Gracie Survival Tactics – The Inside Scoop

The Non-Lethal Techniques Every Law Enforcement Officer Should Know

by Brandon T. Vaughn  01/06/16

Over the years my position/role/career as a martial arts instructor has offered many opportunities and experiences that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. The most recent of which took place last month, November 16th through the 20th, and took me back to California, a place I first had the pleasure of visiting two years ago when I participated in the Gracie Academy Instructor Certification Program in 2013.

My second visit to California would also be connected to the [Gracie] Academy, only instead of Torrance, this time I would be going to Pleasanton, a suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area approximately 25 miles east of Oakland, CA. I decided to take advantage of a formal invitation to all CTC Certified Instructors to assist and participate in any upcoming Gracie Survival Tactics (GST) Instructor Certification Courses. Eager to get an inside look at this program only available to active or retired law enforcement and military personnel, and in desperate need of a vacation (even if it would be a working one) I jumped at the opportunity. I’m glad I did. It was an incredible opportunity to learn the GST curriculum first hand, meet some of my fellow CTC Instructors, and get some “mat time” with Ryron Gracie himself.

 

Adapting To Meet A Changing Climate

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the program, Gracie Survival Tactics (GST) is the Gracie Academy’s Defensive Tactics Program for Military & Law Enforcement Personnel. Created by the Gracie Academy to meet the ever changing needs of their clients, the GST program is itself an amalgamation of two earlier combative/defensive tactics programs. Gracie Combatives, an intensive course based on the most effective techniques of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu developed for the United States Army, and G.R.A.P.P.L.E (Gracie Resisting Attack Procedures for Law Enforcement), a non-violent and court defensible program developed for police officers. Both of the aforementioned programs were originally developed by Rorion Gracie, eldest son of Gracie Jiu-jitsu founder Helio Gracie, and creative mind behind the UFC.

Since it’s inception Gracie Survival Tactics (GST) has been taught to countless Federal, State and International military and law enforcement agencies including the FBI, the Secret Service and the US Border Patrol. During my five days assisting with the GST Instructor Certification Program I was able to meet men and women from a wide range of agencies and hear many of their first hand accounts of situations that they have found themselves in while on duty. As well as some of their concerns with the level of self-defense training that their agencies currently have in place.

 

The Road To Certified GST Instructor

For law enforcement or military personnel (active or retired) wishing to learn Gracie Survival Tactics (GST) for their own continuing education, the complete 23 lesson course is available on www.GracieUniversity.com via online streaming video. However, if you are an officer wishing to implement the GST program at your department or agency the only way to do so is by completing the GST Instructor Certification (Level 1).

The Gracie Academy teaches anywhere from 5 to 10 of these instructor certification courses a year varying by location. Some are hosted by the Academy itself  at their main location in Torrance, CA while others are hosted by various agencies around the world or by individuals within those organizations. The particular course I volunteered to assist in was hosted by a member of the Pleasanton Police Department with the actual training sessions taking place in the gym of a local high school.

The week long course began at 8am Monday morning and started with Ryron Gracie giving a brief history of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, including its creation, their work with the US Army and the development of Gracie Combatives and how working with the military and law enforcement over the last 20 years led to the creation of the techniques that we would be learning over the next five days. He then moved seamlessly into the first of eight techniques that we would cover that day, setting the pace for the rest of the week. Ryron would teach a technique, using either myself or one of the other four instructors that were there to assist in the course, then when he was sure that everyone understood the technique he would release them to practice the technique with their partner. At this time the assistant instructors would walk around and observe the participants doing the techniques, offering feedback and making any necessary corrections.

Day two and three began with the class reviewing all the techniques that they had learned the day before while. After the review period, which lasted anywhere from 10-15 minutes, we would move on the block of techniques that would be taught that day. The training sessions ended with a series of fight simulation drills in which the participants would combine several techniques from previous sessions with the ones that they had just learned, thus building their muscle memory and making them more familiar with how the individual techniques can be used in any possible combination.

