SPEAR moaning again...

Yet more allegations from SPEAR that Spartan gear has ripped off their idea.

http://www.spartantraininggear-scam.com/

You would have thought they would spend the money on a patent case rather than a trash talk website. Which leads me to think they dont have one.

 

They don't have one because Tony may have sketched a design on a napkin, but it was the designer at the now Spartan warehouse that actually designed the gear. When Tony parted company from them to pursue his US contracts they were free to keep improving the product.

Tony keeps harping on about this and I've noticed that even I've been the subject of rubbish from him. In the ones I've seen he fails to mention that I was a published author on the subjects in which I teach before I even met him, or that my karate system was called DART before I spent a year as part of BTS and they had no objections then. Selective memory.

 

I did look into SPEAR before i did DL as both play on the use of natural instinct.

 

Even wikipedia doesnt like it.

" It has since been adopted by several military and law enforcement agencies across the world.[citation needed]"

 

The use of flinch based responses is common in a number of martial arts and predates Blauer and his training.

 

You missed the "tm" off when you mentioned him......

 

Funny thing is i've been hearing some rumours that SPEAR™ is being replaced in the police manuals with something else.

 

So far as I'm aware it has because they refused to use his trademarked name or buy into the whole system.

 

Did they not want "metro police - NOW USING S.P.E.A.R™" on the uniforms?

 

I'm just hoping if it's true that DL is getting the Lincolnshire Police contract they don't spray paint them green.

 

I hope for LP's sake they're not contracting DL. Too many holes in the important places in that frame when dealing with HAOV in all the videos I've seen.

 

HAOV? I've been hearing rumours of it for a while i'll see if i can track down more info.

 

Habitual Acts Of Violence

 

Like these?

Male vs. male:

Push to chest followed by a punch
Punch (usually a haymaker) thrown without preceding physical technique
Chest/lapel grab followed by punch
Two-handed chest/lapel grab followed by headbutt
Two-handed chest/lapel grab followed by knee to groin
Bottle, glass, or ashtray to head
Lashing kick to lower legs
Stabbing the face with broken bottle/glass
Side head lock
Front head lock

Male (assailant) vs. female:

Single hand grab of victim's raised wrist, gesticulating with other hand
Grab of one wrist and the opposite upper arm, victim's arms pointing down
Victim raises both arms, attacker grabs one wrist in each hand
Victim's arms are down, attacker grabs both upper arms
Two hands grab one arm, at wrist and upper arm simultaneously

 

Personally I have nothing against any company doing their best to sell their material.

I am however worried about the systematic jargon that is used within them. Jargon can help to present a particular idea, - monkey dance, or H.O.V but it can give too much weight to an idea changing it from a useful way of beginning to understand a situation into a black and white approach. A language of pseudo science can emerge intended to validate and sell a particular product.

So for example Habits of violence (as described in the post above) might be called, commonly observed attacks.

Commonly observed attacks is wishy washy, less definite and doesn't look good in a manual. But it is more open and transparent. It also begs some very important questions - what situations were these attacks observed in? What type of people were being observed? How Representative are the observed attacks to total of all attacks?

I never read Hegel - too many words - but i believe that he said some important stuff about how language can unintentionally constrain thought.

 

I'm not a fan of TLA's and FLA's or Jargon.

 

I used to have a long article up on my wordpress blog on HAOV which was taken from a piece I wrote for Traditional Karate Magazine in 2004. The same information is in my current books.

Bits of what I've written can be found here:
https://www.iainabernethy.co.uk/content/violent-crime-hapv-statistics

I noted in my most recent books that there are lots of different terms floating around, sometimes overlapping in context, sometimes not. I use HAOV to describe aggressive and violent behaviour patterns because in my experience it is the most commonly used and least ambiguous term.

You might also come across PIA, Monkey Dance (mainly for pre-fight behaviours), HAPV to name a few.

 

I've actually covered most of those in classes. Good list.

 

It's bread and butter stuff. What should make up the majority of training in any self defence focused system.