weaknesses, that’s a fact. How we view them is just as important. For example, if you’re small someone might look at you as an easy mark. A strong attacker might drop his guard assuming you cannot defend yourself. If you can defend yourself he’s made a fatal mistake. He will be quite surprise as he looks up at you from the ground. In the same way a sight impaired person, who is trained, has an advantage because the attacker will assume that he can just walk up and assault or rob him.

How do you teach the sight impaired martial arts? First of all we must realistically look at the limitations of the student in choosing a style and understand, to be effective the sight impaired student must be in close contact with the attacker. Therefore, Jiu Jitsu with its combinations of infighting strikes locks and arm bars would be the most easily learned and most effective style.

Second what method of teaching do you use? The main challenge is that you cannot use visual cues. To say “Do this” or “move this way” doesn’t help the sight impaired because he can’t see what you’re doing. Like with any other skill it needs to be broken down into well described steps. Once you walk through the technique the student can begin to work off his other sense cues like touch once he acts out the movements with a partner. The more he practices the more natural the movements become and therefore the faster they are performed.

Thirdly, the student needs to how to rely on her other senses in jiu jitsu the same way she relies on them for the other situations in her daily life. It has been proven that the brain actually remaps itself using the portion that is normally used for sight and using it for other senses making them more acute. This is taught by testing the student’s senses and demonstrating to her how she connects with her environment.

Fourthly, like any other skill it takes practice. With all the instruction and work with the instructor if the student does not practice with a partner the newly taught skills will be lost. With diligent practice a sight impaired person can learn to defend herself in real life situations.

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What is self-defense

Apr 14th, 2009

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Self Defense – Another Look

Self-defense is the ability to come out of violent situations alive and if possible unhurt and with all of your possessions. For most persons, self-defense is learning how to beat someone up (or use any other suitable technique like throws, locks,…). This is the stuff you will learn in most martial-arts or self-defense classes. Unfortunately this is only a part of the whole self-defense business. In my eyes, self-defense consists at least of the following parts:

Conflict prevention
Conflict avoidance
Situation analysis
Fear control
Deescalation
Running away
Use of violence
Stopping the use of violence
The law

In the following I will try to explain what I mean by the respective points.

Conflict prevention

The most important part of the whole self-defense business is something that is hardly self-defense at all. It is the prevention of any conflicts. Important factors in conflict prevention are education, guidance, tolerance and parents/educators attention (and maybe to a certain degree, punishment). These are measures that have to be present from the beginning and are lacking in certain cultures, regions or groups in society. If they are not there, they have to be built up step by step, until a peaceful society exists. Each individual can influence its surrounding by increasing the level of non-violence through his actions (the most extreme case for this is certainly mahatma gandhi). Other ways are the legal system, education by the parents or the education system.

Conflict avoidance

The standard sentence “don’t walk down dark alleys” tries to capture the meaning behind the conflict avoidance subject, it goes much farther than simple rules though. Avoiding a conflict can start by not going to places (the dark alleys) but for this, these places have to be identified and it has to be possible to not go there (if you work near such a place or in such a region, you just have to go there). It continues with the standard “how to behave” rules like having straight posture, looking up, walk confident and so forth. These things help to a certain extend (and good posture is anyway a good thing). The next thing and this is where it starts to become harder, is to watch your surrounding, try to identify people that don’t belong there or look suspicious and try to go out of their way if possible. This is hard as most people have much better things to do than to be suspicious all the time. You can train to be subconsciously aware of your direct surroundings (the people around you and how they behave) as you are aware of your surroundings when driving a car (how the vehicles are driving, braking and turning) .

Situation analysis

As soon as a potentially dangerous situation arises, it has to be analyzed as fast as possible to decide what actions have to be taken. The analysis includes the following:

What is the “level” of the situation (angry glares, hefty discussion, punches flying, rage,…)
Number of attackers and who is their leader
Number of attacked persons
Are weapons involved
Are improvised weapons around
What is the location (a forest or in the middle of a supermarket)
Is there help available
What are the escape paths

Each of these factors influences what you are going to do next. You have to learn how to judge these factors and take your decision as fast as possible as soon you detect a self-defense situation.

Fear control

When a self-defense situation arises it is possible and even probable, that you will be filled with fear. This is normal. You can learn to cope with this fear. This means, that you have to prepare yourself and train how to overcome this state of fear (the fear won’t go away) and still do something despite the fear. This is partly something you can try to train by simulating fear-like situations and partly something that you have to mentally prepare by visualizing situations that can create fear and what you have to do when they arise.

De-escalation

Many nasty situations can be solved by purely talking to the attacker(s). Whether this is possible largely depends on the state of the attacker(s) and how far the situation has escalated so far. The tools you can use to deescalate are to be found in subjects as rhetoric and psychology. Some means you have at your disposition are apologies, agreement (it’s harder to be angry at someone who agrees with you), avoid contradiction and so forth.

