Brief bio of The Sensei
I never give out too much information about my identity, especially over public media. I advise my students to keep a low personal profile at all costs, so it would be hypocritical (and unwise) for me not to do the same. But those who I trust, and who have trained with me, know who I am and what I can do. That’s really all that matters to me.
…but for those serious, potential students who are interested in my credentials and history, I will let slip a few broad strokes of my life.
…but for those serious, potential students who are interested in my credentials and history, I will let slip a few broad strokes of my life.
Basic Training
As a child, I often felt as though I was living on a knife-edge. The streets where I grew up were dangerous. They were permeated in gang culture. Mugging and violent crime were epidemic. Terrorism was a constant threat. I was a kid during the cold war, and we were continuously being told that global nuclear war was a real possibility.
This unstable environment had a profound effect on me. When one of my best friends was killed in a knife attack—before we had even reached our teens—I made a promise to myself. I vowed that I was going to learn to survive—no matter what.
And so I began to look for instruction. I spent all the money I could earn from odd jobs on martial arts lessons—kung fu, judo, karate, aikido, jujutsu—everything that was available. As I progressed, I realized that hand-to-hand combat wasn't even the start of what I needed. I began seeking out out instructors who could teach me advanced skills—weapons training, disarming techniques, multiple opponents, projectiles, etc.
Perhaps inevitably I began to get involved with more and more powerful weaponry. Handguns, shotguns, rifles. I began to acquire books on making impromptu weaponry—gases, incendiaries and explosives. In college, I took courses on chemistry and learned enough engineering to begin safely experimenting with these frowned upon arts until I was proficient. Better than proficient.
Combat and survival are twin disciplines, and I was inexorably drawn to both. Despite growing up in the inner city, I took every chance I could get to travel into the countryside. As I became older, I began to make these journeys alone, to increasingly desolate and out-of-the way locations. As the trips became less challenging and more mundane, I entertained myself by gradually taking fewer items of equipment each time.
At first I left the miniature gas stove at home, which forced me to gather firewood as fuel for my fire. Then I left the matches at home, so I learned to ignite my fire alone, without technological assistance. Then I left the tent behind, and it became a fun game building a shelter, to stop me from freezing during the night. Next, I left my water supplies behind, so that I had to filter and boil water from the indigenous rivers and streams. In the end—when I was about eighteen—I left all my food supplies behind.
I had learned how to trap animals years before, but catching a beast and killing and eating it is another matter. I’d read articles in books on preparing game , but I was still a bit uneasy about the reality of the whole thing. Luckily for me, a good friend at the time had begun an apprenticeship as a butcher, and he was able to teach me some basic skills on actual carcasses. I combined what he’d taught me with some camp-craft principles and my knowledge of cooking, and I got by. In time trapping, preparing and cooking animals became easy. But then, humans are adaptation machines; everything becomes easy, given time.
After leaving college, I found my studies taking a higher direction. Learning combat and survival was not enough; I wanted to understand the need for these arts in the first place. To comprehend the environment I lived in, totally. I felt a deep craving to know why societies collapse; why wars happen; why one individual turns on another. So I worked part-time to pay my way through university.
I read the only subjects that could help me grapple with these bigger questions; philosophy, psychology and sociology. I studied by day and worked most nights, but every spare hour I could find I used to hone my skills. Because I was spending so much time training my mind, I realized that I need the quickest—and best—ways to train my body to lethal effectiveness.
I scoured literature for the fitness and strength methods used by everyone I admired, from ancient gladiators and the old-time strongmen, to modern gymnasts and navy SEALS. Before long, I developed a system of training that allowed me to get and maintain elite physical abilities with the least training possible. I was virtually penniless, so I learned to develop peak fitness without an expensive gym. I’m glad I did.
I continued studying the martial arts. Life on campus was more cosmopolitan than the inner city, and I gained access to new skills that taught me fresh ideas and techniques to add to my fighting repertoire. Arts like ninjutsu, kobudo, kenjutsu, kali and escrima.
Combat and Survival
But I never forgot my love of survival. In the summer following my graduation from university, I gave myself a “present”—a three-week survival expedition in the center of Belaveskaya Forest, the oldest and most unspoiled woodland in Europe. Belaveskaya is incredibly beautiful. It measures over two thousand square kilometers, and sprawls like a vast green blanket in the political “gap” between Belarus and Poland.
