Flash Mobs & Civil Unrest

Gershon Ben Keren

Wed 29th Apr 2015

When I present on Travel Security, one of the topics I cover, but often do not go into great detail on, is “Civil Unrest” e.g. what to do if you find yourself in a foreign country, when demonstrations, and riots occur. Generally what we advise is not going to those locations or areas where protests are taking place. However if civil unrest occurs in the city or town where you live – as is playing out in Baltimore at the moment – you may end up finding yourself in the middle of a flash mob. This blog article looks at...Click To Read More

Natural Surveillance & Bystanders

Gershon Ben Keren

Sun 26th Apr 2015

People are often surprised to hear about violent assaults happening in “broad” daylight, and expect violent encounters to be restricted to out of the way/deserted places, late at night etc. There are several reasons why assaults happen in well-trafficked places, during daylight, and the purpose of this blog article is to examine some of them. I break violent encounters down in to two types: pre-meditated acts, where the assailant has planned to use aggression, the threat of violence or violence itself to accomplish a pre-defined goal e.g. a mugger, who has planned to approach you and stick a knife to your...Click To Read More

Marathon Weekend

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 20th Apr 2015

Tomorrow in Boston, the 119^th Boston Marathon, takes place. Two years ago, the Finish Line was the target of a terrorist attack, which saw 3 people killed, and injured at least 264. With Dzhokhar Tsarnaev awaiting sentencing, having been found guilty on all charges – the Marathon Bombings are extremely fresh in everybody’s mind. It is worth remembering that it is almost impossible for an individual to predict violence which targets the group they are part of e.g. nobody who attended the Boston Marathon in 2013, could have predicted that an act of terrorism would take place. Violence and criminal...Click To Read More

Always Room For Improvement

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 13th Apr 2015

It’s a relatively long time since I’ve been involved in a violent confrontation, and I’m also not a great fan of martial arts instructors “war” stories, however if lessons can be learnt from mistakes, then I thinks there’s a benefit to telling them. My first caveat, is that when real-life violence does kick off, it’s a mess, and what I’m recalling, is my remembrance of the event, so things might have actually happened somewhat differently. So this happened, on one of the first nice days that we’ve had in Massachusetts. As luck would have it, my car had broken down on...Click To Read More

Training for Reality - Putting the Pieces Together

Gershon Ben Keren

Sun 12th Apr 2015

You can’t simply create reality in training; unless as a “surprise” element, you invited a street gang in to attack your students, without warning – and then you’d only be creating a certain type of reality, as this wouldn’t resemble every potential situation a person might face etc. To train for reality, you need to put several components together, sometimes training and developing them individually, and sometime blurring the lines between them, and combining them. A short (but not exhaustive list) is offered below:

1. Techniques & Technical Development
2. Skills & Attributes
3. Physical Fitness & Aggression Training
4. Threat Recognition & Decision Making
5. Situational Training

Becoming Versatile

Gershon Ben Keren

Sun 5th Apr 2015

Whether it’s sparring, rolling or fighting games, we all have our own personal favorites, whether it’s the techniques we use, or the game-plan we adopt. There are those people, who prefer to come crashing out of the gate at 100 mph, and those who’d rather sit back, observe, and work off the counter etc. Neither approach, is better than the other – they are just different. The problem is, that if we only ever practice the one approach, however well suited it is for us and how effective we are at making it work, we are limiting our own development,...Click To Read More