proof read senshido dvd review

can you proof read this review for me please gents

Quote :

"Lone Warrior" DVD by Rich Dimitri

This DVD is an excellent training resource that I would highly recommend for anyone interested in combative attribute development solo drills.

In order to get a feel for what Rich Dimitri's training style is all about you need look no further than the first 60 seconds of the DVD which starts in typical Senshido fashion by emphasising "CONCEPTS OVER TECHNIQUES".

The Senshido approach does not cater to people’s seemingly insatiable desire for technical variety, it chooses depth over breadth and this DVD is no different.

Rich Dimitri explains in a clear, easy to listen to unscripted fashion that the course focuses more on the Psychological than the Physical elements of training.

There are a lot of similarities between my approach and Rich Dimitri's and in many ways over the past few short years of being in the SP industry I have been influenced and inspired by his research and work. This focus on the conceptual rather than the technical and emphasis on drilling with emotional and psychological intensity rather than micromanaging students techniques is something that resonates very deeply with me.

I've done this review in tandem with the release of my own "Solo Drills" DVDs as I feel the DVDs complement each other nicely.

Early on Rich D feels it necessary for the effective training of the SP student to draw a clear distinction between "Shadow Boxing" (essentially a slower paced sports based drill that focuses predominantly on kicking and punching) and the more emotionally intense, behaviourally rooted and environmentally dictated drill that Rich refers to as "Shadow Fighting" that Rich has developed for the street focussed solo drills shown on this excellent DVD.

Rich points out that the more you perform any skill the more it sets into your neurology and that you must have "a philosophical reason for everything you do".

This is a perspective we definitely share having watched countless keen "partial arts" students drilled into zombie robot patterns of "action reaction". Rich Dimitri really understands and clearly feels passionate about the need to create spontaneity, creativity and the capacity to skilfully improvise in a combative scenario in his students, this comes through on the DVD very strongly.

If you are familiar with my "Psychology of Violence" combative visualisation cds you will know how much I emphasise the need to practise at a mental level, much the same way that sports psychologists will train athletes, golfers, tennis players etc will train it.

Rich Dimitri's "Shadow Fighting" is like a spontaneous, ongoing "P of V" waking hypnosis that allows you to completely recreate and work with combative scenarios which INCLUDE you making mistakes and recovering!
I think the genius of this drill lies in the emphasis on almost pure responsive, creative visualisations with "multiple redundancy" (posh way of saying what to do when you f@@k up) planning built in. Rich D encourages the ability to practise taking shots and making mistakes but fighting on.

This is what real violence is really about at its core, if everything is going perfectly then you aren’t really under threat and therefore not really in a true "Self Protection" situation, you are just delivering a beating.
Rich D constantly comes back to the need to focus on fighting out of disadvantageous situations, environments- even emotional and psychological states of mind.
"Imagine you are drunk or tired or pissed off and sat down, in a cramped corner, outnumbered" (I'm paraphrasing).

The theorists will clamour that it "shouldn’t happen if you are AWARE"- but the experienced will know that this is just how violence occurs, when you are NOT ready, NOT switched on and that you must just "FIGHT" your way out.

This "Lone Warrior" Shadow Fighting Drill of Rich D's really does permit you to spread your wings in terms of potential threats and responses whilst truly developing your fighting spirit and willingness to survive. Rich mentions the need to train people as "survivalists". The flavour of the Senshido training is as far from "fair fight" one on one, sportive, combat type training as you can get. Rich D continually reminds the viewer that this is for visceral, real world, survival situations.

To this end Rich talks about creating an "emotionally intense time frame" and training from it. The Drill on this DVD is very much a Psychological one; the Physical elements are almost incidental. Rich emphasises the need to develop and anchor combative states of mind which START out from a very deliberately non combative state- such as being tired, bored, drunk etc which I think is an excellent and effective way of training.
Lets face it, how often are you going to get the chance to psychologically prepare in the moment? Even if you are lucky to have a few seconds to prepare it will never be long enough. Only pre training your psyche and your neurology in this way can offer you an element of protection.

