Instructor Profiles - Urban Self Protection

I run the Newton Abbot USP club alongside Private Training, Instructor Training, Specialism Training and syllabus development.

I initially started out in Kempo Ryu Karate Kickboxing in 1997, which, whilst a fairly traditional system, was aggressive and carried out a lot of impact training rather than patterns and choreographed movements.

I eventually attained my black belt and began running a small club. However, at the same time, through my profession, I was involved in various confrontations and realised much of what I had learnt was superfluous, however, the aggressive and high impact training had set me in good stead.

I began to look for other realistic systems and came across Krav Maga. I attended a few classes and loved how no-nonsense it was. We trained in shoes, in darkness, in uneven areas and against realistic attacks with realistic responses. I got onto the next IKMF Instructors course and trained long hours in London under some of the world's best including Eyal Yanilov. I succeeded and became a Graduate Level 2 Instructor and set up a Krav Maga class as soon as I could. I ran this class for several years.

Despite Krav Maga being excellent and no doubt effective, I wanted to cross train to make sure I wasn't becoming too blinkered with one system. I discovered Jim Wagner's Reality Based Personal Protection System. Jim is an ex-Federal Air Marshal and has a great deal of Law Enforcement Experience as well as Military, Counter Terrorism, Close Protection and Martial Arts. I attended an Instructor Course in Ireland in 2005 and really enjoyed it. Jim's system was based more on principle than technique. It also emphasised more realistic training conditions. I loved both The Wagner system and Krav Maga and taught both.

I continued training under Jim for some time and eventually became his UK Director.There are only 3 Level's in Jim's system, but due to my background and continued study, I was given the honourary title of Level 4. There were only 5 Instructors in the world to have this honour and it meant I was entitled to train up Instructors for Jim.

I gained further qualifications in scenario creation and realistic training and gained qualifications and experience in teaching and coaching.

In 2009 I realised I could not continue to teach both systems and was coming up with ideas of my own. I then spent some time formalising my own syllabus which incorporated what I felt were the most realistic techniques, the most useful tactics the best training methodologies and most importantly - sound principles. This system was named Urban Self Protection or USP and was born September 20th 2009. Since then, it has gone through various developments and will continue to do so where improvements can be made.

I have just published a comprehensive guide in two volumes to the entire USP syllabus.

I continue to develop my own skill and learning, most recently having attended training in 'Rapid Assault Tactics' and received a 100% grade in the 'On Combat' study course (conflict psychology and physiology) and am currently studying the Centre Axis Relock method of close quater shooting.

In my personal life, I enjoy teaching and training, syllabus development, archery and the cinema and my guilty/geeky pleasure is an interest in disaster preparedness - probably as a result of watching too many zombie films!

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Level 6 Instructor