While the first three days were dedicated to the learning of the GST techniques, day four was dedicated to instructor training, where the participants learned the most effective ways to teach the GST techniques to their colleagues when they return to their individual agencies/departments. The fifth and final day of the course consisted of a final evaluation to test the participants overall comprehension of all the material covered during the previous four days.

The GST Advantage

What sets Gracie Survival Tactics apart from other defense tactic programs currently being taught to law enforcement and military personnel is it’s lack of reliance on striking techniques (ie. punches and kicks) which may not be effective against an assailant who may be physically larger or stronger or who may be under the influence of a substance that dampens their ability to feel pain. Instead, all the techniques in the GST program are based on leverage, timing, and efficient use of energy. This means the techniques can be employed effectively regardless of gender, size or athletic ability.

With the number of fatal police shootings reported to be nearing 400 nationwide in 2015, and allegations of excessive force at an all time high, GST provides law enforcement officers with a much needed alternative to relying solely on their firearm or secondary tools (ie. baton, stun gun, pepper spray) in situations where the use of deadly force could have possibly been avoided. The GST curriculum also address the high rate of instance where law enforcement officers are shot in the line of duty by an assailant using the officer’s own firearm by including weapon retention techniques in the curriculum as well as a variety of effective techniques that allow an officer to get back to their feet and create distance in the event that they end up on the ground underneath an assailant.

 

A Fear Of Change

With a seemingly endless list of benefits and advantages, it’s hard to imagine that all law enforcement agencies aren’t already taking part in the Gracie Survival Tactics program.

From conversations I had with some of the men and women participating in the GST Level 1 Instructor Certification Course, I learned that one obstacle the newly certified instructors will encounter when trying to implement the program in their own department may be the very officers that they are trying to help.

Whether it stems from an over reliance on the tools they have at their disposal or the lack of continued fitness requirements after they graduate from the academy, some officers seem resistant to any self-defense training outside what is mandated annually by their state. When you consider that 40% of officers that are shot in the line of duty are done so with their own weapon, it would seem that all law enforcement officers would be eager to learn any technique that, would not only teach them how to retain their weapon, but also how to subdue a suspect without the use of their firearm or auxiliary weapons.

Another obstacle that new GST Instructors may have to deal with is a natural resistance to change. Either from the administration or from their department’s defensive tactics instructor, in the event that the GST Instructor doesn’t also serve that role. Strategies on how to address these and other common concerns are included in the support materials that each course participant receives on the final day of training.

 

Final Thoughts

Gracie Survival Tactics is quickly proving itself to be not only a valuable resource for law enforcement officers, but to military personnel as well. As I am writing this article, the United Nations Security Service has become the most recent agency to adopt Gracie Survival Tactics.

My experience at the GST Level 1 Instructor Certification Course in Pleasanton, CA was like nothing I have experienced before and I am extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to not only assist, but to participate in the training as well. As a martial arts instructor I’ve had the opportunity to teach students of all ages how to defend themselves. Even if learning self-defense was not their primary reason for enrolling, it was still a skill they acquired while working towards whatever their personal goals were. Having said that, I have to admit that there was something exceedly rewarding about working with individuals that will most likely be using the techniques you are teaching them a regular basis.

Brandon Vaughn

Certified GJJ CTC Instructor

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How To Deal with Fear in Self-Protection

Kelina Cowell

You have just finished training and you are on your way home. You had a good training session and you feel great. You are also really hungry because you haven’t eaten since lunch, so you decide to take a short cut in order to get home quicker. Usually you take the long way around the block, but today you decide to take that short cut through a dimly lit and quiet street. Halfway through this street three guys steps out in front of you.

How do you react? Do you want to run away? Do you freeze and do nothing? Do you feel fear? Do you feel stressed? What if they just want to know what time it is? Is that likely? Do you think of where to position yourself so that not all three will be able to attack you at once? How many thoughts go through your head at this time?

In 490 B.C the Chinese martial artist and philosopher Sun Tzu stated:

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the outcome of a hundred battles”

Regardless of whether you are experienced or not in martial arts, there are many techniques you can use in order to become better at handling a self defence situation (or any stressful situation for that matter). These techniques are based upon the improvement of your mindset.

