Tony Blauer SPEAR PDR seminar in Berlin

There is no right or wrong. Just somthing that is more desireable and less desirable.

In march 2011 I had the opportunity to train Tony Blauer's SPEAR PDR [1]. Tony's man in Danmark, Christian Hvidberg, held a two day seminar in Berlin [2].

A quick summary and the main aspects to me:
1. The starting point of everything seems to be the flinching position. Everybody flinches when something happens. PDR accepts it and acts accordingly.
2. The most probable attack on the street is a hook. PDR trains a lot of defenses against it (as far as I can tell). If a hook attack occurs you'll flinch. And that's what you train in 1).
3. SPEAR PDR tries to incorporate a lot of real world stress. It's really difficult to incorporate real surprise, stress and a higher pulse ratest into a training scenario. PDR tries it anyhow by encouraging people to emulate pre-fight indicators, wide-open eyes, loud screaming and such when attacking. It also has a lot of drills, where the defender does not know what happens, so that the training becomes more "real".
4. Saying that PDR also tries to overcome the freeze that occurs after you are attacked. Do something. Think. Even under stress. Not many systems train for the freeze. Or tell people that a freeze is something supernormal. Nice.

It's really difficult to judge PDR from only 2 days of practising. But PDR definitely makes sense. It also gave me a lot of input for my own training.

Would I want to be a PDR trainer? Not really. PDR is imho a money making machine and PDR affiliates have to spend a lot of money keeping their degrees and such. I mean it's okay. But I don't like it that much.

All in all it was a really nice two day course led by Christian. Christian btw, also follows his own path. He calls it street sence. Worth checking out [3].


[1] http://www.blauertacticalusa.com/
[2] http://www.pdr-denmark.com/
[3] http://www.street-sence.dk/