I silently decided right then and there I was going to really learn how to properly defend myself.... and leave the ‘arts’ to the competitors.
I spent years studying every system I could. Books, seminars, class-after-class…it became apparent that the only place I was going to learn how to really defend myself was in the military.
So I joined the Navy as an officer, was accepted into the SEAL training program and made it almost all the way through the training. On one of my last dives, an explosive accident ruptured my eardrums. After training most of my life to become a SEAL, I was medically discharged.
It was the low point in my life.
But my hard training wasn’t in vain. Along the way the brass had noticed me and I went to work for Admiral Le Moyne, founder of Naval Special Warfare Command (NSWC) and the first commander in charge of all Navy SEALs.
I was eventually asked to join a special program tasked to improve the out-of-date hand-to-hand combat training the Spec Op community was currently using.
Back then, hand-to-hand combat was viewed as archaic… like horses in the cavalry. Since WWII it was pretty much relegated to being a “motivator” for the troops.
The feeling was if things got down to hand-to-hand in a combat operation, something had gone wrong. Very wrong.
In real world combat situations, the top SEAL teams were discovering that what they had been taught was woefully ineffective.