Running away

A very clever solution to many self-defense problems is removing yourself from the scene. In most cases this can be done by running away, but driving away, taking the next bus or entering a building can lead to the same result. Running away can be a solution at any point of a confrontation, before it starts, after an attacker has hit you, after you have hit him once and after you have controlled him.

Use of violence

Applying violence is the last resort you have when being attacked. You try to inflict enough damage or control to your attacker so that the fighting stops. The use of violence is the main subject that is taught in most martial arts classes. It should contain at least the following points:

technique against unarmed and armed attackers, standing and on the floor
development of force, stability and speed
learn how to fight (take away the fear of hitting and being hit)
positional judgment of the attackers
vulnerable points of the human body
training of situations (attackers that grab, punch, shove,…)
simulation of the reality (as close as possible in a controlled environment)

There are many teaching methods on how to learn these things.

Stopping the use of violence

As important as it is to recognize when to start using violence, it is to stop using violence. This can be the case in these situations:

The attacker is no longer able to defend himself (you become the attacker)
The attacker is fleeing
The attacker does no longer attack (e.g. he became reasonable)
Another solution becomes the preferred one (e.g. the attacker’s friends turn up and you should start running)
The police arrives and starts to intervene

The law

As soon as a violent confrontation is over (and in some cases even after non-violent ones) someone (most of the times the counsel for the prosecution) will see if there is need for an accusation. If this happens, the accused person will have to defend itself on a trial. Even when you act in self-defense it can happen that you are this person. It may not be clear from the outside, that you were the one who was defending himself (the attacker or witnesses can lie), you can also have exaggerated the violence you used in the given situation (many countries have laws to cover these cases). If you land in such a situation it is certainly advisable to get yourself a good lawyer. But more importantly, if you train your self-defense, train for appropriate behaviour and actions. It is very bad to train how to smash someones larynx (a deadly technique), when he just slaps you on the cheek. If you train that way, the probability is big, that you will act the same way in a real situation.

Conclusion

Self-defense is a very complex subject and has to be treated that way. Most self-defense courses focus way too much on the violent part of the whole thing. It is very important to give the other parts a more prominent part in the teaching of self-defense. Each of the points I mentioned so far could easily fill a whole blog post (or even a whole book). So maybe I will take up on one or the other and expand on it at a later point.

Source: Ste’s Self-Defense

Republished by: Dave Heuthe, American Kobe Jiu Jitsu Federation Black Belt & Certified Instructor. Dave provides group personal defense classes where lessons are taught in various locations, privately, at Bob Malvagno’s School of Self Defense, and through in-house work programs (e.g. -Fire Department, employer, churches & synagogues, community centers, etc.) in the Nassau County and Sufflok County, Long Island (LI), NY area. Dave’s business is to provide programs that help his students (adults, seniors, teens & children) master self defense. BECOME A CLASS MEMBER TODAY!

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Safety strategies for EMS

Mar 31st, 2009

by admin.

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How to Stay Safe

By: Dave Heuthe

How can we as EMTs and paramedics stay safe? Our job puts us in potentially dangerous situations every day. We deal with the public in a similar way that the police do. People call us for help and they expect us to solve problems or resolve disputes that they can’t resolve on their own. Though we don’t deal with criminals in the act of a crime, we do deal with people who, for a variety of reasons, medical and/or emotional, may see us as a threat.

Emergency situations can escalate very quickly into a physical confrontation. This is where the police have a big advantage. They have weapons. We don’t. They are trained and authorized to use deadly force. We are not. So how can we deal with the reality of our job? Is there a way we can stay safe with the limitations we have? I believe there is.

In a previous article entitled “Awareness: our first and Best Defense” I wrote about how to avoid dangerous situations, but as you know we are not always in full control, mistakes happen and we can find ourselves face to face with danger. What do we do then?

Here are some basic strategies to stay safe.

1) If you find yourself in a dangerous situation LEAVE. If it’s obvious that you won’t be able to treat the patient, GET OUT OF THERE and call for the police. You remember them, the guys with the guns. It’s nice to get a medal for heroism, but not posthumously. People will talk about how brave you WERE, but your family will still be without you.

2) Speak in a calm voice. Don’t allow your emotions to take over. Don’t shout or yell. The Bible says, “A gentle answer turns away wrath.”

3) Don’t challenge. If a person puts his fists up don’t mirror him. He’ll see that as a challenge, which could escalate into a fist-fight. Step back with your hands out, palms facing him, saying, “I’m just here to help you.”

4) Put your ego in your pocket. We can’t allow ourselves to take what people say, in the heat of the moment, personally. Others may insult or accuse you, but remember they don’t know you. It really doesn’t matter what they say so let it go.

As I said before mistakes can happen, but if you follow these simple rules, your chances of going home safe are greatly increased.

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