Because the area is so wild and isolated, I had to estimate the center using primitive orienteering techniques, and I reached it by trekking. There’s no other way. The area where I stayed was a National Park, and in theory access to the wilder portions was (and still is) very strictly controlled. In reality however, the forest is so massive that and the chances of actually encountering a park ranger—or anyone at all, for that matter—are vanishingly remote. Tourists tend to restrict themselves to the artificial glade areas, or the bordering villages.
All I took with me was a sharp, high quality Bowie knife and the clothes on my back. (As I write this it actually sounds pretty hardcore, but I distinctly remember at the time feeling a bit of a pansy for taking the knife!) During the age when most guys in their early twenties were chilling out in clubs and chasing girls, I was hanging out in prehistoric forests and tracking my dinner. (I’ve been called a lot of things—but I’ve never been called normal.)
My time there was peaceful; almost easy, in fact. Game and edible vegetation was plentiful, the streams were crystal clear and the weather was mostly warm. After my successful time at Belaveskaya, I lost some of my focus on survival. I figured that, because I could survive in the wild by myself for three weeks, I knew all there was to know. To be totally honest, I thought I was “the man”!
My experiences later would prove to me that I was wrong. Dead wrong.
Upon my return home, I began work full-time and started learning more about urban combat. My solo life and work allowed me plenty of time and some spare cash to begin picking up the knowledge I needed to really fill out my repertoire in this area. I studied close protection skills, gun drills, urban tactics from militia specialists, and advanced marksmanship.
This way of life continued for a number of years. I never stopped training; but now I had the space to build up some of my resources. During the whole period of my self-training, I kept assiduous notes. I vociferously wrote down what I’d learned, techniques I’d acquired, equipment I’d adopted and methods I’d analyzed. I cultivated an impressive library on self-protection, survival, martial arts and all aspects of combat. I kept clippings on articles related to these areas, hazards and the politics and ideologies putting the world at risk today.
A turning point
During this period, I was also able to travel more, to see areas and meet people who interested me. I went to Israel and learned Krav Maga—the urban art of safety—from the people who invented it. I learned CNB (Chemical, Nuclear, Biological) protocols from ex-SAS soldiers and studied under the last Maquisards in North Africa. But one of these journeys would change my life forever.
It was at the stage of my life where I felt I had learned as much as I needed to know to fulfill my childhood vow to myself. I figured it was probably time for me to settle down, stop being so obsessive, and finally start living like “normal” people…find a career to focus on; maybe get married. But there was still one place I was really eager to visit, somewhere I’d never got round to seeing.
The place was Henan Province, China. When I had first started studying martial arts as a young kid, the first style I ever learned was Chi Shi Chuan—“Seven Warrior” kung fu. It’s a very rare and sophisticated style, and I followed it assiduously for years…but I never got to learn the “final” forms of the style, because my sifu did not know them. Whenever I asked him about it, he responded; “If you want to really learn the true final forms, you will have to go back to where the system was first invented—Henan Province”.
So, a decade and a half after first learning the style, I packed my bags for Henan Province. I figured that this trip would take my studies full circle. It seemed like a poetic way to complete my journey before settling down to normal life.
I went to Henan, and stayed for six weeks, studying with my master’s master. I was lucky enough to learn everything I wanted to know, but in the back of my mind there was a wistfulness. I think I was sad that my time as a student of self-protection was probably coming to a natural end.
How wrong I was.
On the way home, I stopped briefly to visit Langchenggang, a nearby town in Henan. The dense center seemed peaceful, a nice place to be—when, out of nowhere it seemed to me—a massive riot exploded. When I say riot, I mean it—at least a dozen people were killed and probably two hundred injured. The source of the fighting was enormous religious tension between the Hui Muslims and the Han non-Muslims. In a matter of hours, thousands became involved. After the clashes erupted, I managed to get myself to a safe quarter of the town.
I was able to conceal myself quite well, which was a good idea because I had no weapons (and even if I did, the local gangs would not have taken lightly to a foreigner joining in their bitter war). Even so, as the riot continued, I realized just how unsafe I really was. I had no food, no resources, and not much more than my ticket home. I couldn’t even escape the town, because thousands of police had set up checkpoints around the area to prevent foreign journalists of tourists entering or leaving to tell the tale. The army—a trigger-happy bunch at the best of times—patrolled the surrounding borders.