Rich D advises the viewer to experiment with different environmental elements like drilling from cramped confined spaces and being sat down as he says "the environment has a huge role in what you can and can’t do".
Therefore it only makes sense to drill that way. He even develops the training to allow the student to find ways in which they can use the environment to their advantage, inclusive of finding improvised weapons- drawing the distinction between using them to actually injure an opponent and just distracting them before physically attacking them which I thought was a subtle but interesting distinction to make.

Finally Rich is at pains to emphasise that "you must have a training partner" and that drilling solo cannot and will not replace getting some proper contact time in with other humans.
He then reminds us of what makes his methodology of training distinctive and unique by saying:

"Your Behavioural Arsenal Determines Your Physical Arsenal"

All over I think this is an excellent training resource and highly recommend you get over to www.senshido.com and get yourself a copy. If we can train alone effectively we can train for free with total convenience and overall get more flight time in developing our combative skill sets and moving towards our individual objectives. This I think is the real value of training alone.

The "Lone Warrior" Shadow Fighting Solo Drills DVD by Rich Dimitri is available now for $45 Canadian Dollars (roughly £22 quid or $38 USD) and runs for 90 minutes, available from www.senshido.com

got to release this today so any help would be appreciated

A nicely written review of what sounds like a very interesting product. I've PM'd a copy with a few little annotations you might consider. When you say 'release', where will the review be posted or published?

looks fine to me Rich. Good review

Thanks Quillhook very helpful, I mean released on the streetfightsecrets newsletter

Looked good to me. Sounds like a very good product which will go well with your Solo Drills stuff.

Speaking of which, is Vol.2 out soon?

its out mate, i released it quietly as the last one was the best selling dvd we've ever had and I didnt fancy another deluge... so i waited for the moment... like a snake...

its been out for a week and most of the usual suspects have already got a copy so i feel safe to release it properly, I'll do a newsletter tonight advertising it and promoting Rich Dimitri's take on it in tandem

skilled in the ways of the force am I

Sneaky SOB!

I'll get my order in today.

Traceur wrote:

Sneaky SOB!

I'll get my order in today.

As my old boss Stephen French used to say: Im just not to be trusted

Great review Rich.
I've looked at his dvd's before but the P&P from him is a killer. Sometimes almost as much as the product.

I read international postage as 8$ did I get that wrong?

ok i just looked

International
Shipping Fees:
Regular Delivery:
$8 per item.


http://www.senshido.com/sshp1_1.html

as its only one item that seems reasonable, if you were buying 3 or 4 I could see that adding up I suppose

Sorry Rich, my mistake.

For some strange reason I was thinking of Sammy Franco.
(must have been something I ate, or my medication)

Richie,

An excellent piece of writing. The British public school system is still the best in the world. My one suggestion for you would be to go more deeply into the question of why we need this DVD. After all, the content described here has been treated recently and very well by...you. The ideas and exercises you refer to in the review seem so familiar because I've just been studying your own DVDs on solo practice, violent intent, NLP, etc. And I'd recommend them to anyone. Your post on Quinn's upcoming DVD was more persuasive to me because you were able to position it as complementary to own instruction and a unique contribution to SP.

In any case, thanks for bringing these DVDs to our attention. I'm sure I speak for everyone on the forum when I say we appreciate your taking the time to review (and in some cases) produce them.

Have a great weekend.

--Dave

I haven't been posting here much.. been getting back into my own training and doing my own thing.

But what I want to say that I have great respect for instructors that recommend others material and realize that there is other good stuff out there.

As i've had a few instructors that were like "you must never go out of my system" and it really held me back..

So I like that Richie, and seeing that your also open to new things and other points of view.

I love this dvd, i've had it for a while and feel like watching it again now. I'd say my main influences at the moment are Senshido concepts and streetfightsecrets work.. as well as my own conclusions from my experience, which have just confirmed viewpoints of good RBSD instructors. (Though its usually better to listen to them than learn through experience).

Anyway off this subject.. Richie, hows it going with the Beta-8 program?

-Ben

hiya Ben

I'd like in some small way to attempt to redress the balance between truly quality instructors who are relatively unknown because they cant compete with those who have larger marketing budgets or better contacts in the martial arts media or are just better at self promotion- its undemocratic

so if I can do a little bit to promote the Bob Spour's , Rich Dimitri's, Tony Blauer's et al I will

Im shooting the next Beta-8 dvds with Reg Wong when he gets back from Hong Kong at the beginning of November, thanks for asking

Hello Richard,

I've had the Lone Warrior DVD for a little while now and can't disagree with anything in your review. Just curious if you can give out any details on your next beta-8 series. I have all three of the previous and am still going back and referencing them.

