What’s ahead for 2010
Jim Wagner
January 21, 2010 marks the seventh anniversary of the Jim Wagner Reality-Based Personal Protection system. Although I have been teaching self-defense since 1980, three decades now, I shifted from exclusively teaching police and military personnel and created the civilian version of my system in 2003.
The biggest event this year is the establishment of the Jim Wagner Reality-Based Personal Protection United States of America Headquarters in Dallas, Texas that butts up against the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. This is the official Training Center for the United States.
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The second big news item is that Frank Mayson, my martial arts training partner and friend since high school, is going to be running the day-to-day operations and taking on the responsibilities of the role of RBPP Director of the United States.
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In 2007 my Training Center in Los Angles was closed because the land was sold and the building demolished for a new strip mall. I did not bother opening up another school because I was just too busy building up the RBPP European Headquarters in Solingen, Germany. Plus, I did not have a suitable instructor and business man who could effectively run the USA school. Therefore, I operated in the United States by being hosted by various schools in Los Angeles and New York.
What this new Training Center means for you and new comers is that there is a central location that is easy to get to from anywhere in America. Frank and I had been searching the Dallas area for the last six months and finally found a brand new building that just went up. Our requirements was a large industrial roll up door for vehicles to be rolled in for scenarios, a usable outside, a classroom, two bathrooms, and a props and equipment storage room. We are having the inside rooms built to our specifications, which will be completed by the end of February. Our first seminar, Knife Camp, will be held April 10 to 13.
The Training Center is in the city of Southlake and close to the famous Grapevine that is a quaint historical town that has fabulous restaurants, shops, and hotels. Everything a student needs is within walking distance. All a student has to do is fly into DFW, take a shuttle to the hotel, and get a free shuttle to the Training Center, restaurants, and entertainment. The center of Dallas is only minutes away where students can visit the spot where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Lessons 1 to 10, taught by Jim Wagner, will be held June 7 to 11. Dates for all USA courses held at the Dallas RBPP Training Center will be posted at the end of April.
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New book in the works
Jim Wagner
On December 21 and 22 I had a photo shoot for my new book on how to protect other people. This project is through Ohara Publications/ Black Belt Books. This book is designed for the average person on how to protect loved ones, co-workers, fellow students, or anyone else needing protection for a wide variety of modern criminal and terrorist attacks.
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Rick Hustead was the photographer and Sarah Dzida was the producer of the project. I was the director and appear in many of the photographs. Although I appear throughout the book, I relied on a lot of my fellow Reality-Based Personal Protection enthusiasts to appear in most of the photos. I had a good show of people on each day. I even had two children for some of the photos, and Sarah was my one female that was required in some shots when needed.
The cover photo and series of photos are finished. The next step is to review the photographs and write all of the photo captions. Then the manuscript is due in May and the book will actually be printed in the summer. The projected release is in autumn. Doing a book project is no easy task, nor fast. When it is finally out it will be in color, including all series photos. Black Belt books prints about 10 titles a year, so having me as one of their authors is a great privilege.
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Shooting range as a reward
Jim Wagner
On December 23, the day after the photo shoot, I invited everyone who helped on the photo session a free day of shooting instructions as a reward for helping the Reality-Based Personal Protection organization. Several took me up on my offer.
We all met at the Burro Canyon Shooting Park at Azusa, California up in the San Gabriel Mountains in Los Angeles. As a firearms instructor I signed out for my own range giving me the freedom to teach what I want. I decided to do pistol and assault rifle training.
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From 9 am to 3 pm I ran my students through a series of dry-fire and live-fire tactical drills. All of these men are Reality-Based Personal Protection instructors, so the learning curve was fast and easy. We did a lot of movement drills, hostage rescue drills, and stress fire drills.
After the shooting course I did ballistics testing on the new Reality-Based Impact Head; formerly known as the Hammer Head. This product was originally designed to replace the focus glove in order to teach fighters how to strike a human head and neck. The Impact Head is the closest one can come in training to hitting a human head at full contact. However, I knew that the material used in the construction of the Impact Head would also make for a great ballistics training target, but I had to first test it out with various calibers.
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