The first day was not a problem. But by day three I began to get very nervous. I had thought of myself—quite arrogantly and incorrectly—as a master of the art of survival. I’d believed that just because I could purify water, gather firewood, light a fire and trap rabbits, that I was an expert. I saw now the sheer folly of that belief.
If I’d been in the woods, I could have located a stream or pond, for water. But in the city, people depend on civil water supplies, and the nearest river—the Yangtze, hideously over-polluted by industrial activity to the north—was miles away. In the countryside, game and vermin are so plentiful as to be easy to hunt. But in the city? Urban wildlife is rare, and difficult to catch. People get their food from shops and markets—which, because martial law had been declared, were all securely locked up.
As it happens, everything turned out okay. Fortunately I had a limited supply of water, and the riots lasted less than five days—nowhere near enough time to starve or succumb to dehydration. I later discovered that this massive upheaval had been sparked off by a stupid traffic accident, of all things.
Traveling through to Beijing, I boarded a flight and left China. I knew I was lucky. The thought; “what if…?” played in my mind like a stuck record. On the long, slow journey home I did a lot of thinking. Physically I was completely unaffected by this experience, but I’d been quite badly shaken up mentally. I felt very vulnerable. I felt as though I had failed in the promise I had made to myself as a kid—to learn to survive, no matter what.
I reached home a changed man. After my experiences in China, I found that I was now less interested in my career, and more and more interested in knowledge. By day I picked up whatever casual job I could find—anything which kept me financed, mentally unburdened, and without any social ties. By night, I studied. Researched other urban crises, all over the world. I discovered the harsh truth that it can only take a few hours in the city—any city—before anarchy and chaos breaks out. This can be caused by rioting, crime, civil and political unrest, religious or racial tensions, terrorism, natural disasters, technological breakdown…. You name it. It can happen anywhere, and as the world becomes more complex, it’s happening increasingly!
This trip had been a revelation. Before coming to China, I’d thought that me studies were coming to an end. Now I realized that they were just beginning a new phase. I needed to develop an entirely new system. A new path—an urban survival system. A system that not only included combat, weaponry and tactics; but something totally original, that included alternative skills like stealth, infiltration, urban hunting and unconventional maneuver. Like much of my training, I realized that I’d have to embrace radically unusual methods if I wished to master what I needed to know…
Advanced Urban Survivalism
I was intrigued by this. Perhaps there was a way of learning about urban survival, after all? The notion became an idee fixe; at work I’d find myself daydreaming about how I’d manage on the streets of a major city, with nothing; no cash, no resources, no contacts. Nothing. I crawled into bed at night and imagined it while I drifted off to sleep. I thought about the kind of situations I would encounter, challenges I might face, and how I could solve them. I’d fall asleep, and sometimes I’d even dream about being on the streets.
After a few weeks, these vague imaginings began to transform into plans. Being quite an austere, single person, I had very little expenditure, and began to save up the bulk of my wages. Before long I made the decision to do it. I set myself the bizarre challenge of becoming homeless for three months, to see how I would cope.
I stored all my belongings—mostly books, weapons and files—in the small property I was renting at the time. I paid the landlord four months rent in advance, and informed him that I’d be traveling for most of that period. To my surprise, he seemed to have no problem with this. I secured the portion of the building that I’d hired, and left. All I took with me were the clothes on my back—which included gloves and a thick, full-length coat (winter was coming)—and the key to my home. I hitchhiked north until I reached my selected destination.
I had resolved not to take any of the “easy” options, even for a single night. No squatting, no hostels, no welfare, no begging, no charity. And I didn’t. There would have been no point, anyway; this was my test, whether I could develop techniques to survive in a true urban crisis. In such a crisis, those “easy” options would simply cease to exist.
I’ll spare you the specific details of my adventures as a rough sleeper, but my learning curve was steep, to say the least. In fact, in the beginning, it was Hell on Earth. I lived under bypasses, slept in garbage and ate from bins. In the city I’d selected to be my new “home”, there existed a loosely interconnected population of homeless people and before long I was accepted as a part of this “community”.
I learned about them; learned who they used to be, how they got where they are now, and how they survived the streets. I learned their ways. I gathered trash and the disposable junk that other people throw away, to use myself or barter with the others. I washed in public lavatories, and got my water from the filthy taps. In order to eat, I became involved in petty crime; shoplifting and other thefts. A few times I got into heavier stuff and burgled industrial sites and retail centers. I’m certainly not proud of this aspect of my personal history, but I will say that I didn’t steal from private individuals, and I didn’t ever commit a violent crime. I was attacked, however. My knowledge of martial arts came in handy on several occasions, which I’d better not go into.
