Spear_System_Guide_new.pdf

THE

SPEAR SYSTEM

Tony Blauer Shows You

6 Self-Defense Moves

Based on Real Street Fights

Interview by Robert W. Young

Photo by Rick Hustead

Back in 1982, a decade before the Ultimate Fighting Championship and years before other

reality-based-combat simulations, Tony Blauer created the “panic attack,” a training drill that

accounted for the way a real-life adrenaline dump affects a martial artist’s breathing, focus

and complex motor skills. He discovered what everyone else found out once the UFC burst

onto the scene: Theory and practice are not the same.

Black Belt: The result of your latest research is called the SPEAR. What does that mean?

Tony Blauer: SPEAR is an acronym for Spontaneous Protection Enabling Accelerated Response.

Understanding the theory behind the acronym is the irst step in understanding how and why

many self-defense systems are predisposed to fail in a real, sudden, violent assault.

BB: Why do you think most self-defense systems will fail?

Blauer: Most of what martial artists practice is not real. The moment there is consent, there is

awareness — which means there is preparation. These psychological components completely

change your mindset. In a real situation, there are so many emotional and psychological fac-

tors that the sensory overload can negate all those years of training. The remedy is to address

the problem of how real ights occur and what is behaviorally realistic. In other words, you

must proactively analyze how you are likely to move and think in a real assault and train

around that model.

BB: Is that what your system does?

Blauer: My system focuses on “adversity drills.” We are always working on recovery principles.

Most people focus on the offensive, not the protective. In other words, most people tend to

ixate on what they will do to the opponent, not what their opponent will try to do to them.

This slight perspective shift is the difference between a proactive training session that increases

perception speed and decreases reaction time. And that’s a fundamental difference. Our focus

is on a simple three-tiered premise that seems to elude most self-defense curricula: One, real

ights are not fun. Two, real ights are technically messy. Three, real ights are those confronta-

tions in which emotionally we wish we were somewhere else.

WRONG WAY TO RESPOND: As a verbal confrontation begins, the stress builds and the defender (right) may experience an adrenaline dump (1) .

When the attack is initiated (2) , the defender linches (3) . When his arms instinctively come up to protect his head, the attacker can easily land

his blow (4) .

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RIGHT WAY TO RESPOND: Using Tony Blauer’s SPEAR system, the defender (right) can convert his body’s natural reactions into a protective

tactic. As the punch begins (1-2) , the defender moves forward to intercept it before it attains maximum power (3) . Once the defender has

nulliied the attack, he is in position to follow up with a close-quarters technique (4) .

BB: How does the SPEAR it in?

Blauer: The SPEAR is genetically inspired and intuitively engineered. Our true survival system

in concert with our intellect, experience and instincts can combine to enhance safety if we

don’t botch it by learning contradictory muscle-memory sequences or wiring presumptuous

decision-making programs. Behaviorally speaking, we all move away from danger, but tacti-

cally, the only way to stop a close-quarters physical threat is by moving toward the threat.

Real ights happen inside the space of a phone booth.

BB: And the SPEAR addresses this?

Blauer: Yes, the SPEAR is the only behaviorally based self-defense system that analyzes and

uses the survival linch spawned through a survival/startle mechanism in the brain. In a true

ambush moment, your brain experiences a delay between stimulus and response. In reality,

it’s not a response; it’s a reaction. This is the paradox of martial arts training. When we agree

to ight, we can mentally adjust and respond. But when the attack is a true surprise, we are

more likely to react rather than respond.

BB: How does the SPEAR use the body’s natural reactions?

Blauer: Over the past 20 years, I’ve analyzed the most common responses to surprises and de-

signed cognitive drills around them. Methodical practice of these tactics turns your natural

linch into a trigger to engage your close-quarters arsenal. In other words, it helps you convert

a genetically supported reactive response to a real threat into a protective action. You learn to

move from a reactive state to make a responsive statement. I have not invented a new style;

I have created a realistic and effective bridge so you get to the style you are trained in. If you

lose it in that initial contact moment, it may be too late to recover.

BB: For years, you have been on a quest to learn exactly what happens in a real ight, and now

that path has led to the SPEAR. How did it begin?

Blauer: In 1986 and 1987 I developed the sucker-punch drill. I wore only a mouth guard for

protection, and my training partner wore 16-ounce gloves. I was not allowed to strike; I could

only evade and avoid. The drill always started with dialogue at close quarters, and I had to

maintain that close proximity while trying to verbally defuse it.

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BB: Did that drill develop from your trademark panic-attack drill?

