Martial Arts Articles By Jim Wager

Jim Wagner’s Reality-Based Personal Protection system has created a major shift in the way people are learning self-defense world wide. Alfredo Tucci, the publisher of Europe’s top martial arts magazine Budo (printed in seven languages) stated, “Jim Wagner is without doubt one of the most important experts in the world on ‘real self-defense.’ He has taught the most important units in the world, such as German GSG9, Israeli Special Forces, FBI SWAT, Argentinean GOE, the U.S. Marshals, Brazilian GATE, every branch of the American military, the U.S. Border Patrol, Helsinki Police, British TSG, etc. His curriculum is impressive!”
(Biography)

You may be learning a martial arts system in order to protect yourself against a common criminal, but does your training also include how to handle the global wave of terrorism? Is your system designed to give you the tools you need to survive armed attacks, kidnappings, and most recently – bombings? The Reality-Based system does.
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My uncle once told me, “It is easier to be a doctor than a car mechanic. Doctors only have two different models to repair, but a mechanic has to know how to repair hundreds of models.”  This observation is humorous if you’re a mechanic, but we all know that a human being is infinitely more complex than the most sophisticated vehicle. Although the typical human has only one head, two arms, two legs and a torso, it’s the human brain, which directs the body to work in order to accomplish a wide variety of tasks. One possible task is to engage in conflict with other human beings. (Read Article)

Most violent crimes today are committed by armed criminals, be it with knives or guns, and yet most martial artists spend the majority of their time practicing against empty hand opponents. If you have been paying attention to the news lately, you soon come to the realization that your self-defense training should be more weapons oriented and less empty hand centered. Even for those few martial artists that practice gun disarming techniques, often times the training is unrealistic and does not accurately parallel the realities of actual criminal and terrorist attacks. If you say that your gun training is realistic, then there is just one word to prove it – PROJECTILE. (View Articles)

Every adversary you come across is going to have the same level of fighting skills and the same reasons for fighting you, right? Wrong. You and I both know that human conflict is unpredictable because there are countless factors involved. Yet, with the way most self-defense instructors teach their students how to handle a fight, one would come to the natural conclusion that there is one generic attacker, and he’s always the worse case scenario bent on your destruction. Yes, there are some predators out there who would not hesitate to victimize anyone they cross paths with, but a “cookie cutter approach” to dealing with conflict can get you hurt and in legal trouble. (Read Articles)

Immediately after the train bombings in London on 7/7 the New York Police Department implemented a new policy of randomly searching people’s personal items, mostly carry bags and purses, in the subway stations. However, police officers were strictly warned not to use “racial profiling” (specifically stopping a person based on race or national origins). In other words, they are to search people randomly, without rhyme or reason like they do at airports where computers decide who gets searched, and not just stop young men and women of Middle Eastern descent. (Read Article)

If you are devoting yourself to the martial arts in order to defend yourself or others you must ask yourself a simple question, “Who is the enemy?” It is no different than a pilot asking the question, “Where am I going to fly to?” The answer will dictate what kind of airplane will be used and how much fuel is needed. (Read Article)

Thumb through any martial arts magazine and you’ll see advertisements and the mention of the Filipino martial arts (kali, escrima, and arnis). In today’s martial arts community it’s hard to imagine a time prior to these arts’ influence. However, back in the not too distant past (the late 70’s) the Filipino martial arts were virtually unknown outside the small Filipino communities of Hawaii and Northern California. In fact, Dan Inosanto himself (the man credited for bringing the arts into the limelight) referred to the Filipino martial arts in 1977 as “dying arts.” I don’t think he or any of the “old guard” (Richard Bustillo, Angel Cabales, Leo Giron, Ted LucayLucay, or Ben Largusa) realized just how popular the arts would eventually become; not just with civilian practitioners worldwide, but within law enforcement, corrections, probation and the US military.
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Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network claimed that they brought down the World Trade Center towers and punched a hole into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 because the United States of America is a staunch supporter of the state of Israel. For the past several months, almost nightly, we have seen disturbing images of Israeli forces battling it out with Palestinian gunmen, Sha’eed suicide bombers blowing themselves up in the middle of Jewish crowds, and a host of world leaders wringing their hands over the fate of the non-strategic city of Jerusalem. (Read Article)

Many of you who read www.realfighting.com are Krav Maga practitioners. Lately some of you may have been hearing about other Israeli martial arts systems that you never even knew existed; terms such as KAPAP, Hisardut, LOTAR, Krav Magen, and others. You may be asking yourself, do these systems even really exist, or are they fabricated to ride the successful coat tails of Krav Maga? Ever since I wrote a feature article for Black Belt magazine about the Israeli martial arts, it has created quite a stir in the Krav Maga communities. (Read Article)

Four years ago the martial arts community outside of Israel’s borders knew of only one Israeli martial arts system, and that was Krav Maga מגע קרב (in Hebrew Krav קרב  meaning combat or fight, and Maga מגע  meaning touch or contact). Then, after returning from my third trip from Israel, having been invited by the Israeli government to train Israeli military and police units in my own Reality-Based Personal Protection system, I wrote an article in Black Belt magazine spotlighting Krav Maga and introduced readers to the equally popular systems of the Holy Land such as Hisardut הישרדות (Dennis Hanover’s system known in Hebrew as Survival), LOTARלוט״ר (deriving its name from the counterterrorist school Lochama Be’Terror) (the fighting system for Israel’s counterterrorism school), and the original Israeli martial of KAPAP פּ״פּק  (a Hebrew acronym for Krav Panim l’Panim, ים נפּל יםנפּ קרב  face-to-face combat), which is alive and well in the modern world thanks to the likes of Lieutenant Colonel Chaim Peer and Major Avi Nardia. (Read Article)