Hopefully you know what Seminar Reality means. Folks in some of the circles I have kept company with do, and have hit the nail on the head between posts by Paul Sharp, Lee Aldridge and others here  at TPI, and some private conversations I have had over the years when sharing similar stories with some very solid people.

Who goes to a seminar thinking “I am going to be a total jerk?”  or “I am going to fuck with this instructor?”

Well, I have a couple times… not proud of it now.

One was a martial arts seminar. The magical guru was in town. Pretty much that’s all she wrote, I kept just walking out of the devastating throws that everyone else was tripping over themselves to fall for, kept asking “is this all there is?” and was invited to either get with the program or leave. I got with the program. Learned a few useful things.

Learned a lot about that instructor and those that sung his praises.

Then there was the time the tactical combatives expert, “one of the best in the States” in the particular discipline, teaching similar foolishness to officers at a police training. Back then I was much more interested in trying to force people awake,  in  a figurative Zen-like shout, or if it was necessary the beating over the head that is also part of the Zen tradition.

I don’t do that anymore. It is, admittedly, against the “rules.”

Rules that some take advantage of to “sell” their system. As related on the TPI thread, say at a law enforcement conference and you call out the two guys that do MMA there, and they – playing by the rules and cooperating with you, dutifully take their falls – and then the instructors later crow about how they tooled a couple of MMA guys.

This is either self delusion or actual dishonesty. Do you want to train with people that are either of that character, or feel they have to do so out of some twisted loyalty to a “system” that they know couldn’t work had the encounter been truly non-consensual?

Or another guy who plays the game and then gets unfairly jacked with after he has allowed himself to be placed in that position in order to allow the instructor to demonstrate? Then spends the rest of the seminar asking the instructor to “try that again” to only be looked through and avoided on all subsequent demonstrations? Ever seen that?

Or the guy from system A that goes to system B’s seminar, with another great guru, and simply gets disgusted by the overly cooperating students, and when this becomes apparent get shuttled into another room and attempted to be recruited into the system? Wink, wink, nod, nod, psst, psst – play the game we’ll take care of you!!

Seminars are a place where people – except it seems some of the instructors – are generally on their best behavior. The students are there to allow an instructor to demonstrate, in the best possible light, his material and show how it would work under the conditions he or she says it will.

This is common sense, and common practice in all martial arts as well as police training. This is also true in public demonstrations, especially in very hierarchal societies and systems. The next time an Aikido guy tells you with a straight face that  aikido master so-and-so threw all sorts of  Judo black belts at a demonstration, you can rest assured that those black belts were not about to publicly embarrass an older man, a respected instructor of another art, in public, in particular if it is a traditional Japanese system and especially if the people involved are Japanese. It just is not socially acceptable behavior.

To cast it in any other way reveals wishful thinking at best. With the caveat that some people literally do not know the difference, and the longer they have trained to less able they may be to tell.

This does not keep some martial and tactical instructors from taking advantage of the  unwritten rules of the situation and calling a “fall” in this environment as if it were a “win” in a truly contested encounter, violent or otherwise.

So how to deal with it?

One, simply grin and bear it, and try to find something worthwhile in what is being taught. In the situations I noted above I actually learned from both of those instructors. I don’t automatically dismiss everything someone says based on their misunderstandings elsewhere. As the saying goes, even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while.

And more than once I have discovered things of value in teaching which I have come to think some of the instructors didn’t fully understand.

Another strategy is apre-emptive comment. A wonderful example was posted on the linked thread by BillSWPA. This is particularly true if you think you are being singled out for your background or,  say, because you chose to wear a BJJ gi to a traditional joint locking seminar,  you actually  are trying to learn what the teacher is teaching and already taking falls: and now he or she knows you will play by the rules and they can get a notch on their belt…”I had this BJJ guy in one of my seminars and boy, did I show him what a real martial art is all about…“

So the Pre-Empt:

“before you actually launch your simulated attack, ask the instructor, right in front of everyone else, if he wants full resistance to his defense, or merely a demonstrative attack. Tell him you need clarification because you understand that you were selected specifically because of your abilities, and want to be the best help to him that you can.

If he says full resistance, then he gave you permission to show him the folly of his ways.

