Reality Based Self Defence

I remember my first martial arts lesson as though it happened yesterday. I was about 10 years old and my dad took me to meet his photographer friend who taught self defence. My dad’s friend turned out to be non other than Soke Ben Mängels, founder of the South African Institute of Unarmed Combat (SAIUC), martial arts master and Close Quarters Battle (CQB) instructor to South African and British Special Forces units. Soke Ben taught Atemi-Jitsu and Ju-Jitsu, which he later combined into Atemi-Jujitsu. He called it “street karate” and I loved it. Even so, I was not the most dedicated student then. School sports and girls were more “important” and I dropped out of class. It would be 10 years before I was serious, really serious, about martial arts.

When Soke Ben moved to the USA he handed the SAIUC over to Shihan Thaya Moodaley (Seventh Dan Atemi-Jitsu and Ju-Jitsu) who was the Director of Training. I have been fortunate to have some great martial arts teachers and Shihan Thaya stands among those. He has been my mentor in life and martial arts for 15 years. I remember Soke Ben was all about keeping it real, but it was with Shihan Thaya that I internalised the idea that we need to accept reality before I could train for it and then to train hard and be real. Being real means working outside the comfort zone of “traditional” or structured attacks. No-holds-barred should mean, and often doesn’t mean, absolutely no-holds-barred and all dirty fighting allowed.

Shihan Thaya also encouraged us to explore other martial arts and search for useful ideas, concepts and techniques that could be applied in real combat. I did so and started training in, and then teaching, Wing-Chun-Kuen, Tai-Chi-Chuan and Filipino Escrima. Again I was fortunate to have to great teachers and mentors in Sifu Stephen Elliot, the late Sifu Leslie James Reed, and my older kungfu brother Sifu Brett Vallis. All who taught me the value of tradition, form and structure. I do not ascribe to the belief that traditional kungfu has no place in “real fighting”. When applied properly traditional kungfu is as effective, if not more effective, that most mixed martial arts.

The one area I explored more than others was knife attacks – common place in this part of the world and growing in other places such as the UK. Atemi-Jujitsu placed an extraordinary focus on defending against weapons, especially knives. The motto of the SAIUC is “The Unarmed Against The Armed”. I spent more time training to defence against various knife attacks, than doing traditional one-one-one kicking-punching or grappling sparring. I had an excellent grounding in knife fighting before Lloyd de Jong introduced me to the knife methods used by the gangs in the prisons and gangs in Cape Town. I began to consider that some of the methods I was using needed to be adapted to different styles of knife fighting. For years I grappled with different approaches to knife attacks before developing an integrated approach to knife training that I was happy with. Thanks must also go to Sensei Patrick Bambrough, a good friend who trained with me under Shihan Thaya before moving to the UK, who exposed me to more Filipino knife fighting techniques, JKD concepts and Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu.

Teachers often cannot help but bring their own flavour to the arts they teach. In traditional martial arts this is an informal, sometimes encouraged, sometimes discouraged, process. Shihan Thaya Moodaley, however encouraged his sensei to bringing their own thoughts and experience into the martial arts they would teach. I followed my Shihan’s instruction and I thank him for encouraging me to travel this road.

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