Our Self Defense Training Methodology

One question we get at ATX Tactics is: “what type of training is this?” And it’s honestly a really great question that we’ve spent a lot of time unpacking ourselves. Is this a specific type of martial arts? Krav Maga? Jiu Jitsu? What makes us different from other martial arts gyms and other types of training? Especially in the case of Austin, Texas, where there are already so many great ones.

The short answer to this question is that we train fighting concepts from a variety of martial arts that are hyper-focused on tools that can be used specifically for self defense. Those concepts are mostly informed by Krav Maga, Jiu Jitsu, and MMA. For many people, martial arts and self defense mean pretty much the same thing, but we respectfully offer some caveats and considerations about that idea — for more on that, check out our post on the differences between self defense and sports training.

However, there’s a slightly longer answer about what makes ATX Tactics different: our training methodology.

There are two main principle behind ATX Tactics, which have informed what we are passionately developing with our teaching. The first of these principles: simple is safe.

Simple is Safe

When it comes to almost any physical activity, simplicity equals efficiency. We apply that idea not only to our techniques —it’s going to be easier for you to replicate techniques and concepts that are simple and efficient — but also to how we learn and train.

The thing about learning an entire martial arts system, is that it takes an astounding amount of time. Investing that time is well and good if you’re a young upstart athlete looking to go far in the competitive circuit, or if you’re a hobbyist who wants to commit to learning a new skill in its entirety — but it’s just not always economical or practical if you have other things going on in your life and don’t want to invest every single bit of your free time just to feel more safe walking around at night, which is a common concern for many people who want exactly that.

If you train Krav Maga, for instance, you’re going to learn a considerable amount of techniques for very specific problems — is the knife in the left hand or the right? Are they kicking with their left foot or right? Is it coming low or high? Is it coming in a round motion or straight at you? And for most of these, the solution is different. To become proficient (or progress in rank), you are going to need lots and lots of hours repping every single one of them. This is the same when you are learning any system of martial arts — if you want to progress, you have to memorize, study, and repeat each technique until you can show you have a library of them.

To be blunt, if self defense is your primary objective, you will spend lots of time in martial arts systems repeating techniques that have no (or very little) self defense application. This doesn’t mean those techniques are useless or don’t have value (especially on the mat) — they just aren’t always applicable for the most common and most dangerous self defense problems, and often they ignore what is most required in self defense: context. What we wanted to do differently with ATX Tactics was to ask ourselves what the commonalities are between those, and program a curriculum that considers these things first and foremost.

To put it more simply: if a handful of concepts cover 90% of self defense problems, and your primary goal is to learn self defense, we believe you should spend 90% of your time developing those skills and reinforcing those concepts. This is how we’ve structured our curriculum.

We also believe the concepts themselves should be easy and simple to replicate under stress. If you have to physically defend yourself, you don’t have the time or the capacity to figure out which of 10,000 techniques you should apply to the situation. You should have go-to concepts and sequences that you train all the time, and that you don’t have to think about.

These concepts should also be applied to you, your considerations, and your body — which brings us to the second principle behind ATX Tactics.

Your Personal Defense Strategy

We like to use the phrase Personal Defense Strategy when talking about training for self defense. Let’s unpack that term a little bit. Your Personal Defense Strategy = Fighting Concepts + You + Context.

We have an issue with systems, at least when it comes to self defense. Systems are always going to prioritize the system over the individual. Systems deal in absolutes, use words like “always” and “never”, and will make you spend time learning something that just doesn’t make sense for you, simply because it’s what’s in the system.

This makes sense if you’re training to compete or belt in that system. But self defense is different — YOU have to be a factor, because YOU have different goals, different tools, and different considerations. If you have a child with you, your tools and your strategies are going to have to be different from someone who doesn’t. If you carry a weapon, your tools and considerations are also going to be different. Or if you have a bad knee. The list goes on and on for each individual. A governing principle for us is that not all self defense scenarios are created equally — YOU are the deciding factor in your self defense, not a system.

You have to be able to dictate what makes sense for you — one of our goals with ATX Tactics was to give people the ability to, over time, focus on training the goals and considerations for their own body and their own goals. We don’t want you to learn 10,000 takedowns, some of which you’ll never use or simply can’t do for any number of reasons. It’s not the best use of your time. We’d rather you become the master of two or three that you know for sure you can apply to any situation, especially the ones you’re most likely to find yourselves in.

TLDR

So that was a lot of words for a simple question. Over time we’ll make that answer simpler. This is a big experiment for us, but we wholly believe in it. We’re passionate fans of both martial arts and have an enormous passion for helping people feel more safe via self defense training. But we felt like we were running into walls training in systems — so we created the type of training we’ve always wanted to do.

The TLDR: We want to make the best use of your time, developing the most important skills and the most important tools for self defense. Plus, we want to make sure these tools are the very best for YOU, and you’re the one in charge of that — not a sensei or a black belt. If that sounds like an experiment you want to participate in, come train self defense with us at ATX Tactics.