Through a combination of stubbornness and dedication—probably combined with a touch of monomania and plain stupidity—I succeeded in achieving the goal I had set for myself. I did not return back home for three months, give or take a few hours. Upon my return, I was outwardly quite changed by the experience; I’d lost nearly ten kilograms of bodyweight, I had developed temporary arthralgia, and my skin looked very weather-beaten; red, cracked and lined. In fact I’d aged somewhat.
Inwardly, however, I was a better man than the one who’d left. My personal horizons became enormously expanded. More importantly, I had stuck out the twelve-week gauntlet I’d set for myself, and buried the demons that had been gnawing at my skull since the experience at Langchenggang.
After getting back, the first thing I did was to bag up my stinking, filthy clothes, and throw them away. Then I shaved off the coarse, grizzled beard I’d acquired. Next, I fired up the heating and took a huge, hot bubble bath. The joy of being able to shampoo and scrub everywhere was quite overwhelming; I remember in particular how wonderful it seemed to brush my teeth (try going without brushing your teeth for eighty-four days, and you’ll see what I mean).
After drying off, I unlocked my safe, broke out the cash I’d stored there and ordered a ridiculously large Chinese meal, most of which I was unable to eat. Then I took a second bath. Finally, I slept in the warm for the entire weekend, waking up only to make tea and savor the leftover food.
It sounds so ordinary, but it was the most pleasurable weekend of my entire life. I felt like the world’s richest man; like a king, an emperor or something. It made me appreciate how pampered and protected most of us are in the western world, but it also made me slightly wary of our dependence on luxury.
Upon my return, I had the system I had really been looking for all along. Urban survival. My own development had transcended training and become a way of life, and it was not long before others came to me to learn what I had to teach.
After a few weeks, these vague imaginings began to transform into plans. Being quite an austere, single person, I had very little expenditure, and began to save up the bulk of my wages. Before long I made the decision to do it. I set myself the bizarre challenge of becoming homeless for three months, to see how I would cope.
I stored all my belongings—mostly books, weapons and files—in the small property I was renting at the time. I paid the landlord four months rent in advance, and informed him that I’d be traveling for most of that period. To my surprise, he seemed to have no problem with this. I secured the portion of the building that I’d hired, and left. All I took with me were the clothes on my back—which included gloves and a thick, full-length coat (winter was coming)—and the key to my home. I hitchhiked north until I reached my selected destination.
I had resolved not to take any of the “easy” options, even for a single night. No squatting, no hostels, no welfare, no begging, no charity. And I didn’t. There would have been no point, anyway; this was my test, whether I could develop techniques to survive in a true urban crisis. In such a crisis, those “easy” options would simply cease to exist.
I’ll spare you the specific details of my adventures as a rough sleeper, but my learning curve was steep, to say the least. In fact, in the beginning, it was Hell on Earth. I lived under bypasses, slept in garbage and ate from bins. In the city I’d selected to be my new “home”, there existed a loosely interconnected population of homeless people and before long I was accepted as a part of this “community”.
I learned about them; learned who they used to be, how they got where they are now, and how they survived the streets. I learned their ways. I gathered trash and the disposable junk that other people throw away, to use myself or barter with the others. I washed in public lavatories, and got my water from the filthy taps. In order to eat, I became involved in petty crime; shoplifting and other thefts. A few times I got into heavier stuff and burgled industrial sites and retail centers. I’m certainly not proud of this aspect of my personal history, but I will say that I didn’t steal from private individuals, and I didn’t ever commit a violent crime. I was attacked, however. My knowledge of martial arts came in handy on several occasions, which I’d better not go into.
Through a combination of stubbornness and dedication—probably combined with a touch of monomania and plain stupidity—I succeeded in achieving the goal I had set for myself. I did not return back home for three months, give or take a few hours. Upon my return, I was outwardly quite changed by the experience; I’d lost nearly ten kilograms of bodyweight, I had developed temporary arthralgia, and my skin looked very weather-beaten; red, cracked and lined. In fact I’d aged somewhat.
Inwardly, however, I was a better man than the one who’d left. My personal horizons became enormously expanded. More importantly, I had stuck out the twelve-week gauntlet I’d set for myself, and buried the demons that had been gnawing at my skull since the experience at Langchenggang.
