Member From South Africa

Hi Everyone  

My name is Garren,  

I had the great experience of training with Dennis in the late 1990's in South Africa Edenvale he presented a course on Advanced Knife work and empty handed CQB My wife did a ladies self defense course with Dennis as well.

I at the time had some experience with the concept of NLP in a counselling environment but this was the first time it was shared as applicable to Self defense. My experience at the time was some TenshinKan Karate as a young child then some MMA like concepts at the birth of MMA concept these guys were combining Kempo Karate Japanese Jiujitsu, Some Muay Thai (then referred to as Thai boxing in SA) with some Akido and Judo thrown in. Their idea was realistic combat not sport. I did my Military Service and trained with the guys doing JKA mainly helping with body conditioning and helping with the transition from point fighting to full contact, There was a big sports competition held at the end of basic training and the recruits leaving Oumanne/Old Men really went out to hurt the new recruits known as Roofs (Translates to scabs), The instructor was happy to have someone with some full contact background to help him and I was happy to be accepted  into a sport even though I had never done JKA/Shotokan. (If you didn't have a sport or weren't selected to compete, you gardened and cleaned up during sports time).

During the second half of my military service I did little martial arts except for occasional sparring we had some people in my base that did Korean martial arts (Tang soon do + others I'd never heard of) A chap who won silver for South Africa in kickboxing in a tournament held in Germany he kicked like a mule. Some karatekas and some guys who had studied some form of Kung fu and we'd get together and spar for fun now and then.

After I left military service I was focused on finding work and did not actively train, I eventually worked in a pub/social club on a mine where Barman seconded as bouncers.  My martial arts background served me well in controlling situations, though after a few good hand locks (sometimes with added leverage of the bar)  the ability to take a punch and walk away from situations where people expected me to get hurt, gained me a reputation this plus my confidence in potentially violent situations and counselling skills often managed to keep situations from getting too troublesome.

I met my future wife and she and I did a couple of years of Tai chi together, that was the school that led me to discover Dennis and his courses. At the same time I had started a new job and My boss had been a choy le fat  Kung Fu practitioner most of his life and had switched to Wing Chun later. He recognized me as a fellow martial artist and he began to teach me and occasionally spar. He left after 7 years and at that stage  My wife had wanted to do a hard style and we Joined the Shaolin martial arts center where we trained for a number of years. After  Breaking my foot during a grading the time off allowed me to I realized that I was spending way too much time at the Kwoon and missing my daughter growing up. Some time later I met a sensei teaching Mugai Kenjutsu i did about a years worth of gasshukus with him over weekends just to get a handle on the Katana and the differences between Chinese sword arts and Japanese.

These days as my side hustle I sell knives, swords and Martial arts weapons I am very passionate about self defense and ladies self defense and we sell a lot of items specifically useful and easy to conceal aimed at ladies self defense.

Thats my story.  Hope to read and learn as much as I can  from the members of this forum