What is the Essence of Defense?

Jon — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 17:27:27 +0000

What exactly is the essence of defense? Suppose you took a martial art(s) and stripped it down to its core principles and functional movements to allow it to be employable with any tool whether it be empty-hand, blunt weapon, edged weapon, long weapon, hidden weapon, or improvised weapon? What you would have is a fast, effective, no-nonsense approach to communicate years of martial arts training in a short span of time. This approach would make self defense methods immediately accessible to people who may not want, or have time, to devote decades to becoming effective at defending themselves. Suppose you want to have the confidence and ability to protect yourself and your family from sudden violence, but don’t want the trappings of tradition and the hours of perfecting forms and kata? What if the essence of defense could be extracted by 2 highly experienced martial arts practitioners, refined, distilled, and communicated not over years, but in the course of a seminar?

Principles:

Get off the line of attack
Counter-attack
Intercept/destroy the attack
Unbalance the opponent
Continuous movement
Escape
Much more….

Movement:

Positioning
Footwork – angles, distancing
Safe space
3 dimensional movement
Much more…

Tools:

Body weapons
Blunt objects
Edged weapons
Improvised weapons
Hidden weapons
Much more…

Who should attend The Essence of Defense seminar?

Anyone who wants a working knowledge of practical martial arts principles that allows them to create their own techniques in response to a specific threat of violence.

When: Saturday, June 18th from 11 AM to 4 PM

Where: Redemption Kettlebell Gym in East Windsor, NJ

Cost: $50 before 6/11, $75 at the door

Who: Eric Chasko is a fully licensed instructor in Jeet Kune Do/Filipino Martial Arts with over 15 years experience. Jon Haas is a 9th dan in Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu with over 25 years experience.

For more information and to sign up, please go to http://www.iwantredemption.com/

See you there!!

Are You FIT to be a Warrior?

Jon — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:26:55 +0000

It goes without saying that the role of a warrior in society is to protect self and others. Yet, how many of us aspiring warriors don’t realize that health, fitness, and overall well-being are the primary qualities on the forefront of “self” defense? Most of us may train our entire lives without ever being involved in a dangerous altercation, but the same cannot be said about avoiding the dangers of lack of physical exercise such as osteoarthritis, ill health, heart disease, cancer, type II diabetes, and obesity to name a few. Physical fitness (and proper nutrition!) plays a leading role in the prevention of these diseases and conditions, as well as in the protection of our overall health and psychological well being.

Many of us spend 40 + hours a week sitting in an office staring at a computer where the most exercise we get during an 8-hour stint is to walk to the bathroom several times a day followed by wandering into the cafeteria to see what pre-packaged garbage is waiting for us in the vending machines. Then, often we come home from work exhausted (from what?) and flop on the couch to watch TV in order to “unwind” (again, from what?) before finally dragging ourselves upstairs and into bed for the night. We have conditioned ourselves into laziness and inaction. Yes, I do mean “conditioned”. Conditioning does not only apply to being fit; it is possible to condition your body for anything, including being over weight, tired all the time, and to completely lack motivation for any type of physical activity. No wonder Americans are among the fattest people on the planet! (By the way, I am only picking on Americans because I am one; however the rampant increase in obesity is a worldwide problem and getting worse. Just look at recent news articles from the UK on the same subject.)

Challenges of Discussing Fitness

One of the challenges that arise when we attempt to discuss fitness in a meaningful way is that the term itself is extraordinarily vague. Some people think of a tri-athlete as “fit” while others believe a power lifter is “fit.” Unfortunately, neither of these examples conforms to the actual definition of fitness; they are just two extreme ends of the spectrum.

Fitness Attributes

Fitness is essentially made up of nine different attributes:

Strength
Power
Agility
Balance
Flexibility
Local muscular endurance
Cardiovascular endurance
Strength endurance
Coordination

All of these components must be present to constitute a suitable definition of fitness.

Warrior Fitness Methodology

The Warrior Fitness training methodology blends all 9 of the above qualities together to construct a comprehensive fitness program applicable to all walks of life. This blended approach allows for a wide variety of options, based on each individual’s fitness needs, when crafting a complete program. The variety enables each program to be tailored specifically to the individual while still remaining true to the overall Warrior Fitness philosophy of health, fitness, and growth, balanced with recovery.

Warrior Fitness » self defense