If he says demonstrative attack, everyone knows that you were not resisting as you otherwise could, and hopefully some will not be fully convinced.”

Why didn’t I think of that!!!

This would work with both martial arts and police training seminars, it both calls the instructor on any potential bullshit he may pull AND gives him an out, and keeps the seminar on track!

Well played!

Trust me, I understand that it works the other way as well: the prospective “cooperative” student who suddenly goes balls out when you are trying to demonstrate something. I have a standard response for that: I either jack him away from me and draw my weapon or otherwise disengage, or I switch to something else. This is what I would actually do in the real world.

I also point out to the other students that if the bad guy does something else, you have to adapt what you were doing and…. do something else!!

Shocking, I know.

I then pointedly ask the student if they are willing to let me demonstrate.

Almost always they are.

FWIW Red Zone is one of the few methods out there based on this “Brother Factor,” and it shows.

One of the few good articles that comes across on PoliceOne:

(edited to add the content of the article before it goes protected…)

http://www.policeone.com/Officer-Safety/articles/4965069-Are-you-prepared-to-adapt-and-win-on-the-street/

Let’s not upset them….

Cage Potato recently posted an interview with Guy Mezger, former elite MMA fighter who intervened in a domestic violence situation and got cut by a knife.

This incident has MMA and self defense forums abuzz. It offers lessons for all of us on a number of levels, and thus we need to thank Guy for doing what warriors do – stepping in at personal risk, and then giving all of us the advantage of lessons learned.

Lessons Learned:

This incident is a good example of why you need more than just “fighting arts,”  MMA…..or TMA…or whatever. The problems that occurred had nothing to do with the actual physical techniques used, and everything to do with the ” tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving circumstances” to quote use of force case law, and with his assessment of them.

The decision to intervene is a huge question for my core group students. Would I??  Should I??

He did, and it was a brave decision and good one. It may not have been very tactically sound, but we all do that. Observing from a distance and calling 911 would have probably been better, but his protector instinct do doubt took over. That could very well happen to any of us here even though we are critical of it – under the stress of the thing in front of you, you often don’t do what you know you should. More experience with domestic violence situations may have made a difference here. No life was immediately in danger here based on the description and Mezger’s own not taking it very seriously when he guy focused on him.

Mostly other people will stand around, not knowing what to do. Don’t be surprised by that.

If you call 911 and observe, you can still intervene if it starts getting really bad, but now you’ve had time to process your options and you know backup is on the way. And they know what you look like and that you are not the bad guy.

But experience is gained through making mistakes.

The mental picture Mezger paints is the primary issue here – and people who are not training realistic decision making, or just training pure martial arts, need to really pay attention to what he is saying here as this will happen to them.

He just doesn’t take the situation seriously. Had he taken the guy seriously at the beginning, this would not have continued to go on. He got caught in an internal focus versus an external focus, probably because the guy surprised him coming at him like that and he minimized the threat. He himself lays out the reasons why.

Consider this: domestic violence mostly occurs in the home, outside of the view of prying eyes, because it is shameful to people and criminal. Where do think a guy’s head is at when he no longer cares and is doing it in public, in full view of multiple people?

Once engaged, Mezger seemd to have a hard time breaking out of his mindset because his attention was divided by being concerned for the woman.

It happens, even for a guy that teaches tactics to the cops (I would venture he does mostly physical skills versus decision making) ,and he probably was not thinking of it as a potential combat situation but rather a low level beef he could solve just by his presence.

Minimizing is a real danger with high level performers. The very fact that he does have such high level physical skills is why he was able to handle it even with the mental response issues that were occurring.

Remember the rest of us do not have that level of skill and experience to fall back on.

In this case, the second time should have been it for dude with control post KO. Yell at somebody else to call 911.

In terms of technical assessment of what he did,  we have nothing really to go on, and I am sure he did just fine. He f0ught a guy who had a knife, he did not know he had a knife, and managed to escape with only an injury on his hand. That sounds good in my book!

The more important point for all the martial artists reading this, and for the self defense trainers that teach martial artists reading this, are the various elements surrounding the use of the knife.

If you change anything in your program from reading Prevail, please start addressing knife stuff realistically…

1) He did not know there was a knife.

Extremely common in real life. Yet Martial Knife Defense always assumes they know there will be a knife and the distance at which knife assaults occur are the same distance that dueling and kickboxing occur. Funny.

