My Journey as a Personal Defense Instructor part 2
About 6 months had passed since my ankle injury and though I had gotten through PT, it still felt very weak. What is worse, I felt weaker overall. That was the longest I had gone without training in over a decade and it was taking its toll on me emotionally, psychologically, and physically. I started to look for a gym where I could train that was near my new home, but I kept making up excuses not to go back. “That place is not as serious as what I’m used to”, I would say to myself, or “those trainers aren’t as experienced as my previous gym”. They were all rationalizations for not going back because I felt intimidated about being put in a situation where I couldn’t perform at the level that I once could. I knew I didn’t have the stamina, flexibility, or strength as the last time I trained, and my ego couldn’t take it. I’m not proud of this, but at least there was a positive consequence. It prompted me to look at new things to learn.
At this point I had been in martial arts for a dozen, or so, years and started to investigate other aspects of personal defense. It was at this juncture that I began reflecting on something that I realized I had taken for granted: firearms. On my father’s side of the family all the men were avid outdoorsmen and I had grown up fishing and hunting from a very young age. I was first taught about gun safety around the age of six and starting around age eight I knew my way around a firearm and would accompany my father and uncles on hunting trips whenever I would visit him. So, in my mind, as far as using a gun for personal defense, I assumed that since I knew how they function, that if I ever needed one, I would just have to point and shoot, right? But I realized that if someone asked me to tell them how to fight and my response was, “ball up your fist and throw it at your attacker’s head as hard as you can” that would be reductionism. As a long-time martial artist, I knew better. If I wouldn’t accept such a simplistic answer about empty-hand fighting, I shouldn’t accept one about fighting with a weapon.
I concluded that I didn’t know what I didn’t know about firearms and I set out to rectify that. Thus, began my exploration of firearms for personal defense. I started by whetting my appetite with some videos on the internet or on DVD, which confirmed my initial suspicion that employing a weapon for protection looked very different than what one does when hunting or plinking around for fun. I was giddy. The thought of knowing there is a lot to learn about something gives me a thrill, especially when it involves something I already had an affinity for. I immediately started to look for classes in my area and came upon Bill Desy from CCWUSA. I started training locally with him on a regular basis and also pursued different methods and instructors, which led me to a wide variety of trainers and schools over the next couple of years including, Front Sight, Haley Strategic (Travis Haley), TFTT (Max Joseph), ZERT (various SEALS and SF guys), and Active Shooter Defense School (Matt Klier), among others.
Tactical training became my new obsession. After a couple of years of training I began to assist Bill on his monthly courses and began my transition from student to instructor. While I had become very comfortable and adept in my newfound knowledge, what really gave me joy was helping others learn, overcome their fear, and become safer individuals. I knew that this is something that I wanted to do for the long term.
After about 5 years of consistent training and working as an assistant, I decided to take the plunge and get certified as an instructor. In 2013 I achieved instructor certification by the NRA in Pistol, Rifle, Shotgun, Personal Protection in the Home, Personal Protection Outside the Home, as well as Range Safety Officer. I began to build my own clientele on top of assisting Bill with his monthly courses and private classes. I was off to the races and Alpha1 Tactical was born.
Throughout this period, invariably I would get questions from students about empty-hand self-defense. Being in California, getting a concealed weapons permit was almost impossible so many of my students took firearms lessons for protection in the home, but still felt vulnerable out on the street. Given my martial arts background, the most natural thing for me was to teach them what I knew: proper striking technique and some grappling skills. In essence, I would shoe-horn in some of those moves in my firearms classes in an effort to make my students better-rounded fighters. The intent was a good one, but it became evident very quickly that this was not a very realistic or effective approach.
Upon further reflection, I realized that it had taken me years to become a decent practitioner of martial arts even though I had trained several days a week for years, so how could I expect my students to become expert strikers or grapplers from practicing a few moves once or twice a month? It just wasn’t realistic.
While I had not gotten back to training martial arts during this period, I did at least go back to working out at a traditional gym in order to get my fitness in order so as not to feel so intimidated when going back to training. However, I never seemed to find my way back to the ring/mat. It took a moment of honest self-reflection to admit to myself that I was scared; I had never gotten over my insecurity about being rusty and possibly even getting my butt handed to me in a sparring session or being too out of shape to even finish a class. And it suddenly dawned on me that most—if not all—of my students probably felt similarly about training with me and about the prospect of being in a violent encounter. This epiphany prompted me to completely reevaluate everything I was doing. My students were overcoming their fears and their egos in order to train, and I wasn’t. They deserved better.
With the realization that teaching my students traditional martial arts almost as an afterthought and in sporadic fashion would not serve them in a violent encounter, I committed myself to find a method that would work for them in the real world. I decided to swallow my pride and do whatever was necessary to accomplish that goal no matter how uncomfortable I felt. My experience told me this much: I would look for a system(s) that would emphasize real-world, practical applications, and not be focused on fitness or sporting purposes.