This series of articles will hopefully give you some answers on how to develop a functional mindset. Hopefully it will help you to understand how to cope with fear and stress and to function better both in training or if you unfortunately find yourself facing three guys in a dark street one evening. But before I go on, just want to say – no matter how hungry and tired you are, taking the short cut through the dodgy area is not worth the risk!

Improving Your Mindset

Within Apolaki Krav Maga we have a well-developed system for how to improve your mindset. When we talk about developing mental skills, we usually think of five mental training strategies. These are visualization, goal setting, positive self-talk, combat mindset (confidence, courage, determination, aggression) and relaxation.

All these mental skills will help in reducing the effects of fear you might otherwise experience in a self defence situation. As a bonus effect you will be better at coping with general stressful or difficult situations in your life, as your brain will more deal with them more productively.

It should be very clear that regular self defence training contributes significantly to improving your abilities to handle a confrontation. This is due to the fact that while we are training physically, our minds is being trained too. However, in addition to this regular training and in order to further improve ourselves, there needs to be drill included that are especially designed to enhance your fighting spirit and mental abilities.

In his book “Condition to Win”, Wes Doss makes the following important point:

“Greater than any other calling, the life of the warrior requires mental skills in combination with physical or mechanical skills. Yet, mental training is an area which has been long neglected in the fields of conflict management and force application”.

Apolaki Krav Maga is a system that has incorporated mental training into every aspect of our training, although you may not be aware of it at first. When you first start training with us, many of you think a simple beginner level drill such as doing 30 seconds of press ups, 30 seconds of burpees and then 1 minute of bag sprints (running on the spot and striking a punch bag) is simply a cardio fitness drill. In a way it is, but if you think about it beyond the superficial, it is actually a mental drill. You have to keep going until the instructor calls time. There is no stopping, there is no rest. You keep fighting through the pain and fatigue until the job is done. This is developing your fighting spirit right from your first class. Within the Apolaki Krav Maga syllabus we focus upon developing the mental, tactical, physical, and technical aspects of self defence and instilling a proper combat mindset through correct conditioning.

There have been tons of studies on athletes and mental training and this can easily be found on the internet. The basic principles of mental training are the same regardless if you are a Apolaki Krav Maga practitioner, a soldier, a martial artist, an athlete, Joe from the accounts department…anyone! The key point is adapting the techniques to your own environment.

What is Stress and How Does It Affect You During a Violent Confrontation?

Stress occurs from social, physical, or mental stressors. Social stressors are your thoughts on what other people might think of you. Physical stressors are for instance that you are too hot or cold, in pain or overly tired and so on. Mental stressors are caused by your thoughts about what can happen or what to do about it.

Stress is caused by an activation of what is called a “stress reaction”. The activation of the stress reaction is caused by a person’s perception of the situation as threatening. What Psychologists coin as “Psychological Resources”, an individual’s belief in optimisim, control and so on whilst assessing a situation. How many times have you been very stressed about something that a friend sees as not as stressful? This is because their phychological resources towards the same situation is higher that yours. Therefore people with a high degree of psychological resources towards a violent altercation will perceive a situation as less threatening than people who have a low degree of psychological resources.

This is one of the reasons that you should include mental training, that is, to gain more resources to deal with a stressful situation, into your self defence training. To be able to function during a self defence situation, you need to raise your psychological resources.

The Fight or Flight Response

The fight or flight response has 7 possible outcomes. These are: Fight, flight, freeze, posture, submit, choking, and the death grip.

• Fight-response: your reaction to a situation is to fight, you defend yourself and/or fight with your opponent or opponents. Fighting here not only refers to physical fighting but also to standing your ground and confront your opponents verbally.

• In freeze-response: you experience temporary paralysis, meaning that you are not able to move or do anything.

• Posture-response: you stand up to your opponent using both verbal and body language and pretend that you will fight your opponent if needed, in the hope he/she will back down. If this fails it is often followed by…

• Submit-response: you surrender in hope that your opponent will stop attacking or hurting you.

• Choking-response: you feel that you are not able to swallow or breathe, like somebody is actually choking you.

