REALITY-BASED MARTIAL ARTS STUDENTS LEARN MORE ABOUT FIGHTING THAN MOST
Jim Wagner
On Thursday, November 14th I landed at the Koln Bonn International Airport an took a taxi cab to my hotel and crashed for five hours having had only an hour and a half of sleep during my transatlantic trip. I had traveled to Germany to teach another series of courses at my Reality-Based Personal Protection European Headquarters in the heart of Cologne.
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To adjust to the different time zone, or else I’d be completely wiped out if I had to teach the day after landing, I take advantage of the two days of acclimation by posting articles on my Facebook page, getting in touch with my German Director, Tobias, working on RBPP projects, and hitting a museum or two to continue my research on human conflict.
This time I went to the Wallraf das Museum, for the price of 12 euros, specifically to study the medieval paintings and sculptures. I was not disappointed, for the museum was filled with a fantastic collection. Although most of the paintings on wood (a time before painting on canvas) were of New Testament Biblical scenes, most medieval painters did not know what ancient Hebrew and Roman armor looked like and so they just painted the Biblical characters wearing the clothes and armor of their day actually giving a historical glimpse into their own time period. The bonus was that I also got to see famous 19 th century works from Monet, Renoir, Degas, and others; although not related to human conflict, the masterpieces appealed to my artistic side. Most of my students don’t know this, but I am an artist having done oil on canvas, wood carving, metal work, mosaics, and ceramics. I was also in the world of advertising after the U.S. Army and before going into law enforcement.
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Besides the Wallraf I visited some of the medieval gates, walls, and fortifications that still are around the city of Cologne that I did not have a chance to look at last time.
On Saturday, November 16 th, I started at 8 am with my Level II course Conflict Conditioning. What made the course even better than normal was having Jorg Kuschel attended the course with a few of his black belts: Manfred Hollmann-Jasper, Ajeeth Sivanayagam, and Torben Hirschberb. Jorg runs the Kenju-ryu martial arts school not far from Cologne. He is one of those rare traditional-based martial arts instructors whose eyes are open to the growing market for Reality-Based Personal Protection and wants not only the training for himself, but wants his top people to get it from the sources as well. For the past year his school has been offering Reality-Based training to a new breed of students. To show his gratitude for me and the system he had new T-shirts printed up and presented me with one. The front of the shirt bears the Jim Wagner Reality-Based Personal Protection logo, and the back has the school logo. Many schools do this, have my logo printed on their official training T-shirts, and each time I am presented with one is a tremendous honor. To me it is the highest form of respect.
Surprisingly, the other students in the course were not affiliated with any self-defense schools. Pierre Einwachter has trained with several schools, and keeps coming back for more of my classes, and the others started as beginners with me and have stayed exclusively in the Reality-Based Personal Protection system. The one who I am proud of most is Sevil Dilbas. You may remember from last month’s news that she wrote an article about her GO BAG. Sevil, a 20-year-old student who understands the potentially violent world around her, graduated from Women’s Survival and Knife Camp. Since she has weekends off she wanted to participate in Conflict Conditioning. The men in the course were very accepting of her, the only woman in the class, and worked with her like one would a sister that they wanted to toughen up. She told me that she tried to get some of her friends to come with her, but they told her that she was “crazy.” I said to Sevil, “Welcome to my world. People know that crime and terrorism is a possibility, and that they could become a victim, but they just hope and pray it never happens to them. They’ll spend money for dinner and the movies, but not to learn how to protect themselves or their loved ones.” If governments didn’t make auto insurance mandatory most people wouldn’t get it, even though everyone knows thousands of car accidents happen every day around the world.
