Training Syllabus

Introduction to Basic Training Syllabus of Self Defence  & Personal Protection Training

 
From the start, pre-empting of potential problems by continual personal environment monitoring to avoid situations is encouraged and discussed. This is a very important component of the training syllabus.

Who wants to get involved in fighting? We discuss many of the concepts elsewhere on this site.
 
This training syllabus is an outline-working guide to direct students away from the sports and rules environments and oriental structures and weapons that take years to perfect. 
 
People enjoy their civil war re-enactment groups in this country, but they don't and can not carry their sword, bow and arrows and halberds when they pop down to the local ATM on horseback!
  
This is where we get back to how much we can legally do to someone in self defence - any carrying of weapons puts you in pre-emptive assailant mode in this country (UK).

Wandering around the local retail park (mall to our USA friends) with your katana will soon invoke an armed response unit.

Yet you, like myself, may have spent many years practising sword or staff utilisation as part of your art.
 
Knowing how to disembowel someone or snap their neck will hold no sway with the judge at your manslaughter or murder trial!
 
It must be appreciated that as well as the psychological and physical responses encountered (surprise, shock, fear, fight or flight decisions), that in physical confrontations:

With this in mind, the controlling framework of yoshiki go shin jutsu, has prioritised, reducing the broad syllabus of conventional (mostly Japanese) ju jitsu techniques to those more relevant to the western way of dress, life and self-protection requirements of escaping to safety - not stopping to fight! Incorporated is a sub layer of training to cater for the less threatening situations found in family and work arenas.

When you accept the concept of unsocial physical contact moving from fighting to to take control, finish the job and escape to safety as quickly as possible - then the removal of the padding of many generally accepted throws, locks and groundwork hold-downs found in most ju jitsu dojo traing syllabus is acceptable in favour of a leaner, faster style of effective, instinctive and natural movement with close quarter combinational strikes, takedowns and ‘get-ups’ and run.

This enables students to quickly learn simple, strong body basics in a controlled environment and then give them a smaller, progressive range of usable physical self-protection tools.

In this training syllabus for personal protection training, we put the ‘reality check’ back into play. We have to to assume that all our avoidance techniques have failed and it's come to the crunch.

Frankly, as a law-abiding citizen, you'll be crapping yourself.

Pretend practise is not the same as harsh reality!

So this is the focus of our training. The situation response may be just pre-emptive to gain a known physical response and in all cases - the final result sought is a subdued attacker(s) incapable of further aggression and a sharp escape.

Emphasis is placed on a simple system of training with natural reflex actions, linked with the body mechanics achievable by most adult age groups, plus some core underlying general principles. This prevents degeneration in to endless combinations of derived techniques to be remembered for ‘defence’ against multiple “what if” scenarios and the resulting mental bottlenecks at critical times.

When the student is being assessed in assailant situations and scenarios, the response will be as good as the training received and absorbed up to that point. 

As the student progresses the same attack scenario will be met by more confident and efficient responses and he or she will be encouraged to shape the available training to his or her own physical stature.

Skill Assessment

Every technique we pass to the student can be adopted, adapted and honed from the core concept to become the individual's - and match that individual's physique and talents - NOT just be a cloned art to be performed exactly like the teacher, and his teacher before him and all the class students around them! It must however, keep to the working concepts.

Demanding that everyone performs the same twenty standard jujutsu throws against any weight of person who can return ANY form of severe punishment is clearly an unreliable and inefficient use of training time for 100 pound females looking for self defence.

The average person picks up basic goshinjutsu quite quickly - and that is what we expect. In their coarsest attempt - if they try what they have been shown - it generally works on anyone in the room.

All people need goals and signs of achievement, so we have found it easier to continue to use the coloured belt system where the colour shows the level of competence reached against a syllabus. This helps everybody, including the instructors, to quickly acknowledge the standard held by each student, and take care not to over extend each student’s capabilities when doing or showing a technique or application.

Most of our adult students have no ego or lust to wear the next coloured belt, they are happy with the challenges of learning the blending of what we teach them. I'm continually assessing them each training lesson  - so when they reach a standard - we mutually agree a date and hold an assessment in the corner of the training area during a class or private lesson.

No fuss. It's my personal award to them.

Instructor grading, however, is a separate day event where we push the individual to the limit of their knowledge and physical capabilities.

Student Levels equate to kyu grades and are below Instructor Level which equate to dan grades. 

Please bear in mind that these coloured belts are an outwards indication of the training and skill acknowledgment of the individual within the training syllabus and the training group that awards it. 

UPDATE

For the last year or so I have experimented in teaching ordinary people by bypassing the learning curve of the basics of our competent, all round martial art and going straight to the advanced level and the severity and sometimes harsh, painful and chaotic arena of physical training required of modern personal protection principles and techniques.

Generally - I have to say - this hasn't worked well.

Without the gradual build up of all round skills to integrate and blend:

  distance evaluation,
  balance,
  guard and fence,
  punching,
  slapping,
  striking,
  elbowing,
  kneeing,
  kicking,
  throwing,
  standing grappling,
  take-downs,
  locks,
  strangles,
  groundwork,
  multiple attackers,
  civilian weapon attack responses,
  escape principles and techniques

- in a controlled condition - they do not have the perceptive base to build on for the reality of rule-less, referee-less, uncontrolled conditions when being attacked in any position or place.

Frankly - They QUIT!

So it's back to ways that do work.

All the above skills and tools will be acquired in stages through the vehicle of a martial art type performance evaluation system.
 
That 'martial art' must feed the requirements of the 21st century whilst drawing on all that has been proved functional and knowledge-based from previous centuries.
 
It must take what works and reject that which has been flawed by ignorant mis-interpretation.
 
It must take that which is supremely useful and proven in the street - and leave behind that which has become entrenched, dogmatic and performed with out good scientific evidence for its value, or only valid for an era, culture and lifestyle long gone.

During this growth we add the study of avoidance and awareness skills and effect of fear.

At the end we can start honing back the gross arsenal to become leaner. Students are now ammeniable to learning and emulating and practising the uncomfortable situations and under-pressure environments spoken and discussed by those veterans of daily forced encounters with reality and violence.

There is no magic bullet or guarantee.

Our revamped syllabus will allow an individual to grow an individuals effective set of skills, a healthier body and a positive personal mindset.

We sincerely hope that while the physical skills can be honed sharp - the mental awareness training will never let the skills be used for real!


Malcolm.
Summer 2008