• Death grip-response: you hold very hard on something for instance a door-knob or someone’s arm or jacket but fail to do anything else beyond that.

My Own Experience of Fear (Pre Self Defence Training)

When I was 16 I was out clubbing with a friend, we had an argument and I decided to go home. 3am stood alone on a quiet street waiting for a taxi to pass by. This was my main mistake – too lazy to walk to the taxi rank. At that age with a lack of personal saftey awareness and clouded by my anger towards my friend I chose to wait somewhere nearby the club where taxi regularly drove past but was deserted.

Within minutes a group of older teens found me and took the opportunity. I was shoved against the wall and a knife was put to my neck. Why? Because they didn’t like my heavy metal fashion and purple hair…yes I had purple hair…don’t judge me!

Now at the time I had muay thai training, which got me through all the high school bullying. I always reacted with a fight response, I had a high level of psychological resources to deal with fists, kicks and hair pulling in school. I was stronger and more skilled than the school bullies and they quickly learned to switch to verbal abuse instead. But this was bullying on a whole new level. I was drunk and pinned up against a wall in the middle of the night with a knife to my throat.

I found myself in a mix of mental and physical stress. My drunken adolesant brain was trying to process a huge amount of data:

“Who are these people?”

“Why are they doing this?”

“How am I going to get away?”

“Is she going to cut me?”

“I can’t feel my hands, how am I going to punch her?”

“Should I punch her or grab her knife hand?”

“How do I get the knife away from me?”

” My left leg is numb and my right leg is shaking, how can I kick her?”

“If I get her off me how am I going to run away if my legs don’t work?”

“If I can run what if my knee dislocates?” (I had recently gone through 18 months of physiotherapy for a severe knee injury)

“If I fight back are her friends going to jump in?”

“Do her friends have knives?”

All these questions where running through my brain at the same time as trying to listen and respond. All I remember is this girl spitting “You think you’re better than us, not so cool now are ya” into my face and her friends shouting “Cut her, Cut Her!” I was reduced to a mumbling, stuttering wreck which they found highly amusing.

Lucky for me a passer by, who knew one of the group stopped and started to diffuse the situation. I don’t know if it was what he was saying or a matter that they were bored of the game they were playing. But she let go of me and joined the rest of her group in conversation. I managed to stumble away and into a taxi nearby. It was front that point that I decided I needed to look at self defence training beyond striking skills.

My Experience with Fear (Post Self Defence Training)

Since training in Krav Maga I have been in a few violent situations, the last one was over a year ago when I was approached by a junkie outside my flat in Stockwell, South London late at night and he lunged at my stomach with a box cutter. At the time my training kicked in and I handled it as if it was a drill in class. No hesitation, no fear, no questions, just action. I don’t remember thinking anything. I just remember watching his hands and reacting when he pulled out something shiny. It wasn’t until I got inside and slammed the door behind me that I noticed my heart was pounding and my hands were shaking slightly with adrenaline. A vast difference in response compared to 17 years ago with that knife against my throat – and I owe that to my training.
Join me in Part 3 where I discuss the hippocampus and amygdala parts of your brain and how quality self defence training can re-programme your pre-programmed responses to fear.

By Kelina Cowell

Apolaki Krav Maga & Dirty Boxing Academy

Reposted from her blog: Self-Defence and Dealing with Fear Parts 1&2

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For more information about training in Krav Maga Self Defence in London, please contact Chief Instructor Kelina Cowell:

apolakicombat@gmail.com

020 3695 0991

www.apolakikravmagalondon.com

Apolaki Krav Maga & Dirty Boxing Academy,

KO Gym Arch 186, Bancroft Road, London E1 4ET

Apolaki Krav Maga & Dirty Boxing Academy is a full time self defence school in Bethnal Green, East London. Contact us today for a free trial class.

Cus D’Amato on Fear

Cus D'Amato. Portrait

Cus D’Amato [1908-1985] was a man of great integrity, knowledge and heart.  Most famous as being the manager and trainer of champions Floyd Patterson and Mike Tyson, many martial artists outside of boxing would come to learn about him through his brilliant insights on fear and the psychology of fighting.

