The system
Although closely related to Martial Arts, Our system is based on Bodyguarding tactics and Reality based Self-defense. Unlike most martial arts schools which are based on a competitive fight nature, ITC’s system follows more of a professional security guideline. This involves gaining control with inflicting the least possible amount of physical damage, but this is only after you exhaust all other opportunities of not getting into a physical altercation in the first place. Of course, we’ll teach you how to “Throw down” in case you are put into a situation where you need to.
What do I mean by a “Competitive nature”? Imagine going to a Karate tournament. You’ve been training for months, sparring in the dojo under tutelage of your instructor. Your opponent has been doing the same thing. You’re throwing blows them and it gets out of hand, your instructor or the referee stops the fight and someone gets penalized. Points get taken away, yada…yada. Now imagine that you are at a party, your female friend’s jealous boyfriend is getting aggressive with others because they are talking to “His girl”. You intervene and he directs his attention to you. He is stepping closer, stepping back, puffing his chest, raising his voice. Problem is, nobody has ever showed you how to navigate that situation and now you don’t know what to do. Maybe your heart-rate spikes, you get tunnel vision, you start to shake because you just got an adrenaline dump into your muscles, it’s hard to think clearly. You probably should have gotten some training that would help you deal with things like this. It comes to the point where you have to put your hands on them. Do you punch them in the face? Shove them to show you are more aggressive? You probably shouldn’t. This is where our system comes into place. Try to diffuse the situation, make sure others do not get hurt, follow laws concerning “Use of force” and control the situation. This I can help you with.
Individual Lessons
The very concept of Tactics were meant for groups and teams. They all have to be on the same page to to be effective since they all work together. That makes it one size fits all and through experience we know that some tactics work for some and not others. Your tactical lessons are molded to you, your personality, fitness level, size and proficiency. At ITC we primarily work on an individual one on one basis. You can’t beat personal one on one sessions! You can choose private ongoing training, Seminar type training for a specific subject or a combination of both for an immersive experience. In either case, you will start off with the Introduction To Personal Security class (Kids Self-defense being the exception).
Ongoing Training
We would all like to gain the confidence in knowing we can handle ourselves in physical confrontations. Confidence comes from competence and with this ongoing training you will achieve that very competence. This is a complete system. We start you from square one, give you the tactics you need to handle an attacker with no weapons, with weapons such as a knife, a pipe, hammer, bat, a gun and ultimately, multiple attackers (Because that bad guy never likes to be alone).
This training is simple in nature, not super complex with all the possibilities that martial arts likes to have. Every lesson builds off of the techniques you’ve learned from your last lesson. I teach the techniques, we practice until you “lock it in” then we expand from it. This comprehensive training can be used efficiently and in a short period of time. The tactics can be tailored to the individual. It can be simple and straight to the point for the individual learning. It can contain more “Goodies” that are fun while supporting the attributes of the system. It can also be focused on techniques more suited for security personnel. A quick conversation will allow me to get a better idea of what you are looking for and what your goals are.
Private Group classes
If you have a group of people in need of training, we can do both ongoing classes or the more popular Seminar type training on a specific subject.
Kids Self-defense
Kids are impressionable. They can be molded, but it’s kind of a paradox. They can be molded into something great, someone that is confident, social, outgoing and somewhat of a real role model for other kids. Here is the bad part of being impressionable at such a tender age, without that confidence they remain a good target for the adult predators and the bully in their school. This has the exact opposite effect on your child. It can produce deep mental scarring that may either never heal or take a very long time to heal. We don’t want to imagine that for our loved ones.
I’ve had great success with teaching kids. My approach is more personal and on the fun side. I’ve dealt with victims of violence and bullying. Taking orders from someone and doing exactly what they say because they fear being disciplined or letting someone down probably isn’t that fun and for some kids (Not all), teaches them to be more timid. If you are looking for your child to have Karate school discipline, I’m not your guy. I can refer good instructors and schools for that, but it isn’t my thing.
Seminars
Maybe you are the busy type of person who really can’t commit to an ongoing regimen of training. Maybe you are not from the area. Maybe you are from a corporation and want to get some form of security training for your employees in order to have a safer workplace. Whatever your situation, there is a solution. We can have the option of “One off” training sessions that can pack a lot of information into a short period of time. These would be seminar based trainings where we can focus on a particular topic. The most popular being subjects that involve things like kids going away to college, critical incident response like a “mass shooting” and how to respond to being ambushed in a surprise attack. Like my individual training (Hence the name INDIVIDUALIZED TACTICAL…), our seminars can be tailored to your needs and the needs of your business if those listed below don’t have exactly what you need.
Introduction to personal security
Your very first class. All other classes are built from this one. This teaches you not only the physical techniques needed to put down an attacker, but it also gives you the knowledge of how the whole dynamic works. What are the types of violence that occur? Who are these predators? What kind of prey do they go after? What’s their objective? How can I avoid them? When push comes to shove, what can I expect of my own mind and body? How much force am I allowed to use? What object can I use to protect myself? What is the single most greatest power I posses that can keep me and my loved ones from harm?
I’ll answer all these questions and I’ll give you ways to outsmart the bad guy. Once you’re in the personal protective world, you start to think of things in a different way. Not only as a victim, but from the predators perspective as well. Reminds me of the old phrase “takes one to know one”. As always, questions are welcome.
Surprise attacks
Imagine someone catching you off guard. You may be walking to your car, at the ATM, out for a Jog and someone grabs you. Where did he come from? Should have, would have, could have, It’s too late for that now, you have to act! Here you will learn how to get out of holds and grabs, affect the bad guy and get away to safety. You need to take the seminar listed above before you take this one. It’s really a prerequisite. If you’re thinking this one is the only class you need, then you are thinking the wrong way. Leave the victim mindset in the closet. Be your own bodyguard. Don’t wait for someone to attack you and then hope your physical skills will rise to the occasion. It doesn’t work that way in the real world.
Critical response
This is a huge topic; Workplace violence, school shootings and unfortunately in the local case of the Franklin Regional school district in 2014 “Mass stabbings”. This is what most would consider “Random acts of violence”. Are these attacks really RANDOM? We can discuss this for hours, but that’s not the point here. We’ll leave it for the class. The point is that we need to know how to defend ourselves if we are attacked and what to do if we are in the vicinity of such an attack. It became all too real for me when parents of students at Franklin Regional school district came to have their daughters trained, because one of them was a direct target. If you want to go deeper, A man in 2000 went on a racial shooting rampage and gunned down an Asian man right next door to where my (Asian) brother was working. The list can go on, but these two happened IN OUR AREA and there were more that happened after those. It CAN and DOES happen. Ignoring it won’t make it go away. Give yourself the fighting chance. Thankfully my student had a hero of a friend that saved her life. Be like him. Don’t be a victim.
Young adulthood
Your kids are your everything. You’ve devoted so much time and effort into developing them and keeping them safe. High school does a decent job at keeping kids in line, making sure that the bus drops them off in front of your house and calling you at home when they don’t check in to school homeroom. Now they’re a senior and you’re looking into colleges. You live in Pittsburgh and your daughter decides that Michigan State is where she is going. Wait, now we’re worried. Don’t they have wild parties off campus? What about drugs, alcohol, peer pressure, blowing off steam, studying late into the night and walking back to the dorm/apartment? Does your daughter, who is now a young adult, have the mental preparedness to deal with the peer pressure, the predators or even a physical attack? It’s a lot to take in and it’s much easier to send them off knowing you helped them get some knowledge and skills to survive in what will probably be the most hectic and hardest part of their life.