After getting back, the first thing I did was to bag up my stinking, filthy clothes, and throw them away. Then I shaved off the coarse, grizzled beard I’d acquired. Next, I fired up the heating and took a huge, hot bubble bath. The joy of being able to shampoo and scrub everywhere was quite overwhelming; I remember in particular how wonderful it seemed to brush my teeth (try going without brushing your teeth for eighty-four days, and you’ll see what I mean).
After drying off, I unlocked my safe, broke out the cash I’d stored there and ordered a ridiculously large Chinese meal, most of which I was unable to eat. Then I took a second bath. Finally, I slept in the warm for the entire weekend, waking up only to make tea and savor the leftover food.
It sounds so ordinary, but it was the most pleasurable weekend of my entire life. I felt like the world’s richest man; like a king, an emperor or something. It made me appreciate how pampered and protected most of us are in the western world, but it also made me slightly wary of our dependence on luxury.
Upon my return, I had the system I had really been looking for all along. Urban survival. My own development had transcended training and become a way of life, and it was not long before others came to me to learn what I had to teach.
The Urban Warrior School
Over time, I built up a considerable group of students from different areas. They reached me through other instructors who knew me, and by word-of-mouth in the survival and combat communities. Those who know, know me. Some of these men were fathers and husbands looking to gain some empowerment to protect the people they care about. Some lone civilians, some expert survivalists, even some military and close protection specialists looking for the edge that only I could teach them.
Before very long, my personal students grew quite large in number; a little community which in time became known as The Urban Warrior School. Many of my more advanced students were from a large local Jujutsu school. Jujutsu is a Japanese art, and the Japanese word for teacher is “sensei”.
During one session, one of the trainees began calling me “sensei”. The others followed suit, and the name just stuck.
Before very long, my personal students grew quite large in number; a little community which in time became known as The Urban Warrior School. Many of my more advanced students were from a large local Jujutsu school. Jujutsu is a Japanese art, and the Japanese word for teacher is “sensei”.
During one session, one of the trainees began calling me “sensei”. The others followed suit, and the name just stuck.
The Urban Warrior’s Bible
Years passed, and some of my students had to move on—different career paths, different lifestyles. The way of the world is change.
So, at the request of my shifting band of trainees, I began correspondence training with selected students—via letters, at first. Eventually, email. As this continued, my system—slowly—began to take on a structure; a written, illustrated source of fresh material.
Following one training session—it was on knife defense—I brought a couple of students back to show them some of my written records. One of the trainees—also a brilliant law student—looked up at me after perusing a couple of folders brimming to overflowing with ideas and tacked on notes. He then asked me the most obvious question in the world—a question I had never even considered:
“…Why on earth don’t you write this as a book? It would be the ultimate manual on self-protection and urban survival! There’s nothing else like this in existence!”
This idea—passing on my hard-earned knowledge to the next generation, who would definitely need it more than ever—excited me. But before long, I was brought down again. The future attorney’s fellow trainee, a gruff but savvy forty-something ex-boxer, spoke up:
“Nah. Publishers will never go for your stuff. It’s way too hardcore—too politically incorrect. You’ll have to tone it right down.”
He was right.
I knew the self-protection market like the back of my hand, from years of collecting every work I could get my hands on. My chosen discipline, by its very nature, is to the extreme. I had no intention of toning my teachings down. Ever.
We soon began discussing other matters. But my mind kept returning to the problem, as if magnetically drawn to it, racking my brains for a solution. There must be some way to train people who can’t actually reach me—but without compromise?
After midnight, my students left. I went up to the roof, still contemplating the problem, to look out over the lights of the city below. This is a routine of mine. It helps me think. And it worked like a charm—before very long, the solution sprang into my mind like a clarion call:
Reach people through the internet!
I sprang down the stairs five at a time to get onto my computer—and I spent the rest of the night and next day without food or sleep, scouring every site I could find for the information and software I needed to make my dream a reality.
That night, the concept for the-urban-warrior.com and The Urban Warrior’s Bible was born.
The rest is history. Now I’m reaching more people than I ever dreamed, training more students than I could ever have imagined…a whole army of Urban Warriors!
AND WE WANT YOU!
I hope that tells you what you wanted to know about my life and work.
Want to know more?
Join my INNER CIRCLE and you only have to ask!
I hope to see you there soon!
THE SENSEI