“Boxing is a sport of self-control. You must understand Fear so you can manipulate it. Fear is like fire. You can make it work for you: it can warm you in the winter, cook your food when you’re hungry, give you light when you are in the dark, and produce energy. Let it go out of control and it can hurt you, even kill you….Fear is a friend of exceptional people.” [Fire 50]

On Recognizing Fear

“Fear is the greatest obstacle to learning in any area, but particularly in boxing. For example, boxing is something you learn through repetition. You do it over and over and suddenly you’ve got it. …However, in the course of trying to learn, if you get hit and get hurt, this makes you cautious, and when you’re cautious you can’t repeat it, and when you can’t repeat it, it’s going to delay the learning process…When they…come up to the gym and say I want to be a fighter, the first thing I’d do was talk to them about fear…I would always use…the same example of the deer crossing an open field and upon approaching the clearing suddenly instinct tells him danger is there, and nature begins the survival process, which involves the body releasing adrenalin into the bloodstream, causing the heart to beat faster and enabling the deer to perform extraordinarily feats of agility and strength…It enables the deer to get out of range of the danger, helps him escape to the safety of the forest across the clearing…an example in which fear is your friend.
The thing a kid in the street fears the most is to be called yellow or chicken, and sometimes a kid will do the most stupid, wild, crazy things just to hide how scared he is. I often tell them that while fear is such an obnoxious thing, an embarrassing thing…nevertheless it is your friend, because anytime anyone saves your life perhaps a dozen times a day, no matter what how obnoxious he is, you’ve got to look upon him as a friend, and this is what fear is…Since nature gave us fear in order to help us survive, we cannot look upon it as an enemy. Just think how many times a day a person would die if he had no fear. He’d walk in front of cars, he’d die a dozen times a day. Fear is a protective mechanism….By talking to the fighters about fear I cut the learning time maybe as much as half, sometimes more, depending on the individual.” [Heller, 60]

The Next Thing…

“The next thing I do, I get them in excellent condition….Knowing how the mind is and the tricks it plays on a person and how an individual will always look to avoid a confrontation with something that is intimidating, I remove all possible excuses they’re going to have before they get in there. By getting them in excellent condition, they can’t say when they get tired that they’re not in shape. When they’re in excellent shape I put them into the ring to box for the first time, usually with an experience fighter who won’t take advantage of them. When the novice throws punches and nothing happens, and his opponent keeps coming at him…the new fighter becomes panicky. When he gets panicky he wants to quit, but he can’t quit because his whole psychology from the time he’s first been in the streets is to condemn a person who’s yellow. So what does he do? He gets tired. This is what happens to fighters in the ring. They get tired. This is what happens to fighters in the ring. They get tired, because they’re getting afraid….Now that he gets tired, people can’t call him yellow. He’s just too “tired” to go on. But let that same fighter strike back wildly with a visible effect on the opponent and suddenly that tired, exhausted guy becomes a tiger….It’s a psychological fatigue, that’s all it is. But people in boxing don’t understand that.” …[Heller, 61]

“… However, I should add that at no time does fear disappear. It’s just as bad in the hundredth fight as it was in the first, except by the time he reaches a hundred fights or long before that he’s developed enough discipline where he can learn to live with it, which is the object, to learn to live with it…”

“Every fighter that ever lived had fear. A boy comes to me and tells me that he’s not afraid, if I believed him I’d say he’s a liar or there’s something wrong with him. I’d send him to a doctor to find out what the hell’s the matter with him, because this is not a normal reaction. The fighter that’s gone into the ring and hasn’t experienced fear is either a liar or a psychopath…” [Heller, 67]

The Hero and the Coward
“I tell my kids, what is the difference between a hero and a coward? What is the difference between being yellow and being brave? No difference. Only what you do. They both feel the same. They both fear dying and getting hurt. The man who is yellow refuses to face up to what he’s got to face. The hero is more disciplined and he fights those feelings off and he does what he has to do. But they both feel the same, the hero and the coward. People who watch you judge you on what you do, not how you feel.” [Heller, 97]