2)  I am assuming we no longer have to address the whole knife defense, biomechanical cutting, the slightest cut is disabling, when tendons are cut the hand can’t move thing here anymore?

3) He had no follow-up reaction to the wound. Since so much other training is based on canned “reactions” of bad guys or knifers to our efforts to do damage, can we dispense with that myth as well??

Some people are tougher psychologically and physically than other people. Some work out harder, challenge themselves in face of pain and adversity more, train when they are injured versus sitting out when they have a minor strain. Some get this by virtue of drugs. Some are simply more feral than others, human Junkyard Dogs…

Don’t ever assume YOUR limitations are shared by your assailants. Martial artists, especially non-sparring martial artists, are challenged in particular by this because their training reinforces these ideas. Do something else that breaks you out of this thought pattern.

And while I don’t want to rain on Mezger’s parade, she probably will  testify for the defendant if there is a trial on these charges, and will go right back to him when he gets out of prison.

“What martial art should I do?” is a question very frequently asked by non-martial artist cops of those of us who are recognized within police departments as being practicing martial artists.  This may seem an odd distinction, what with all the “police tactics” instructors undoubtedly there to dispense advice, but the fact of the matter is most police Defensive Tactics instructors do not practice martial arts. They practice defensive tactics. At best, probably once a month and a week or two away at the Academy every year for re-certs.

They go to the martial artists, too, when they have a question on why they can’t make s0mething work, why something is hard to teach or retain, etc.

Never one  to let sleeping dogs lie (this is apparently an old article there, and admittedly not an exhaustive treatment), I don’t think it goes far enough in its fundamental assessment.

By that, I will return to the Fitness-Fundamentals-Force on Force elements critical to developing confidence and competence, as opposed to simply exposure, in police Control and Combatives techniques. As the Spartan Cops article indicates this includes everything from non-injurious control and restraint tactics to vicious close combat countermeasures and less lethal and lethal weapons skills. Quite a broad field to cover.

It should be noted that in the grand scheme of things ANY martial art a cop does is a probably good thing if they do it seriously. It will have benefits that may have nothing to do with tactics for the street. So long as the officer realizes that many things martial artsy must be kept in that realm, it is okay. This does not always happen, and I remember a DT class (everyone in sweats and socks – how’s that for realism for ya!!) in which an eager officer and seasoned taekwondo green belt started demonstrating all sort of high kicks and spins to his fellows as valid police fighting methods….. cementing his particular poor reputation and distracting the class needlessly from what it should have been working on.

So with the elements of  Fitness, Fundamentals, and Force on Force, let’s review these various arts with a more analytical and adaptive perspective.

Pugilistic/striking arts have a place, but it is limited in terms of Fundamentals for a variety of reasons. Personally I alter what I practice in striking arts to better serve a p0lice end, and consider them as a force multiplier for the much more common and practical grappling situations that occur within police restraint and combat methods.

The article touches on  this but does not really delve into it, so I will here.

Striking arts are tremendous at creating distance for evasion – but that should be followed up with a transition to a less lethal or lethal weapon based on the circumstances. They are great anti-clinch, and “stunners” when the use of force is appropriate, again, to create the opportunity and opening for a greater force multiplier. NOT to simply put ones hands up and wade back in to the fight.

It is a subject of legitimate debate, but I have seen far too many cops (who don’t condition their hands a great deal) break their hands punching people in the street. Not a good idea as it can translate to a lessened ability to access the weapons that you should be using your strikes to get space to do!

If you are one of the types that goes ”Balderdash!! I never broke MY hands when I hit guys,” then just be happy with your Man Hands and keep punching away! The fact that other people do and it is far from uncommon means that maybe there is more than one way to skin the cat for those other people. Open hands and hammer fists, elbows and knees are preferred.

Striking arts that spar do have a tremendous advantage in the Fitness and Force on Force realms. Those that don’t are of even more limited utility for the average cop.

Filipino Martial Arts (FMA)are very popular in police circles. As noted, there is an extensive repertoire of jujutsu within FMA either directly borrowed or as an extension of similar Southeast Asian arts and Filipino wrestling.  FMA contain a great deal of stick and knife tactics as well, which I will address below.