Blauer: Yes. It’s important to understand the evolution and progression. There were a few groups

out there trying to push the envelope. They were sparring hard and doing multiple-assailant

drills. Some were wearing gear, but there was always something missing: real-time evolving

dialogue and reciprocal risk. In other words, once the ight started, both the role-player and

the defender had equal opportunity.

BB: How is that different from the sucker-punch drill and the SPEAR?

Blauer: If you spar hard or against several opponents, it’s still sparring and there’s still the [aspect

of] consent and awareness. If you are doing scenarios and only one person attacks, there is

no real risk. The adrenaline dump is created by performance anxiety, not a potential threat or

the fear of failure. Many people, especially some of the newer groups doing simulations, do

not completely grasp this. And those two components are the missing ingredients in a real

dynamic simulation where a true “emotional blueprint” is created. If there is no dialogue and

no unpredictable risk for both parties, the simulation is partial. You can’t jump in a swim-

ming pool and wrestle with a rubber shark and then believe you’re ready to handle “jaws.”

And that insight is why the panic attack is uniquely different from many simulation systems.

Our effort to develop attack-speciic responses within scenario-speciic simulations is why

the sucker-punch drill was developed. I wanted to create a close-quarters isolation drill to

address the sudden attack.

BB: Why is scenario-speciic training so important?

Blauer: Because scenario-speciic training is the only process that can mature and develop the

body/mind connection. And it develops the pre-contact stage, the missing link in all training.

Sparring, no matter how you do it, is still just sparring. It is not scenario-speciic, and there’s a

huge difference between attack-speciic training and scenario-speciic training. Attack-speciic

is when you work on how to get out of a choke or how to get out of a multiple-assailant

The versatility of the SPEAR allows it to be used to defend against a realistic

attack such as a tackle. To illustrate, Tony Blauer (right) simply lowers his

center of gravity to jam a charging grappler.

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situation. Scenario-speciic is

about the situation and how

you got there. It induces a

different adrenaline state,

and most important, it creates

the mental blueprint that can

heighten your awareness in a

real-life confrontation.

STUDENTS OF THE SPEAR

In case you’re wondering just how legitimate

Tony Blauer’s SPEAR system really is, check out

this partial list of agencies that have paid big

bucks to learn it:

• Australian Federal Police

• Dallas (Texas) Police Department

• Federal Air Marshals

• Federal Bureau of Investigation

• Houston (Texas) Police Department SWAT Unit

• Illinois State Police

• Rochester (New York) Police Department

• Tampa (Florida) Police Department

• U.S. Coast Guard

• U.S. Department of Defense

BB: How are surprise attacks re-

lated to the SPEAR?

Blauer: Everybody forgets that in

a real attack, you are some-

where doing something else,

not waiting for someone to

signal the start of the fight.

Predators look for victims

they can surprise. In real life,

you don’t know when or where someone’s going to hit you. After creating the panic-attack

system, I wanted to be able to reine special moments in a conlict. We had verbal-assault

drills and pain-management drills, and I wanted a sucker-punch drill since that big right hand

was common and fairly predictable. Embracing all I had learned in the role-playing panic

attacks, the sucker-punch drill was pretty obvious. Phase one would start with a hostile verbal

exchange that was escalating. The conversation was crucial to the success of the adrenaline

dump and the element of surprise. I refer to this principle as adversity training — creating

drills where the probability of failure was greater than the probability of success. Too many

martial artists spend most of their time worrying about looking good rather than recovering

from a Murphy moment.

Anyhow, we’d be in a heated verbal exchange, and even though I knew one punch was com-

ing, I didn’t know when or where. It could be a punch to my groin, a shot to my bladder, an

uppercut or an overhand. I found that once the adrenal system kicked in, the irst thing to go

was breath control and lucid verbal skills. Hyperventilation compromises blood low to the

brain. That’s a problem if you want to think clearly. That is the magic of a truly behaviorally

based approach.

The sucker-punch drill messed with all the notions of control and focus. I had to proactively

design verbal defusing and distraction segues for real assaults: What can I say if I am being

mugged? What can I say if I am at an ATM or in my car? Years later, I was explaining the process

to a researcher in Texas who develops nutritional supplements, and he called it a genetically

inspired self-defense system. He said I was wiring into the tactics that the human survival

system wants to do, whereas other martial arts are based on learning and muscle memory.

BB: How did that evolve into the SPEAR?

Blauer: With the sucker-punch drill, I was trying to use a physical tactic when I had no knowl-

edge of where my opponent’s attack would originate. Because the sequential relationship

of the martial arts has no basis in reality, I got hit. That’s because most tactics are based on

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