As a Dojo that works on historical techniques, it will come as no surprise we have taken the same approach to combatives training. While most will feel they need a new system that works on the street, time and time again, history shows us that systems that have been tested through time tend to survive for a reason.

W.E. Fairbairn was a combatives visionary who learnt his trade in the drug dens and criminal underbelly of South East Asia. Working and training, what is said to be the world’s first SWAT Team, the Shanghai Municipal Police. Fairbairn used all the tools at his disposal to create a number of fight systems that helped get results.

This included knife fighting, shooting, grappling, striking and kicking. This systems was repackaged numerous times, but most famously as Defendu, the art of combatives he taught to the newly formed British and American special forces during WW2.