FMA locking methods suffer from the same thing that the “traditional jujutsu” and Aikido methods that entered law enforcement do: while perhaps sound as Fundamentals they are not practiced in a Force on Force manner against resisting opponents.

This is problematic on several levels – many of the teachers teaching these methods to cops have never had a fellow student seriously resist or counter what they were doing to them, let alone ever had to restrain someone on methamphetamine, someone who is mentally ill, or in the throes of a psychotic break.

Such so-called  experts in multiple different venues can be very dismissive of the ability of officers to restrain people of this type. This tells me a lot about their points of view as teachers (cops are basically martial arts beginners no matter how long they’ve been on the job) and about any claims to real world experience they may tout for themselves.

Since the methods can be fairly complex, and predicated on “lock flows” based more in what a cooperative opponent is doing, they require a fairly honed level of skill to flow effectively – even with a cooperating opponent.  Hell, even people that don’t cooperate “the right way” also tend to gum up the works.

Remember the vast majority of cops will barely be training, and even the people supposed to be instructing this stuff – yes even the “Master Instructors” – will be getting in a year what most serious practitioners get in a month.

They are also limited in the Fitness model as part and parcel of the technique itself. Unfortunately FMA, traditional jujutsu, and Aikido are right up there with other martial arts systems producing senior black belt/instructor level people who are literally corpulent rather than a little thick around the middle.

This sets a poor example as cops have enough problems in that area themselves. And they may be fighting for their lives rather than simply hawking their newest DVD…

Weapons Arts:

FMA includes weapons. Unfortunately in most arts they are generally practiced in a manner that is not suited to practical police application.

Just as they shouldn’t “fist fight” or “kickbox” with suspects, cops don’t “stick fight” or “knife fight;” if they find themselves there they have done or are doing something very wrong.

Sticks are in fact rarely used in police work these days, and when they are it is almost always against an unarmed but violent resistor. If he has a stick, and is the kind of subject presenting the kind of resistance where the officer would be “stick fighting” with him, he should be dealt with using deadly force.

The same is more true with knives. Cops use knives as a weapon of last resort, and far more often in a grappling  encounter such as a weapon retention situation rather than in a stand-off knife fight.

FMA weapons therefore have the same limitations that striking arts do in terms of how they relate to police combat; a force multiplier that does teach some valuable concepts such as timing, distance, etc. Still, very little of this practice in FMA is done with free fighting, the very thing that teaches these most useful elements in a practical way, thus delimiting it further.

Classical Jujutsu is the actuall Japanese forebear of many of these arts described. The article mentions “traditional jujutsu” but describes it in a way which includes tournaments and no weapons, putting it more in the realm of Judo. Without the tournaments and still not weapons, it enters more Aikido territory.

But older lines of actual Classical Jujutsu are often practiced including weapons. In my experience, this practice is often contextually more appropriate to the needs of law enforcement as armed classical jujutsu is not predicated on dueling or competitive grappling formats, and shorter weapons are generally transitioned to when a larger weapon has broken, the tangle that one is involved with an opponent prevents their being drawn or used, and/or the practitioner has been attacked at close range.

The Fundamentals should be plainly obvious.

However, most classical jujutsu suffers from the same problems in terms of general Fitness level of the average practitioner and the lack of Force on Force training. As well, the means of transmission and the generally closed nature of the true classical traditions mean that qualified instructors are difficult to find and may not be much interested in adapting their methods to modern police usage, the exact opposite of what occurs in FMA.

Judo , Brazilian Jiujitsu and MMA:

These are combat sports, Brazilian Jiujitsu (BJJ) is in fact directly derived from Judo, as opposed to the claim often made that it derived from traditional/classical jujutsu. MMA developed from Brazilian free fighting that was strongly based in BJJ and rivalries between different BJJ and muay Thai kickboxing groups.

In earlier days Judo and BJJ contained more combative elements that have been shunted aside or all but lost in the drive to create competitive champions. Still Judo was many years ago embraced by police departments in the U.S. for defensive tactics training, and in recent years BJJ and lately MMA have been appearing on the DT mats.

In terms of basic skills, these arts are Fundamentally extremely sound, though MMA may tend toward the striking element where the same concerns there will apply.

