Personal Defense Readiness Background

Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network. Today on the Personal Defense DVD series, we're going to talk to Tony Blauer, Blauer Tactical Systems USA. The founder of the Spear System and the Personal Defense Readiness Program. Tony, tell everybody a little bit about the background, the PDR and how you got to the place you are today sharing this information with people about efficient close quarters self-defense. I've been teaching now for almost three decades. And what we did is develop a system and it was really accidental. It was a listening to students who weren't being very successful defending themselves and realizing that so much of the training was geared around the sport model, just the physical tactics. And there was nothing on fear management, psychology, performance psychology and the scenario. And so we started putting stuff together back in '79, 1980. I mean, it's just so many years ago. And we developed a scenario model that kept evolving and evolving. And it really kind of crystallized into the PDR program, Personal Defense Readiness. Because of students and self-defense instructors around the world who started to read our articles and get our videos and the serendipity of it as they, you know, I would get a call I mean, the first call came from a guy in New York. He said, "How do I get affiliated with you?" And I said, "Well, you can't." And he said, "Why not?" I said, "Cause I don't know what that means". And it was that innocent. It wasn't some business motive. It was really people saying what we're learning isn't working. I know how to kick, I know to punch, but I'm freezing, I'm hesitating in the confrontation. So what we did is we put together, it's kind of a reverse engineer model. We looked at real life incidents and we kind of looked at that butterfly effect. How would that change? How would that, if my awareness changed, would it be in that situation? If I'm in that situation, how do I need to think? How do I need to coach myself? And then what are the tactics that are appropriate for that situation? So, you know, you remember doing martial arts as a kid and we're doing high kicks and blocks and flying sidekicks. And now you find yourself in a car jacking or home invasion or a multiple sales situation, where are those tactics? They're nowhere. So it's very similar to a skills in isolation concept that we work with all the time. When we talk about efficiency and effectiveness in context. And I think that is what I've always admired about the assistance that you bring to people is it works in context. It's not just a skill in isolation model. When it comes to that context, what is your research shown? and what's led you to the methodology you used in terms of training? Well, it was always, you know, real simple that, you know, looking at real fights, where do they happen and what do I need to know to either avoid them or to defend myself in them. So we developed a real simple 3D's model, detect, diffuse, defend. If you can detect, you can avoid. If you can avoid, you diffuse and deescalate. And if you can't do that, you need to be your own bodyguard and defend yourself. Each one of those blocks the detect, diffuse, defend, then has a subset of skills and awareness that you need to know. You need to know what is my routine? What are people looking for? What messages do I convey walking around as the good Samaritan. And then what are deescalation? The psychology of choice speech. How do I diffuse and deescalate so that I've got a moral and legal foundation for, God forbid, I gotta defend myself. How do I articulate why I did that? And if you look at those brackets that we tried to keep everything very conceptual, very principle-based so that any person, I mean, we've done classes for little kids. We've done classes for operators at the highest level. The research model is the same because our tactics are all based on physiology. They've been vetted and reviewed by doctors on three continents. Four different doctors who don't know each other. We've had scientific and legal. So are the tactics, the toolbox we teach is based on how human beings actually move. The reason we selected them was looking at surveillance videos, dashboard videos, eye witness reports, people coming into class going "This happened to me. I didn't know what to do". And we would build it like that. That's great. You know, the idea of putting things into context and researching, of course, is vital to any valid program in my opinion. And of course I've been working with under Spear System and being instructor with you. We've talked together and been in your classes for years. And that application to everyone, the application, not just the professionals, the soldiers, the law enforcement, but to anyone interested in self-defense is obviously something. It puts you in demand and your staff instructors and your company in demand all over the world. And today we're going to focus obviously on that last D that defend. And really help people develop their natural tools and understand how they would actually need to react and what they can do to practice to get ready for that reaction. In that worst case scenario, that dynamic critical incident. Yeah. I'm real excited to share this, it's a great opportunity. The neat thing about that is what unites all of us all over the world is physiology. And I always tell people that the martial arts system that you select is usually something that's going to resonate with your personality but it doesn't mean it's street ready. It doesn't mean it transfers. And so, the system that we're going to teach, the basic, the natural tools, the scenarios, are things that we find ourselves in anywhere in the world. At any time, they're not. And the tactics we're going to show are not gender, age, or tasks specific, so. Well listen I'm really excited about it. I'm glad to be able to help and look forward to hearing the information and seeing what you guys have to put out today. And just glad to hear it. Thanks. Thanks, Rob. Check out more videos, just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.