The direction for the Reality-Based system in 2007
Jim Wagner
It is now 2007 and there are plenty of exciting events and projects to look forward to in the Reality-Based Personal Protection system. First, I’ll start with the changes that will take place:
1. Prices for each Level 1 and Level 2 courses will remain the same for 2007 ($125.00 USD for student enrolment and $250.00 for instructor enrolment), but the difference is that students now will only receive 6 hours of instructions instead of 8 hours. Instructors will still get 8 hours of training, all course support material, their own custom Reality-Based Personal Protection logo bearing their own name, listing on this website, and my endorsement as a certified Reality-Based Personal Protection instructor.
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2. Level 2 now consists of the following courses: Conflict Conditioning, Improvised Weapons, Scenario Training, Control & Defense, and Handgun Survival. Our two new courses, Control & Defense and Scenario Training, replace the instructor courses Women’s Survival and Children’s Survival, which are now in Level 3.
3. Level 3 now consists of the following courses: Women’s Survival, Children’s Survival, Business & Leadership, Marketing & Advertising, Training DVD Production. These courses are designed specifically for those who teach professionally, and are only open to Level 1 & Level 2 instructors. For 2007 Level 3 will only be offered once, and to be held at the Jim Wagner Reality-Based Personal Protection Training Facility in Los Angeles, United States.
Three Level 2 events for 2007
Jim Wagner
I will be teaching only three Level 2 courses this year. The first one will be coming up soon February 5 to 9 at my own facility in Los Angeles. The next one will be in Amsterdam, Holland May 7 to 11. The last one will be in Paris, France August 27 to 31.
Here are the course descriptions:
Conflict Conditioning Monday, 8 am to 5 pm
When confronted with physical violence a person has three choices: 1. Fight 2. Flight 3. Submit. Most people submit to their attacker and become victimized. This course teaches Reality-Based Personal Protection instructors how to each their own students how to physically and mentally prepare for conflict so they can better handle the physical and emotional stress associated with real conflict. The exercises, drills, and training concepts come from elite police and military teams from around the world, from dozens of martial arts systems, as well as original Jim Wagner techniques. You’ll learn German GSG9 strength exercises, French Foreign Legion punishment drills, Apache Indian warrior tests, Israeli YAMAM “boiler pressure drills,” U.S. military calisthenics, Moroccan military field strength training, SWAT team confidence builders, and much more. When it comes to teaching mind over matter we’ll let you play the K.I.M.S. game, try the Fight & Write drill, see how thermal shock training parallels conflict stress, and make you the instructor a little bit tougher.
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Scenario Training Tuesday, 8 am to 5 pm
This course, after the warm-up, starts off with contact conflict training wearing protective gear – the same type of gear worn by the police and military when they train in defensive tactics. This is the only way to test yourself and what you know. However, we don’t just throw you to the wolves, but we will work with you at your own skill level and endurance. Then comes the training that truly separates us from all other self-defense systems at this point in time (because others are copying us already), and that is how to turn your workout area into a Reality-Based training environment. You learn about lighting, sound effects, and props. Then we’ll teach you how you and your training partners can be more realistic in training scenarios with scripts, stage make-up (simulating a drug induced state, injuries, or for disguise), and costume. Towards the end of the course you will take all that you have learned and run through a few conflict scenarios and see for yourself how much more realistic it makes your training.
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Control & Defense Wednesday, 8 am to 5 pm
This course is all about getting out of situations where someone is trying to control you through force, or how you can control someone in order to survive or to hand them over to the police. The first thing you’ll start learning is how to get out of the common choke holds and bear hugs used on the streets and battlefields. You’re going to find out quick that there are not that many, and the basic principles that threads through all of them. Then we’re going to get away from the ME ONLY mentality and learn how to rescue others after a violent encounter. After all, you may be with an associate, a friend or even a loved one who goes down and you need to get them out of the hostile area. A fight is not over until your party is out of the area. We call this portion of training Victim Rescue. We’ll then go into the dos and don’ts of making a citizen’s arrest, how to restrain someone, and how to avoid killing someone accidentally with positional asphyxiation.
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Improvised Weapons Thursday, 8 am to 5 pm
One Mind, Any Weapon. That’s the motto of this hands-on course which will teach you how to use any object or weapon, other than a firearm or knife, to defend yourself in spontaneous physical conflict. From a broom in a closet to a rolled up magazine aboard an aircraft, you’ll learn the striking and blocking angles of flexible weapons, long and short impact weapons, and throwing weapons: solids, liquids, and powders. You’ll be shown proper target acquisition, plus the strengths and weaknesses of teach weapon system. However, this course is more that learning the latest techniques, we’ll also run you through police and military style exercises that will take you right up to the edge of real conflict, but in safety. You’ll experience exotic training drills such as the Roman Legion Blocking, Kali low overhang fight, Apache Indian eye shielding, garrote tactics, long gun disarms, surviving an Improvised Incendiary Device, and more. As a bonus you’ll get into the mind of the criminal and learn about improvised weapons making; skills you may need one day if you are ever held hostage or have to fight your way out of a bad situation with only the clothes on your back or common objects around you.