They additionally have the double advantage of developing Fitness and a Force on Force format that go hand in hand – saving money and time!

Unfortunately there is a strong tendency in competitive schools to “play to the rules” which in serious real world altercations can lead to some default positions and responses that are not conducive to officer survival. None of them take this, or weapons into account as it does not enter the equation for the overwhelming majority of practitioners. This will be the case in most schools though a few MMA groups with military vets or police involved may include weapons in separate self defense training. There can be a tendency even with the military and police worlds for some to just do these arts with little regard for the differences involved in street practicality or weapons involvement. Double leg takedowns on subjects by a guy in full kit with a slung rifle, anyone??

Due to the Fitness and Force on Force elements, practitioners of these arts will still likely be better prepared for a critical officer survival incident than those that do not train these elements to the same degree, let alone those that are barely practicing. In large part because a certain level of mental and physical toughness is developed by repeatedly doing things that are physically and mentally tough.

So then, what do you do?

The complicated answer is that you don’t do martial arts, you do something else that is like them but focused on practical elements.  Arrestling, ECQC, and a few others that include a strong Force on Force practice in conjunction with street and combat survival principles in the weapons-based environment. This can be hard to do, as I have observed this community for a long time and there are a lot of people who think this is what they are doing but they only go so far.

Still even in those realms the best people do some kind of additional practice, the best of the best almost always have a strong background in at least one of Judo, BJJ or MMA. They have learned to integrate what applies and what doesn’t.

If  y0u don’t have such a group near you? What I would recommend is balance. Are you already a good FMA guy with lock flows and stick and knife drills? Then do MMA or BJJ and gain the things Force on Force can teach you; maybe even find a group of like minded folks and combine them. If you are cop, do them with your duty gear on and in situations you are likely to encounter in the street. If you catch yourself wearing a gun belt and doing extended stick drills or knife passing exercises with a guy who is constantly one step away from you, re-boot your program and bring elements in that are more real.

Same for the others – engage in something else that gives you the element(s) you are missing, add those factors that are your reality in the field, and then find that place where they all converge and the principles and practice of one complete the others.

It’s about your survival, after all.

Quito, Ecuador

March 23-25, 2012

This course will cover Awareness and Threat Management strategies useful in potential and actual violent assault situations, an adaptive Personal Protection Platform focused on evasion and control of standing and grounded self defense situations, and integrated skills for encounters with multiple assailants and in which an assailant may be armed with edged weapons or handguns.

Threat articulation, decision making, mindset and technical development, and managing the aftermath of violence are integrated within the practice. All training will progressively develop students from cooperatively based drilling to force on force versus an opposing will.

Coursework will be of particular interest to modern and traditional jiu-jitsu/jujutsu practitioners, Judoka, aikidoka, and close combat enthusiasts seeking to make ttheir discipline practical from a real world perspective.

Hours:

Friday March 23d: 5pm-9pm

Saturday March 24th: 9am – Finish

Sunday March 25th: 9am – Finish

Cost: $250

Location:

La Niña 431 y ReinaVictoria

Barrio La Mariscal

Teléfono (593) 2 3331563

 http://www.ecoledebudoecuador.com/

Contact: David Garcia at

ecoledebudo@mac.com

Hollywood vs. Reality

Guys like Mark  Wahlberg should take note….

We have all heard the saying “you fight the way you train.” This is generally true, but many folks don’t go far enough with this line of thought, because if they did, they would realize they are training to fight with little or no adrenalization, little physical exertion, no contact/pulled punches/delimited contact, and against people not actively countering or fighting back.

Kind of a problem….

But I am specifically considering the more insidious kind of programming: playing to sportive or training safety rules sets that are counter-productive to actual self defense. Or even playing to imagined societal and legal rules sets.

As for the latter the fact that a “minimal” force standard does not exist has already been addressed here. Just be aware if you are being programmed with such ideas, or thoughts of force continua under whatever name, and whether that is the product of your agency if you are LE, or a misunderstanding on the part of your self defense teachers, you are being programmed with ideas that could cause you to hesitate at the very time you need to not be hesitating.  This is a very common occurrence within law enforcement because people are not comfortable with “what they can do” in a certain situation based on fear of liability or discipline.

