Jake Steinmann shares the Personal Defense Readiness Journey.
My first thought when Mike Panebianco asked me to write up a retrospective on my time in the PDR program was “that’s going to take a while”.
Coach Blauer jokes that I was born at a PDR; like all jokes, the humor contains an element of truth. My participation in the PDR program has defined and shaped my life and career as a combat athlete and coach, and the knowledge I gained in the PDR has gone far outside of my coaching as a self-defense instructor. I’ve also been privileged to watch the PDR program grow and evolve from one man’s experiment into an amazing professional coaching program.
In retrospect, the first PDR was a lot like the birth of a child. It was the start of something new and amazing. It was full of excitement, hope, and potential. It was also, frankly, quite messy. No one, including Coach Blauer, knew exactly what to expect. Each of us brought a different set of expectations and visions to the seminar (I envisioned hours upon hours of Panic Attack drills). Sometimes those visions matched. Other times, they didn’t (no Panic Attack drills actually took place). The only guide we had was the Be Your Own Bodyguard Manual, a fifty-page document that contained a great deal of Coach Blauer’s philosophy, concepts, drills, and exercises. Coach Blauer’s stated goal was that we would work through the manual, page by page, until we had completed it. We started on page one.
I’m still waiting for the course on page two.
As disorganized as the weekend was, it was absolutely amazing. Tony unloaded so much information on us over those three days that at times I was left sitting in my seat, stunned and overwhelmed. Some of the ideas that I learned there completely changed my training from that point forward. Some of them I still use, struggle with, and try to make sense of to this day. It was an amazingly powerful experience. In some ways, it was almost too powerful. The information that Tony unloaded on us in those three days could take years to explore. I’m still exploring some of it ten years later.
Of course, I knew even as I left that I had more to learn. As soon as the opportunity presented itself, I signed up for another round of training. And another. I took advantage of a special offer to go to a one-week course at the Smith and Wesson academy, where I watched Coach teach a group of LEO trainers all about the SPEAR. I drove to Maine to attend a three-hour seminar. I was hooked, and little things like distance weren’t going to stop me.
More PDR courses were offered, and, slowly but surely, I saw them start to change. An agenda was laid out. Specific topics and drills became more and more important. Themes emerged. The fourth PDR session was devoted specifically to the concept of the Ballistic Micro-Fight. Further sessions were planned to address Weapons Protection, Multiple Assailants, and other, similar topics.
Manuals appeared. Short ones, at first. A page-by-page breakdown of the Close-Quarter Form (which I still have, and use). Other trainers started growing and helping. But at the end of the day, everything was still on Tony’s shoulders. He was leading this process from the front, and he was doing it solo.
Then, the unthinkable happened. I had to take a break.
I was in graduate school, and the challenge of juggling my studies, work, Muay Thai, Boxing, and PDR participation became too much. After a lot of soul-searching (and wallet checking), I realized that I just couldn’t keep it up. So, with a great deal of sadness, I called Tony and told him I had to take a break from the PDR. I kept up with my own studies of the material as best I could, and waited patiently for the day when I could return to the fold. That day came two years later, at the end of my Master’s program.
It’s worth noting that Coach Blauer was incredibly supportive and understanding, both in my absence, and in my return. There were no attempts at guilt-trips, no sneaky ploys to get me stay on board, no “if you leave, you’ll never be able to come back” nonsense. When I left, he wished me good luck; when I came back, he welcomed me back. In fact, he put me in touch with Tom Arcuri, the Director of the PDR Team (an entirely new concept in of itself). Tom and I talked, and decided that, given how the PDR program had changed, it would be best if I came back and did a fundamentals level course. So once again, I was on the road to Montreal for PDR 14, wondering what exactly I was going to experience, and how things had really changed in the two years since I had been gone.
Understand something important here; many self-defense instructors, martial artists, and combat athletic coaches like to talk about how their training “evolves”. They will tell you about how things are different, how they are always looking for new ways to do things. If you hang around the community long enough, you start to realize that very few of the people who say these things really mean it. Oh, they’ll add a new drill here and there, or they’ll make some slight change in the kata because they don’t like a certain interpretation of it, but their practice will remain essentially the same.
If I hadn’t taken two years off from the PDR, I might not have noticed the staggering changes that had occurred in the PDR program. They might have seemed to occur slowly, incrementally, instead of being the massive overhaul I perceived them to be. As it was, I was shocked, and impressed.
For one thing, Coach Blauer was no longer running the show solo; he now had a team of experienced coaches running things alongside him. In fact, Tom Arcui and Tony Torres spent as much time working with the new coaches as Coach Blauer did. They guided us through the material, aided by a brand-new, well-organized manual, and an in-depth power point complete with some illustrative (and occasionally humorous) video clips. The entire weekend was planned out, so that every participant left with a clear understanding of the material, and an idea of how to move forward with it.
The PDR program rolled along, and I brought myself back into the thick of it. Advanced courses in Multiple Assailants, Weapons Protection, Groundfighting, and Ballistic Micro-Fights appeared. So did a clear team structure. Coaches learned not only how to perform the drills, but how to coach them properly. A clear, common vocabulary emerged, allowing us to pass ideas back and forth clearly and easily.
As the program improved, it grew. Initially confined mostly to Canada and North America, I saw it grow to include trainers from around the world, from the UK to Singapore. Even more impressive, I saw professional trainers and fighters begin to take note of Coach Blauer’s ideas and methods. I had the privilege of helping Coach Blauer share some of his drills and research with renowned Muay Thai and MMA Coach Kru Mark Dellagrotte, and MMA fighters Marcus Davis, Jorge Gurgel, and Rich Franklin. To see athletes and trainers of that caliber taking in an interest in this material was absolutely incredible. I’m sure it will only provoke more innovation and evolution as the program moves forward.
When I look back on that first PDR now, it’s difficult to believe that it was part of the same program. That first seminar was very much like a child—full of passion and energy and enthusiasm, but without restraint or discipline. Now, the PDR is older, wiser, and if it seems less exuberant than it did in the beginning, it is not a lack of enthusiasm, but enthusiasm tempered by wisdom that has made it calmer. Attending the first PDR was like trying to hydrate through a fire-hose; attending it now is like hydrating at a drinking fountain. You can still get a lot of water, but you aren’t overwhelmed by it.
The PDR program has given me tools that have gone far beyond coaching self-defense skills. Through the PDR, I learned to appreciate the importance of pedagogy; I learned that HOW you teach is as important as WHAT you teach, because great material taught poorly is as useless as bad material. I’ve applied BTS FEAR Management concepts to amateur and professional Muay Thai fighters, including myself. Perhaps most importantly, I’ve learned the importance of always being willing to change, to evolve for the better. It is not always easy, but it is always worth it.
I can’t wait to see what the next ten years look like.
