We recently interviewed Jarrod Saxton, author and founder of Tactical Running on our podcast. When I first purchased his book I was shocked that anyone could write an entire book on running away from a self-defense situation. I was pleasantly surprised when it wasn't full of fluff, but a lot of great information.
Tactical Running is a martial art that is focused on the flight response rather than the fight response in a self-defense situation. As a martial arts and self-defense instructor I have been as guilty as most in telling people to run away if they can, but not telling them how to do it.
So if you are someone who has trained in martial arts, fighting, or firearms you may think this would be unnecessary, but you would be mistaken.
It is always best to escape or deescalate a situation if at all possible. As I heard from another instructor, any time you let a situation get physical there is a greater than zero chance of you dying. If you do run and the attacker is following you, where do you go? What do you do? How do you deal with obstacles you may encounter?
I pointed out to Jarrod that when I was coming up I was always told to run away if possible, but never told how to do that. Jarrod responded "Huh, yeah. I think that's something that I noticed as well. I thought, what if we had a martial art for our flight response? That was very similar and had a set of techniques that we could learn with a system and clear directions. Learning how to fight greatly improves your chance of surviving a fight. So surely learning how to run and having techniques for running and accessing certain advantages improves your chances of actually getting away from that situation. It gives you another mode of self-defense. You know, if you think about it, we've got our fight and flight response. And so, if you're just sort of maxing out one, you're limiting your self-defense abilities."
Jarrod Saxton developed Tactical Running by combining what he learned from studying multiple styles of martial arts, track and field, rugby, and beach sprints from surfing competitions. He took all of that and started working with friends to help him to develop the best techniques.
What I love about what he has done, is not just trying to reinvent the way we fight or try to throw together techniques and call it a new style. He found a hole in what was being taught in self-defense and martial arts and he found a way to fill that hole.
I'm such a fan of what he is doing that I not only bought his book, but we are also going to be doing some training with him and Jada and Kylie will be working on becoming Tactical Running Instructors.
Pick up a copy of his book here: https://amzn.to/3QIOBTZ
Check out the Tactical Running website here: www.tactical-running.com
Check out the Tactical Running YouTube Channel here: https://bit.ly/3y9GmJg
Train hard. Stay safe.
Brian
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