Self-Defense &
Martial Arts Wisdom
For All

As weather warms up, people start taking their spring breaks and planning their summer vacations. Some of them might be local, and others even internationally. As a self-defense instructor, I’ve realized that some citizens are taking more responsibility for their own safety. They range from using simple safety tips to…

In the previous month, I covered the importance of a fighting structure for “defense”, and this month, I want to show you how that basis now creates a great opportunity to attack offensively. One of my self-defense mentors once said, “You want to be the person who hits the first-est,…

As we move into the holiday season, social events will start to increase, along with personal stresses for many individuals. If you combine these two elements, you get the formula of possible mass shootings. Many organizations along with government guidelines have adopted the “Run, Hide, Fight” model for how to…

Eliza Fletcher was a kindergarten teacher and mother of two who in the fall of this year went out for her morning jog, and never came home. Her body was found with a gun shot wound to the head, and several injuries to her jaw and right leg, due to…

There is one thing that my martial arts training has taught me over the years, and that is to train for everything. As I’ve dove into many different martial art curriculums, and observed lesson plans from a vast array of arts, I’m amazed at two commonalities. The first is that…

In the previous article on defending against multiple attackers, I laid out the three main steps to help you survive through that situation. In a nutshell, you first look for an equalizer (i.e. weapon), zone around the attackers to create a “1 on 1” stack and then use “footwork” to…

Growing up in America, most of us envision fighting as people cocking back their fists and throwing a fury of punches. The problem is that most people are firing punches back at us, which leads to a lower hit rate, and a absorbing plenty of strikes yourself. Therefore, I would…

Growing up outside of Chicago, and raising a self-defense academy there, taught me a lot about terrain and self-defense. I would regularly take my classes outside to train, sometimes to get a breath of fresh air, but most of the time to teach them how radically different types of footing,…