Technically and tactically, one may be programming to engage in pugilism or grappling, or frankly even to close with a subject when that is not the most practical, tactical, or even most available option; in other words essentially choosing to engage mano-a-mano when other options exist and are readily apparent.

Martial and self defense training is problematic in this area as, in order for training to occur, there has to be some unrealistic measure of agreement to engage. If not, no training.

Its why decision making and threat management is so important to training, and why over-reliance and misunderstanding of sparring drills (from the pros and the antis) could be patterning some dangerous things. I’ve watched it with my own group and even inadvertently programmed it in them myself at times.

Watching people stay, unarmed, bouncing back and forth as if they are sparring, with a knife wielding attacker standing outside of range and also bouncing back and forth as if he was sparring….

Learn to recognize when the opening has presented itself to disengage or to draw your own weapon versus missing the forest for the trees and drilling to the point of patterning bad habits.

Drills have to be clearly laid out and students allowed – or pointed toward- the defensive response versus the Test of Skill approach. The vast majority of martial arts training fails in this sense because it is based on a prepared dueling response, at times starting from outside the practical distance of the partner’s strikes or weapons, and the response is ALWAYS to close.

There are times when that is necessary. I’d venture very few people can make that distinction. A hint is that the distance will pretty much already have been closed, probably unawares to you, when that is proper response.

Expanding on this, whatever programming or patterning you are seeking for professional or personal purposes may mean that you re-evaluate your chosen system/systems. In an exchange off-line I have been discussing this with another long time martial artist who is also an LE and trainer.

I have left more than one system NOT because the system was not valid, even in fact very good at what it did. But I realized it was not how I fight or intend to engage in a situation in the majority of instances in which I need to do so in the real world. I gleaned useful things, but in those cases felt that continued practice would actually start to program me in ways that I felt could be detrimental to my actual safety since I do not approach martial arts as a hobbiest, for “health, fitness, and self defense,” or  as a cultural researcher or “martial” anthropologist.

Nothing wrong with any of those things, except when the lines start getting blurry.

And that is the point: clarifying the lines, understanding how you do react, how you want to react, and training to support those reactions and actions versus  patterning an unconscious response that simply goes on auto-pilot when certain situations and stressors appear. You have to be very careful what you train to the point of auto-pilot, because it will often come out at the time you may least want it to.

Indeed you do train the way you fight…

This is particularly true under stress and training in realistic resistive formats- because when your body and brain perceive that set of circumstances in real life – though in a wildly different environment than encountered on the mat or in the training hall or gym – you likely will automatically begin to engage those processes that have served you well.

Witness the guy trying to sink a triangle choke in a fight on pavement and getting summarily lifted up and head-spiked into said pavement…. or the tendency for many “grapplers” to tackle a guy, get to his back standing, and instead of disengaging (ideal situation when you are at someone’s back) or taking him down while staying on their feet, automatically go to the ground in a sacrifice throw because their “mat sparring” goal is exactly that.

Square peg, round hole – better said “square mat, round world” with due respect to Square Rangers out there…..

This does not mean that at times the square peg will be exactly what you need. Just that when all you train is with the square peg, you might find yourself wondering why it won’t fit in the round hole, and why survival stress is making you persist in trying to make it fit….

WSTOA Training Link

View the Hosted section.

Extreme Close Quarter Officer Survival (ECQOS)

Course Description:

Law enforcement officers nationwide continue to experience a spike in single and multi-casualty officer assaults. These encounters often occur at very close quarters, with officers significantly behind the curve in terms of surprise and positional disadvantage, and frequently involve both hand-to-hand and shooting engagements in tandem.

This training will address these “behind the curve” engagements through mindset development, skills in rapid movement and acquisition of the firearm in the face of an emergent threat, including from unconventional positions, and in multi –suspect and multi-officer encounters.

Exercises will be performed with red/blue guns and in airsoft/Sim Force on Force exercises.

Course Objective:

At the conclusion of this course students will have been exposed to many of the variables that occur in sudden, close quarters lethal force encounter situations and will be given practical strategies and tactics for responding to them.

Class hours will run 9 am – 6 pm

You must be a member of WSTOA to attend this class. It is only $25 individual membership for LE or Military:

http://www.wstoa.org/membership.php

For the Pac NW:

October 26-28

Extreme Close Quarter Concepts (ECQC) in Olympia, WA.