Handgun Survival Friday, 8 am to 5 pm
Since air guns are a vital part of the Reality-Based Personal Protection system in simulating gun violence, such as robberies and small arms terrorist attacks, through the practice of Conflict Rehearsal, it is vital for the Reality-Based instructors to know gun safety and range procedures inside and out in order to avoid injuries and to make training more realistic. In this course you will be using an air gun that fires (through a mechanical process) a 6mm plastic projectile accurately up to 21 feet / 7 meters. The secondary benefit to taking this course is that you will know how to effectively use a gun should you ever be in a position where you have to disarm a criminal or a terrorist and have to use that weapon to save lives. In this course the classroom will be treated like an actual range, and therefore, you will learn standard police and military range safety rules and procedures as well as proper gun safety: handling and usage. You’ll also be taught the standard shooting positions: standing, kneeling, sitting, and prone as well as tactical movement.
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Movie Review: Apocalypto
Jim Wagner
Last night I went to see the new movie Apocalypto made by Academy Award winning Mel Gibson, and I highly recommend that all Reality-Based enthusiasts go see this film for it’s realistic and very graphic fight scenes.
This 2 hour and 18 minute story is about a Mayan warrior in the 1400’s who must fight an enemy raiding party in order to save the lives of his family. I won’t give any of the details so as not to give away the story line.
The fight scenes involve empty hand combat situations, lots of war clubs brutality, and a few realistic knife fights. The action is continuous throughout the movie, and brings up very real emotions for those of us who have had to fight for our lives before.
The fight scenes in this movie are a good reminder to all of us just how fast and violent fighting really is.
Since I am also a history buff, and research the fighting methods of every culture I come across in my world travels, this movie really made history come alive for me. On a few occasions I have visited the Mayan ruins in the jungles of southern Mexico. I’ve had the pleasure of climbing the great pyramid at Chichen Itza overlooking the Temple of the Warriors, and to see the ancient temple of Tulum overlooking the turquoise Caribbean.
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Reality-Based Instructor of the Week
Jim Wagner
Mike Ekkers, 32, is one of the latest Level 1 instructors to be certified by me in Holland. He is like many who took advantage of the Reality-Based Personal Protection modular system. Due to his work schedule he took a few courses each time I came to Holland until he finally had all five Level 1 courses under his belt in November.
Mike has over 23 years of experience in the martial arts. He has studied several systems such as Kyokushin Karate, Judo, Jiu-Jitsu, Filipino Escrima, Silat and Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do earning instructor status in a few of them.
Although Mike enjoys the traditional martial arts he teaches reality-based methods in order to prepare his students for today’s violence. He said, “I felt like my former training didn’t effectively deal with modern situations so I started training with Jim Wagner and his friend Major Avi Nardia (Israeli KAPAP system).”
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Mike first learned about Reality-Based Personal Protection through my articles in Black Belt magazine. “What attracted me most is the completeness of the system and the absence of dead weight” Mike told me. “I believe that the martial arts were intended to preserve life first, and that is why most people come to the martial arts. However, too many self-defense instructors kept copying each other’s illusions until over time they forgot what real self-defense looked like. That’s why I like the Reality-Based Personal Protection system. It delivers what others have promised for so long.”
Each time Mike was in my class he gave it his all. He loves to learn, and is not afraid to did deeper than most. Not only is he a competent fighter, but he desires to know the martial arts on an intellectual level as well. He wants to know what is the most practical solution for any given problem.
For those of you in the Schagen and Alkmaar areas you can contact Mike directly at info@bushin.nl or visit his website at http://www.bushin.nl/eindex.html at the Bushin Martial Arts School.
Swedish Reality-Based student survives gang robbery
Andre Angantyr
I am a Level 1 instructor in southern Sweden and I would like to tell all of you fellow Reality-Based practitioners about one of my students, Michael, who survived a robbery in Thailand recently.
Michael went to Thailand for five weeks of vacation and had a great time, until his last day in Phuket. He and his girlfriend rented a motorcycle and took a drive up into the scenic mountains. When it started to get dark they decided to head back for the hotel. As they came down the road and made their way around a curve six men on four motorcycles raced right up next to them and ran them off the road until they had no choice but to stop. It was that or crash the bike into a retaining wall.
As soon as Michael and his girlfriend came to an abrupt stop the six men jumped off of their motorcycles and surrounded the couple. Michael quickly got off of his own motorcycle so he would have some mobility. Two of them immediately took the woman’s cell phone and her passport. The other four men decided to give Michael problems. One of the robbers slugged Michael just under the eye socket and then ripped Michael’s digital camera from him. The second subject was attempting to pull something from his pocket, perhaps a weapon, when Michael decided to take action by grabbing the man’s wrist before he could pull it out and struck the man twice in the face. Michael then spun around and went for the next closest target and went straight for head shots. He knew then and there that he was now fighting for his life.
Michael managed to knock three of his attackers down in the slug fest. As he was preparing to fight to the bitter end he noticed that his girlfriend several feet away had herself broken free of her captors and trying frantically to start the motorcycle. Michael remembered a technique from Crime Survival, grabbed a handful of coins from his pocket, and threw it at them. The distraction worked and Michael ran to the just started motorcycle, jumped on, and the two drove away. Once they got to the first town they went to the local police station and reported the crime.
Neither Michael nor his girlfriend had any serious injuries. When Michael returned to Sweden, and recounted the story to me, he said that he credits the instructions that I gave him teaching him Reality-Based Personal Protection. Michael had also received training from Peter Falk, the Reality-Based Director of the Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland).
Send in your story
Jim Wagner
If any Reality-Based Personal Protection student or instructor has an interesting story or news item that they would like published in this section please submit it via email to:
info@jimwagnerrealitybased.com
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