After some scouring of the internet and speaking to colleagues the answer seemed almost too simple: Krav Maga. From the looks of it, this system was all business and I had heard a lot of good things about it for several years, so I decided to try it. Over the next year I attended several seminars with schools such as Krav Maga San Diego (Dana Kaplan) and Krav Maga Academy (Alex Trafton), among others. I was very impressed, and this system appeared to tick all of the boxes; Krav just focuses on winning the fight, not scoring points in a tournament or getting in the best shape of your life in order to be able to employ it.
Well, you’d think I would be shouting “eureka!” from the mountain tops, right? I didn’t know why I wasn’t as excited as I thought I should be at finding the answer. The theory was sound, the moves and applications were effective, and yet there was still something nagging at me, and I couldn’t explain it. Later, I would learn that subconsciously I knew that even this system was still too complex to implement immediately.
Even so, I did start implementing more Krav concepts in my classes and go over some techniques with my students when they inquired about empty-hand self-defense. The response from my students was definitely better than when I was trying to make them into MMA fighters. However, I still had that itch in the back of my brain that I couldn’t reach, so I kept looking at other systems, arts, methods. As it happens to a lot of people, I was seduced by a lot of sexy-looking techniques and cults of personality (we’ve all probably gone down a 2+ hour rabbit hole of YouTube videos when we see something that looks fancy). I had to smack myself out of it constantly. It was total serendipity how I finally found what I was looking for.
In the interim, my wife and I relocated to Phoenix, Arizona to expand our other business. I had to start building a clientele for my personal defense business from scratch since I didn’t know anyone in town. I built a crew of regulars slowly but surely, but I was still on my quest to find the missing link.
As I mentioned previously, I like to expose myself to different methods of teaching by attending courses and watching videos. I had subscribed to a site that features videos of several well-known firearms instructors teaching all kinds of different methods of fighting with firearms, it’s called Panteao (I’m still a subscriber to this day). One day, a new series popped up on the site and it was not firearms related. It was called Make Ready with Tony Blauer: The Spear System. I watched the entire video in one sitting and afterwards I was speechless. I paced around my house mumbling to myself like a crazy person. I could not believe what I had just seen.
Every question was answered, every sneaking suspicion confirmed and addressed by what I learned to be the SPEAR System. Let me be clear, I don’t mean that it addressed every possibility in the world for every possible case, just the one that matters: the initial attack, or ambush. In a setting where there is no ring, padded mats, or referees, the likelihood of being able to use a complex body movement as a reaction to an attack is highly unrealistic as can be seen (or not seen) in thousands of hours of closed circuit tv footage of real-life violent encounters. Meaning, we have over-complicated self-defense by making it about complex body movements (i.e. crisp punches, fancy kicks, unnatural poses, complicated series of techniques, etc.) that only mirror fights we see in the movies, not in the real world.
With SPEAR, you weaponize the inherent reflex in all of us—that which we refer to as, the flinch—as a way to thwart the initial attack. This is not something that needs to be trained, as it is biological and physiological; it need only be refined and does not require one to train six days a week or to be a world-class athlete. It’s already in me and you.
By surviving the ambush and winning the time and space necessary, it is then possible to employ your Muay Thai, Jiu Jitsu, Krav Maga, etc., or to get away. It is, in fact, the bridge to everything else. One need not drop every other art or system or deride them after learning the SPEAR concept. This system makes them all feasible. And for those who don’t have that martial arts background or inclination, the good news is that it will work for you just as well!
Since discovering Tony Blauer’s videos on Panteao I have gone down the rabbit hole with his videos on You Tube, interviews, his articles and now podcasts several times, and explored and vetted every aspect of what I’ve seen and heard. So much so, that I decided that I needed to be a part of it. I was fortunate to be able to attend a weekend-long seminar of Personal Defense Readiness™ where I earned certification as an instructor of these concepts and became an affiliate of Blauer Tactical Systems. I am also completing a year long mentoring program with directly with Tony.
I’m excited to complement my existing firearms courses with what I believe to be the best, most realistic self-defense system there is. As outlined above, the odds of being able to employ a complex body movement in self-defense are slim. Same goes for deploying a weapon (which is by definition a complex body movement), especially if you are the target of the attack. Consider this: if you carry a concealed pistol and you were ambushed, how likely are you to be able to perform every step of engaging the threat as you practice it on the square range (i.e. perfect stance, defeat your concealment garment, perfect grip from the holster, present your weapon, good sight alignment and sight picture, trigger press straight to the rear)? Now, in class I can train you to be able to get that whole process down to under a second. The bad news is that the bad guy already clocked you or stabbed you in half the time. I always tell my students, “I would rather you be good fighters and mediocre shooters, than world-class shooters and poor fighters as you might never have a chance to get to your gun”.
As you can see from this story, I have been involved in personal defense in once capacity or another for about 23 years, as of the writing of this article. It’s been a long and winding road to where I am today, but I believe I have arrived at a place where my organization and I can do the most good for the most people. By providing quality information and helping people develop important and intuitive skills that will aid them in being able to protect themselves effectively, I believe we are doing a service to society, and that I’m honoring all of those people who got me where I am today.
If you took this literary journey to learn about my background and development, I hope it was of value to you. But there is still a whole new journey ahead of me, and I hope that you take it with me. Stay safe.
Hermann Morris
To learn more about the SPEAR: Personal Defense Readiness courses we offer click here.