Keep safe and train hard/smart, Mark H

hiya mate

well in keeping with the idea behind the beta-8 philosophy that this isnt a technique based system rather a framework for developing certain combatively relevant skills ...

the first 3 DVD are about developing specific attributes, as you've already seen, the next 5 DVDs will break down the technical applications (from atttributes to applications) of what Im calling the "core game plan" whilst providing the means to drill them, peice by peice. Im really trying to provide a skill analysis and development programme that is totally watertight so everything has to be broken down into specific parts and objectives stated.

the main objective for this particular Beta-8 syllabus (called 1to1, and one of four) is to provide a practitioner with the means to train to be able to perform a certain series of skillsets with just one specific objective: to be able to fight one opponent, face to face, of reasonably equal size, weight, strength, with no other mitigating factors like weapons or multiples or a dodgy environment.

I think of it as the "mirror image squash court" frame- how would u train someone to fight a mirror image of themselves on a squash court?
obviously no fight ever takes place on a squash court or in any similarly sterile environment, but this is the environment you need for skills to be developed... shooting ranges dont look like the kinds of places you will actually be applying the skills learnt on the range- you get my drift

I'm taking a sports analysis, industrial time and motion studies type of dry approach to it and have broken down the skill of , to put it crudely "beating someone up" into 4 stages with skillsets specific to each phase- this includes multiple redundancies , ie if plan A fails whats Plan B, if plan B fails whats plan C? etc

Its not fancy at all, its super sexy kung fu's dull and reliable cousin who always turns up on time, has a flashlight in the bedside cabinet in case of power cuts and spare batteries right next to it.

The rough draft name for the four stages are: open, blast, crush, drop- the first of the 5 dvds is an overview, the other 4 go into each phase in depth. This type of thing has been done before by a couple of people, usually badly in my opinion as it wouldnt stand up to any kind of academic or industrial scrutiny simply because they didnt take it far enough and because they started applying subjective preference in deference to a "style" instead of obeying cold hard scientific methodology. I will use techniques I dont personally "like" if they are the best tool for the job.

Speaking of "best tool for the job" that is hopefully something people will come away from this course : the habit of constantly asking "what is my objective here? what is the best way at this point to get this job done?" and to challenge all assumptions (including mine) to move beyond what the syllabus offers, which after all is just a training framework.

Im not trying to invent anything new here, but what I like about it is it gives a new perspective to old problems. Applying concepts like procedural and hierarchical task analysis (check on wikipedia for more info) to combative questions has yielded some brilliant results for me over the years, this course is no exception.

So for beginners it should be a good belt and braces step by step syllabus to developing a dependable skillset, and for the advanced students and teachers it will be full of stuff you can steal and adapt to suit your own objectives.

Richard,

Thanks for the quick yet insightful destription. I'll be looking forward to the series. I try to look at every DVD I buy at least twice when I first get them. The first time as just a student maybe picking up something new and the second time I view it with a more analytical eye toward how the information is being taught/transmitted. I still learn variations that are new to me after all the years I've put in developing my own unique system for myself, but also in my capacity as an instructor for my fellow police officers.

If no one has told you there is a suprising lack of interest by many officers in spending time learning self preservation tactics (unarmed that is). It seems most officers and administrators are tool driven. They seem to believe that some kind of device (OC spray, taser, baton or gun) should be the answer. The only problem is that most of the time the officer is not walking around with a weapon already in their hands when the trouble suddenly starts.

keep safe and train hard/smart, Mark H

yeah

its the same in the UK got some mates and family who are bobbies and either they are really into it because they are into martial arts anyway or totally disinterested and think it will all come down to spray and baton

I could tell you some shocking stories of assisting officers during arrests whilst working as a doorman but seeing as your American I would be contravening "nationalistic patriotism" laws by implying that "we arent as tough as you"-lol!

Seriously though, speak to any British bobby- a few post on this forum form time to time- and they will tell you the training is crappy and very short.

One day I might do a control and restraint DVD