Adrenal Training

The # 1 factor in Effective Self-Defense is learning to deal with the adrenaline and fear induced rush that is a natural survival response to a threatening situation. All the fancy technique in the world won't help you if the effects of this adrenal rush are not understood and reconditioned to work in your favor. The good news is the effects of adrenaline and fear can be your greatest ally, infusing you with razor sharp reflexes and amazing strength when needed.

Virtually any person who encounters an intense life-threatening situation will experience the above effects. Imagine how difficult it is to find effective resolution to any given problem when all this is happening internally. Not only does the brain fail under these conditions, the body follows suit. Simple things like putting keys into a door lock, finding the trigger on a can of mace, and the multitude of fine motor self-defense techniques that are taught go right out the window. Add to that any past emotional trauma triggered by this new event, as well as sociological conditioning (like don't be a bitch, don't back down, etc…) and dealing with the current problem is even more difficult. This explains why traditional self-defense training and other complex protection methodologies do not work and why the following techniques and methods do.

Train the Brain: Students must learn proper awareness skills of the pre-fight indicators, so as to not get drawn into a confrontation in the first place. Interviews with convicted felons show emphatically that predators look for specific cues from their intended victims. Failure to exhibit these cues is often enough to deter an attack before it ever begins. Awareness skills also include learning the various social conditioning that occurs that can get us into trouble, for both men and women.
Train the Voice: Verbal Skills must be taught to effectively thwart an assault before it becomes physically violent. 80% of assaults on women are successfully carried out by verbal threat alone. The vast majority of assaults on men are preceded by verbal provocation. Most attacks can be stopped in their tracks by good verbal defense alone.
Appropriate Action: The real trick to effective self-defense is in determining the level of threat and responding with the appropriate level of response. Most people fail to assess the threat level correctly and usually under-respond and become the victim, or over-respond and exacerbate the situation. Students must learn the entire continuum of threat levels and the correct response at the level the threat presents.
Breathing: This may seem silly to mention, as certainly everyone knows how to breathe. But breathing is the "anti-freeze" secret. Most people hold their breath under duress and quickly lose power and control of their minds and bodies. Holding the breath is often the first symptom in a cascade of failures that can lead to totally freezing up in the heat of the moment. Breathing is emphasized through every step of the FAST Defense training and is the catalyst to turn fear into power!
Focus on Simplicity and control: We are focusing on just a handful of very simple strikes delivered with full adrenal force. Most importantly, students of Adrenal Stress Response Training find they have the ability to control the adrenal rush and maintain the ideal heart rate for optimum effectiveness of 115-145 bpm.
Realism: Simulation training using live scenarios has proven to be the very best way to train people in self-defense. Each scenario applied by a skilled team can accomplish the desired results for that particular section of the course.
Visualization: This is another powerful learning tool. Your students will watch each and every scenario while standing in the line waiting their turn. This provides a great deal of experience in a relatively very short amount of time.
Group Dynamics: Various survival/Adventure courses like Outward Bound have used group dynamics to dramatically breakthrough old fears and limitations for decades. Adrenal Stress Response training uses the same principles for maximum results in minimum training time.

As you can see, Self-Defense must encompass a wide variety of skills in order to be effective in the diverse situations that people experience every day. The good news is that modern technology has afforded us the means to accomplish this quickly and relatively inexpensively. FAST Defense offers a wide variety of courses that include all of the above information, where students attain amazingly consistent results in just a few hours. From there, students can continue on to advanced level courses to include ground fighting, weapons defense, and even defense against multiple assailants. One thing is for sure, self-defense is not rocket science and virtually anyone can learn to take care of them self better than was ever before possible. Not only is there a growing need for good self-defense as our society becomes more violent, these skills translate into other walks of life where any sort of confrontation exists. Graduates of our courses report again and again how empowered they feel at work home and play in virtually every facet of their lives after taking one of our short courses.