Point of contact: Eric Davis ericdavisg17@yahoo.com

Get with Eric ASAP as I think this thing will fill up fast!

June 11-13

Extreme Close Quarter Concepts (ECQC) in Vancouver, Canada
FIRST TIME OFFERED IN CANADA

Point of contact: Rob Engh rob@activeshooter.ca

AMIS and the Edged Weapons Overview are also tentative for Oregon in 2012.

Dates in USA, Europe and Canada:
January 28-29

Armed Movement in Structures (AMIS) in Pittsburgh, PA

Point of contact: Paul Hotaling training@greygrouptraining.com

February 17-19

Extreme Close Quarter Concepts (ECQC) in Americus, GA.

Point of contact: Shane Gosa wsgosa@hotmail.com

March 9-11

Extreme Close Quarter Concepts (ECQC) in Scottsdale, AZ.

Point of contact: Paul Hotaling training@greygrouptraining.com

March 16-18

Extreme Close Quarter Concepts (ECQC) in Culpeper, VA.

Point of contact: Craig Douglas csd1375@hotmail.com

March 23-25

Extreme Close Quarter Concepts (ECQC) in Oklahoma City, OK.

Point of contact: Spencer Keepers spencerkeepers@yahoo.com

April Dates pending

ShivWorks Practical Unarmed Combat seminar in Finland FIRST TIME OFFERED IN THIS E.U. VENUE

Point of contact: Ville Kaivonen ville.kaivonen@snikt.fi

April 14-15

Armed Movement in Structures (AMIS) in Tannenberg, Germany FIRST TIME OFFERED IN EUROPE

Point of contact: Frank Burkert burkert.frank@gmail.com

April 28-29

Armed Movement in Structures (AMIS) in Memphis, TN.

Point of contact: Tom Givens rangemaster.tom@gmail.com

May 13-15

Extreme Close Quarter Concepts (ECQC) in Wallingford, CT

Point of contact: Paul Hotaling training@greygrouptraining.com

May 18-20

Extreme Close Quarter Concepts (ECQC) in College Station, TX.

Point of contact: Paul Hotaling training@greygrouptraining.com

May 25-27

Extreme Close Quarter Concepts (ECQC) in Lakewood, CO.

Point of contact: Mike Erickson 303-915-9825 drt.mike@yahoo.com

June 1-3

Extreme Close Quarter Concepts (ECQC) in Carthage, NC

Point of contact: Paul Hotaling training@greygrouptraining.com

June 22-24

Extreme Close Quarter Concepts (ECQC) in Jackson, MI.

Point of contact: Brad VanValkenburg info@PatriotDefenseTraining.com

June 30-July 1

Armed Movement in Structures (AMIS) in Chino, CA.

Point of contact: Paul Hotaling training@greygrouptraining.com

July 14-15

Edged Weapons Overview (EWO) in Elkhart, IN.

Point of contact: Jeff Tinsley tinman.in@gmail.com

September 14-16

Extreme Close Quarter Concepts (ECQC) in Frostproof, FL

Point of contact: Paul Hotaling training@greygrouptraining.com

September 21-23

Extreme Close Quarter Concepts (ECQC) in Pelham, NH.

Point of contact: Jim Conway jim@neshooters.com 603-673-6105 (days)

September 28-30

Vehicle Combatives and Shooting Tactics (VCAST) in Carthage, NC Prerequisite: ECQC No Exceptions.

Point of contact: Paul Hotaling training@greygrouptraining.com

October 5-7

Extreme Close Quarter Concepts (ECQC) in Sacramento, CA.

Point of contact: B. Yates bycyclist@me.com

October 12-14

Extreme Close Quarter Concepts (ECQC) in North Versailles, PA.

Point of contact: Paul Hotaling training@greygrouptraining.com

October 19-21

Extreme Close Quarter Concepts (ECQC) in Gadsden, AL..

Point of contact: Chase Jenkins rcpd120@hotmail.com

November 2-4

Extreme Close Quarter Concepts (ECQC) in Albuquerque, NM

Point of contact: Tom Jones tom@atomicjones.com

November 9-11

Extreme Close Quarter Concepts (ECQC) in High View, WV.

Point of contact: Paul Hotaling training@greygrouptraining.com