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Students have to bite the bullet(man)article by Bill Doucet - Staff writer Cambridge Times - printed Sept. 23, 2004 article posted with permission of the Cambridge Times |
| The Bulletman looks like a crude caricature of a football player or one of the members of schlock metal group GWAR. But the heavily padded “assailant” - named because of the shape of the huge helmet protecting the head - is a key ingredient in the FAST Defense technique that will be taught on Saturday at 1:30pm at Hespeler Jujitsu, 2-54 Guelph Ave. |
| FAST, an acronym for Fear Adrenal Stress Training, is a three-and-a-half hour seminar geared toward teaching students how to harness the instinctual survival response when being attacked instead of freezing due to the level of fear in the situation. To do that, students are put into real scenarios with an attacking assailant and must fight back. To get the adrenaline flowing in the participants, actual profanity (if deemed necessary) and touching - though no one gets hurt - is used to make the scenario as real as possible. |
| Students then have to bite the bullet(man), actually striking the heavily padded assailant until they can escape. According to instructor, Greg Crozier, the Bulletman is just a small portion of the seminar, as students are taught how to condition themselves to avoid a physical confrontation all together. But if pushed to that point, they will be able to defend themselves. “The whole point is to set boundaries and raise the awareness about how to carry yourself so that you are not a target,” Crozier said. “The bulk of the seminar is friendly, with drills with a partner. The Bulletmen really never comes in until the end. The whole course is based on conflict resolution. The strategy is to help self control and teach people to be assertive, and use the all the tools to not become a victim.” |
| The FAST Defense method was created by Bill Kipp, who is considered one of the world’s leading experts in adrenal stress scenario based self-defence. Kipp basically took a previous defence program developed by Matt Thomas, called Model Mugging, and fine tuned it over 16 years through trial and error to determine what works and what doesn’t work in real life situations. Scenarios were tested on martial arts experts, professional fighters, children, teens and mothers and fathers with no previous training. “There has been great success with people who have taken the seminar and faced the Bulletman,” Crozier said. “When they get on the street and have an altercation, it’s easier to react properly because they’ve already broken through that barrier in class. But it isn’t just for women. This is a co-ed class. It really tends to be an eye-opener for the guys, as well as the ladies.” |
| Crozier acknowledged that even though the course is cutting edge and has been around for about 30 years, it is shunned by most martial arts instructors. “People in the martial arts clubs have certainly heard of it, but they won’t believe that the teachings and training in traditional martial arts just isn’t enough.” But even with all the talk and drills, Crozier admits that the standoff with the Bulletman is when the course really becomes valuable. And he has seen first hand how adrenaline can affect even the calmest of persons when they pushed into what could be a life or death struggle. “Depending on the person, they get so adrenalized that they won’t stop wailing away. So we have a female coach to blow a whistle to get them to stop. Sometimes the higher brain function doesn’t work if you’re really adrenalized.” The class is $99. For more information and to book a spot, call Crozier or Mike Curtis at 651-3316. |