Tagged: Randy King

Randy King: Training for Escape

Randy King of KPC Self Defense and Randy King Live has another awesome installment of his Randy’s Rants series. This one’s on training to escape.

Personal story: few years back I discovered an almost 100% reliable way to confuse and eventually piss off a room full of martial artists. Fight only to create an opening for an escape and then take it. There’s a sort of predictable pattern: confusion, OK I get it, haha you’re still doing it, and ok but seriously why aren’t you hanging out to fight me for fun for the next 10 minutes. (Yes, eventually we probably do have to stay in longer than we would so we can learn.)

Randy King & Erik Kondo: Stop Using Fear Based Marketing

Randy King of KPC Self Defense & Randy King Live and Erik Kondo of Conflict Research Group International:

If you’re not a good enough instructor to bring students in and retain them on your merits, if you have to scare the hell out of them to make them stay out of fear that when they leave your gym they will be attacked by random ninjas and vigilantes and rapists all the time… stop teaching! Just stop – you’re not doing anybody any favors. If you need to keep people in by making sure they leave terrified, or you bring them in by making them terrified…

Continue reading at Conflict Manager Magazine…

Randy King: Instructors and Victim Blaming

Randy King of KPC Self Defense:

“If somebody comes to you and they are very vulnerable and something bad happened to them, the last thing they need to hear is ‘oh, if you would have took my system three weeks ago, you wouldn’t have got attacked like that’…”

For a practical, deep dive on not making things worse for students who’ve been through some stuff, check out Trauma-Aware Self-Defense Instruction: How Instructors Can Help Maximize the Benefits and Minimize the Risks of Self-Defense Training for Survivors of Violence and Trauma by Anna Valdiserri. As far as we know, it’s the only resource out there on the subject. (Disclosure: IDJ publisher Nick Grossman helped Valdiserri develop this book.)