One of the favorite group exercises everyone seemed to enjoy, and hate at the same time, was the Israeli Boiler Pressure that I learned from my good friend Major Avi Nardia back in 2002 when I invited him to the United States to train members of the FBI, U.S. Marines, Orange County Sheriff’s S.W.A.T. Team, Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, and other local Southern California agencies. This was a reciprocal invitation for him inviting me to Israel to train the top Defensive Tactics instructors of Israel’s national police academy in 2001. The Israeli Boiler Pressure exercise is where a half dozen to a dozen martial artists are armed with kicking shields and circle a student. When the instructor gives the command, “Go!” the student must kick and punch at the shields. Then, one by one attackers alternate by hitting the student in the back, which means that he or she must turn to the new attacker and lay into the shield: kicks, punches, and knees with full intensity. Sometimes the circle is closed in tight, sometimes expanded, and a few times the order is given, “Squeeze him!” This goes on for a least a solid minute, and sometimes two or three depending on the student. If the student is giving up the pressure is increased, if a student is fierce and shows no signs of weakness the time is reduced. No matter who goes through it, beginner or Special Operations operator, everyone is spent by the end. I remember the first time I did it with Avi I was exhausted, but at least I didn’t have the dry heaves like the man before me or vomit on the grass like the man after me.
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Day Two was Control & Defense, which is everything about surviving chokes and holds, and how to control others; like for a citizen’s arrest or preventing Restraint Positional Asphyxiation. At the beginning of the course I also reminded the group that NO PRESSURE SHOULD BE APPLIED TO THE NECK FOR ANY STUDENT OVER 40-YEARS-OLD ( click here for video) , because it is like stepping on a water hose, and once the pressure is released built up plaque from an artery can be forced free and cause a stroke or death. Few martial arts know about this danger, and I let my students know about this very real danger. This is a preventable death in a self-defense school.
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Day Three was the course Situational Awareness. This class goes deeper than practically every civilian martial arts school on the planet. The students are learning things about conflict few others ever will: how to remember crime scenes and faces by playing various K.I.M.S. games, how to draw various tactical diagrams that will be vital for the police or a S.W.A.T. team, vehicle security, and probably the most important for conflict training development – scenario training. Any realistic martial arts technique that will be used in the streets or on the battlefield takes only minutes to master, but what is needed after a technique is mastered is to put it into the right context with scenarios. With a little guidance from me, my students were not only creating scenarios, but teaching them to others, and having them do them.
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Day Four was Improvised Weapons, and a course everyone looks forward to. Students don’t just learn different weapon systems, but master them: impact weapons, staff weapons, flexible weapons, and throwing weapons. They also get a couple of historical fighting lessons as well like spear fighting and throwing, which believe it or not ties into some modern techniques and tactics.
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The final day, Day Five that was held on Wednesday, November 20 th, is an in-depth course on gun safety, range safety and operations procedures, handgun familiarization, shooting positions, monthly qualification, single person tactics, and some intense shooting drills. Of course, this course uses air guns, and the whole purpose of this course is so that Reality-Based Personal Protection students and instructors can conduct realistic exercises and scenarios using air guns. If a school is not using air guns (or the equivalent of paint guns or Simunition who is incorporating the term I coined, "reality-based, as it concerns self-defense) then it is safe to say that that school is not “reality-based.” Many criminals and terrorists use firearms, and having a training gun that shoots real projectiles is an absolute must for understanding point blank and distance shooting situations.
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After finishing up Level II Tobias invited me to have dinner with him and his family, which has been our tradition for eight years now. Tobias is not just my Director, but to be honest, one of my best friends. We have the same interests, he’s a great martial artist and knife enthusiast, and we just enjoy spending time together “talking shop.” I’ve worked with him in Germany, the United States, and in Bulgaria.
Then came my much needed two days off. My courses are very physical and intense, most of them going a full 8 hours, and I’m getting a good workout as well demonstrating and sometimes jumping in to partner up with someone. On top of that I am talking the whole day. The rest is needed so that I am on top of my came come the weekend with Women’s Defense (a one-day course) and Pocket Stick & Tactical Pen.
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My last day off was good, because my Director of Luxemburg, Patrick Wengler, showed up so he could assist me and Tobias in the Women’s Defense course. He was there not only to play the role of attacker, but to really study me on how I teach women. I have a completely different approach to teaching women’s courses than most self-defense school; after teaching police officers, military personnel, and dealing with crimes against women for over twenty years, I should have a different perspective than most. Anyway, Patrick took me out to a great Chinese restaurant where we discussed a Knife Camp in Luxembourg in 2014, along with some police courses he plans on running. The following night, after Women’s Defense, I took Patrick out to a great steakhouse that I know a block away from the Cologne Cathedral. We also went to the wilderness equipment store Globetrotter, which is an amazing store. I wanted to go there to pick up a miniature tactical light that Sevil had in her GO BAG. It was good seeing Patrick again, for the last time I had seen Patrick was when he came out to visit me in California in September.
