Looking forward to getting to know you.

Hi Everyone,

John and Dennis invited me to join the forum when I had the pleasure of attending their fantastic seminar in Ireland a few months back. Looking forward to making some contributions on the site and I thought I’d give a bit of background as to who I am and where I’m coming from.

My name is Paul, aged 26 and I’m a reality based practitioner, but it didn’t start that way. Usual story of how I got into the martial arts – small kid, read books and was able to form my own opinions, so I was a natural target for bullies, and of course I wanted to learn self defense. So I took started to study Shotokan Karate. I even took a year out of school to train full time.

Trained in Shotokan for 15 years and several others arts including; Kobudo and Nunchaku-do for 10 years, Aikido for 3, Jujitsu, Kendo, and Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu for about 2 years. I've trained briefly in a number of other styles as well, though not for long enough to be worth listing. The martial arts taught me everything, how to stand, how to walk tall, how to be confident and to stand up for what I believed, however – it didn’t teach me self defense.

I discovered this in an unfortunate evening where I was attacked by a knife, and in another incident involving a firearm. 15 years of karate and I didn’t have clue what to do – I really hadn’t seen violence since a school yard, and the reality of the streets was a very far cry from the Dojo.

Luckily I survived those ordeals, but it did hammer home that all my martial arts training had perhaps left me worse off than knowing nothing of martial arts training. So I started researching the methods of combat used by people who actually had to fight for a living, military, police forces, doormen and security teams etc.

I found these guys weren’t using complicated moves or combinations like I had trained in. They used simple straight to the point effectiveness. They used the techniques taught by Dennis Martin, Lee Morrison, John Brawn, Richard Demitri and Jim Wagner and others.

So for the last 5 years or so I’ve spent my time training in Combative systems, and trained with many of the best instructors. I’m currently a Level 3 instructor under Jim Wagner teaching Reality Based Personal Protection.

Other than Reality Based Self Defense, I work as a fitness instructor and developed Boru Fitness Personal Training and Isometric-Training.com. I’ve also recently established my own private medical practice, specializing in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture, though I’m also qualified as a Western Clinical Medic.

I look forward to getting to know all of you and learn about what makes you tick and what works for you, and perhaps jump in every now and then with some of the things I’ve discovered and what has worked for me.

- Paul.

Welcome Paul
It was great meeting you at the seminar at John Brawn's place.
Looking forward to your posts
Cheers,