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About Richard Grode

From the StreetsRichard Grode

Growing up in East Los Angeles — where gang wars, racial tension and violent acts of crime were almost a daily occurance — gave Richard the opportunity to experience what it takes to survive on the street in a wide variety of situations. So, when he started getting involved in the Martial Arts field over twenty-five years ago, it was more for the sport than for any idea of self defense. In all his time spent training as a full contact karate ring fighter, or as a tournament point fighter, or during the time learning kata's, kicks, and punches in the dojo, he would have never thought of using those techniques in a street fight. It was pretty well accepted that what you did at the dojo was not what you did on the street to survive.

A Personal Quest for a Reality-Based Self Defense System

Knowing that there were other more effective methods of personal self defense than the traditional standard martial arts, Richard started searching for systems of combat that would be effective in today's world. Some of the systems he came across were good, but none were complete systems that could be incorporated into the average person's life. He trained with military personel learning their systems of combat, but most of the systems were based on being in a constant combat mind set and being in excellent physical condition, and most of the moves were designed to kill or seriously hurt your opponent. What might be appropriate for the battlefield might not be appropriate for an encounter in the parking lot at your local store.

Training Techniques from the Field

While Richard had found martial art systems to be nearly useless on the street, he later discovered some old-style military martial systems of South East Asia, old-style Military Mauy Thai (not to be confused with Mauy Thai kick boxing), Military Silat and Bondo. These systems of combat were brutal and fast with powerful strikes, using body mechanics, moving at angles, getting in close, and for the most part, based on gross motor skills. Although these systems are powerful and many of the techniques work well during attacks, they are too time consuming to be practical for the average person to learn. While working as a Senior Instructor at the International Institute of Professional Executive Protection, Richard met Daniel Sambrano and other high-level fighters with the same goals for personal protection. Bouncing ideas and elbows around with this elite group, Richard integrated the most practical and powerful aspects of all the systems he had studied along with his experience on the streets to create the highly effective and practicle Personal Protection System.

Travelling extensively in third world countries, often in some of the world's most dangerous places, taught Richard what it took to survive in foreign countries — where what you carried on your body and traveling case could keep a family eating for a year. So, when he started taking clients to these places as a high risk adventure guide, he knew that along with feeling confident in his ability to take care of himself he had to expand into developing a system that would include taking care of his clients. He also wanted to teach his clients how to survive without him.

A Lifetime of Education in the Mind-Body Connection

Always looking for ways to bridge the gap between knowing what it takes to survive on the street and what it takes for the average person to learn self-defense techniques has led Richard to many different areas. Being an athlete for most of his life — biking, rock climbing, mountain climbing, skiing, diving, fighting and martial arts — along with being an instructor in these sports, has given him the knowledge of what it takes for people to learn on a physical/kinesthetic level. Having studied psychology, hypnosis and the mind/body relationship has given Richard the understanding of what it takes to learn on a psychological/mental level. His ongoing search for different fighting systems has given him the opportunity to study, train and work with a wide variety of people and different systems of the world. His experiences as a street fighter and being in many high stress dangerous situations has given Richard the opportunity to develop a highly effective and easy-to-implement Personal Protection System.

Having studied, trained and worked with many different martial artist, fighters, military/law enforcement personel, Richard knows that it takes more than just being a good fighter to be a good instructor. He knows that, when you are working with people from a variety of backgrounds and with differing physical conditions, you have to be flexible in your teaching and have a system that can work for a wide variety of people in a wide variety of situations.

It's EVERYONE's Right to Feel Safe

Richard feels, as does everyone at Personal Protection Pro, that it is everyone's right to have the highest form of Personal Protection Training available. Lately, self defense has become quite a buzz word, with almost every corner dojo and martial arts instructor claiming to be self defense instructors—buit often their systems have little or no value at all in actual reality-based situations. High quality reality-based training should not only be available to special groups, military, law enforcement, body guards etc., but to every responsible person. Richard, along with everyone at Personal Protection Pro, is always training and developing higher forms of personal protection so that they can offer the highest level of training anywhere.

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