The Women’s Defense course went well. I had a lot of nervous women wondering what they had gotten themselves into, but a couple hours into the course and I was already seeing a positive transformation. By the end of the day every woman told me that it was a great course, and a real eye opener. I didn’t make any of them a “Rambo,” or I should say a “Ramba,” in a day’s time, but I certainly gave them a few “tools” they could use, gave them some untapped self-confidence, and made them more aware of what could happen to them if they don’t follow their woman’s intuition. None of them won their simulated fight against my attackers Patrick Wengler and German Army soldier Christian Knops, at least not their empty hand fights, but they all found out what they could do if they were armed – improvised weapons or other tools. And, to top it off, Sevil Dilbas came back that Saturday to be an Assistant Instructor. Once again she impressed me with her attention to detail, her passion for Reality-Based, and her clear concise teaching methods.
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The final course of my trip was Pocket Stick & Tactical Pen. That turned out to be a really good class because everyone in it was highly motivated. I had a professional bodyguard, a few good martial artists, beginners who never had a formal self-defense lesson in their life, and my only female student, “Christina,” who had been a bit timid when she took my Women’s Survival course in the past, but came back this time with a noticeable confidence and “warrior spirit.” Even Tobias commented on how she didn’t hesitate go up against any of the men. A small, very feminine woman, I noticed that she never complained once, and got in there and fought hard. She had become quite lethal with both tools that I taught her. She’s going on a trip to the United States soon, her first, and she wanted to be able to protect herself. Since my country is getting more and more violent by the year, I told her that it was a good idea.
When this course concluded, so did my last seminar of the year in Europe. November is always my last teaching month on the continent, for I usually do a final seminar the first week in December in the United States, and then take the rest of the month off from teaching. This year is no different, although my December seminar is not advertised because I was hired to train police officers, and is restricted only to a specific group.
On Monday, November 25 th, I flew to Amsterdam, caught a plane to the United States with just a few minutes to spare, and took a third plane to my home – California. I wanted to make it home before the Thanksgiving holiday. It is a holiday where most Americans give thanks to God for our country’s bounty, and the holiday was first proclaimed as a national observance by President George Washington on November 26, 1789. I for one offer up my thanks, and admittedly my favorite holiday meal of the year: roasted turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, bread rolls, and always followed by a tasty dessert; usually pumkin pie.
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HONORING OUR VETERANS
Jim Wagner
Before jetting off to Europe to teach my courses in Germany I had an obligation to fulfill. On the eleventh month, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh hour the people of the United States of America remember their military veterans, both past and present, and so did I on this Veterans Day. Not only did I serve in the United States Army during the Cold War, but for the past eight years I have been serving as a Reserve soldier in Southern California. First, before I go on, why do Americans remember eleven-eleven-eleven? Well, it is based upon the end of World War I, known at the time as “The Great War,” when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919. However, fighting had ceased seven months earlier when an armistice between the Allied nations and Germany went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. In 1938, November 11 was officially adopted as a national holiday and a day to honor American veterans.
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On the eleventh hour of November 11 th I went to go hear a speech delivered by Lieutenant Colonel Christian Ellinger of the 2 nd Battalion 11 th Marines of the United States Marine Corps stationed at Camp Pendleton, California; a base that I had trained and taught at for almost nine years.
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Colonel Ellinger stated, “Less than 1% of the population has worn the cloth of the nation (a military uniform).” But, what really touched me, and I had never thought of it in that way before was when he said, “We’ve gone to war more times than not to liberate others.” It’s true. The American Revolution, starting in 1775, was to liberate ourselves from the oppressive British rule. The War of 1812 was for the survival of our nation when the British tried to finish us off, and the American Civil War (1861-1865) was to settle internal problems. However, after that, America has liberated other countries, which cost us the blood of our sons and daughters, include: the saving of France in World War I, the liberation of most of Western Europe from NAZI Germany and several Asian countries from Imperial Japan during World War II, we safeguarded South Korean from Communist North Korea and China and they live free to this day, we tried to protect South Vietnam only to lose from political pressure from home and pull out, the invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada to eject Communist Cuban forces, the invasion of Panama to overthrow dictator Manuel Noreiga, the liberation of Kuwait in 1991 from Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein , destroying terrorist strongholds in Afghanistan in the Global War on Terrorism in 2001, liberation of the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein himself in 2003, military air strikes on Libya to assist freedom fighters in toppling dictator Mommar Kadafi, and many nations today look to the United States of America for their protection. There may be a lot of countries today that criticize us, but few countries will sacrifice their money and precious people for other nations like we have. Also, unlike many other countries that invade others to commit genocide or steal their natural resources, the United States has tried to improve the countries they have gone into. Former enemy countries like Germany and Japan were fed, rebuilt, and stabilized. Today South Korea has a thriving economy while the North Korean people are starving to death and are brutally oppressed by their communist-organized-crime-like government. How many billions of dollars have been poured into Iraq and Afghanistan to rebuild and improve their governments and infrastructure? Colonel Ellinger’s point was well taken.
The U.S. Marines are good at remember Veterans Day because it is always the day after the birthday of the United States Marines. This year they are 238 years old.
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I also had the privilege of listening to a speech given by Colonel Dale Miller of the United States Air Force Reserve. I couldn’t help but notice the flash on his black beret. It was the emblem of the Security Forces; a group that I had trained on a couple of Air Force bases: Vandenberg AFB to train their tactical team and Peterson AFB in Colorado to train their tactical team, and a U.S. Army S.W.A.T. team aircraft interdiction.
One statement that the Colonel made that impacted me most was when he said, “Veterans of all ages share a common bond like no other.” He is absolutely right. There is a certain bond among warriors. These are people who seem to be more patriotic than the rest of the population, they are generally individuals who are willing to take risks, and they have the stories that people like to hear. Plus, they enjoy the majority of the population who support its veterans. Often times when I am in public wearing my uniform I’ll have strangers come up to me, shake my hand, and say, “Thank you for serving.” Just a few months ago I was in Wendy’s fast food restaurant for lunch with six fellow soldiers and a woman came up to us while we were standing in line and said, “Please, let me buy you all lunch. I am so appreciative for your service.” We told her that we were thankful for her kind words, but it was not necessary to buy us lunch. She wouldn’t hear of it. She cut in front of everyone and said to the clerk, I am going to pay for these soldiers. We graciously accepted her kind offer. Last year I was on a flight coming back home from Europe. On my flight was a soldier who was returning from Afghanistan. A woman in first class gave up her seat so that the soldier could take her seat. This woman in her 60s, wearing very expensive clothes and carrying a very expensive purse, took her new place in the economy section. When the flight attendant announced this on the public address system everyone in the aircraft applauded. This was not the case back during the Vietnam War in the early 1970s. Many veterans were despised by the misguided youth poisoned by drugs, free sex, and communist or utopian doctrine. Many were unjustly called “baby killers” or “murders,” but they were men and women who were just serving their country and following in the footsteps of the “Greatest Generation” who fought World War II.
Because my unit has a dangerous mission, just like any street cop would have, we tend to have a closer bond to one another than most units in my division. Our lives literally depend on one another, and so we greatly support one another despite rank. I’m truly blessed because I have a chain of command that shares my values: “mission first,” get in as much realistic training as possible, and treat everyone like you would want to be treated.
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The Veterans Day event that I attended also included the playing of the national anthem by a live band, a police and U.S. Marine Honor Guard, patriotic music, and the playing of Taps at the end of the ceremony. Throughout the day I received text messages on my phone, and messages on Facebook, from my friends and family thanking me for serving my country. I do it because I love it, but it is nice to know who supports our veterans. No matter if people hate the military or respect it, the United States military protects our country, and only a small percentage (less than 3.5% of the population actually fought for independence from King George) of the population, the veterans, are willing to pick up arms and do it. As President Barak Obama says at the end of his speeches, “God bless the United States of America.”
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