I am writing this article right after seeing the John Wick 3 movie, and it was awesome. It got me to thinking about how someone can be this skilled in a rather short period of time. What I am going to talk about in this article will take you almost a year to accomplish, but it takes years to master a single martial art, so a year to become an unstoppable warrior is pretty short.

Phase 1: Learn Standup fighting

For phase one, I want you to focus on standup fighting before you develop anything else. So, for this phase, I want you to take a Krav Maga course for at least three months.

Krav Maga will strengthen your body, challenge your mind, and teach you how to protect yourself in a standing position. I chose Krav Maga because I have trained in it and know the effectiveness of this art.

It is a military self-defense and fighting system developed for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israeli security forces derived from a combination of techniques sourced from boxing, wrestling, aikido, judo, and karate, along with realistic fight training. I served in the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, and it has adopted Krav Maga as its choice of combat for special agents. I like it because you can become pretty effective in a short time. As a matter of fact, there are many weekend seminars that will make you pretty proficient in just two days.

Krav Maga is known for its focus on real-world situations and its extreme efficiency in a fighting situation. From the outset, the original concept of Krav Maga was to take the most simple and practical techniques of other fighting styles (originally European boxing, wrestling, and street fighting) and to make them rapidly teachable to military conscripts.

Krav Maga has a philosophy emphasizing aggression and simultaneous defensive and offensive maneuvers. Krav Maga has been used by the Israel Defense Forces’ special forces units, the security apparatus, and by regular infantry units. This should convince you of the effectiveness of this art.

If you don’t have the time or a location near you, an alternative is to get The Israeli Connection course offered by TRS Direct. It teaches you how to use the combat-veteran soldier’s “Vital Target” map of vulnerable spots on the human body to instantly take out anyone (of any size or skill level) who attacks you. You will be able to raise your fighting skills from zero to proficient fighter pretty quickly. There are also many other hand-to-hand courses offered by TRS Direct.

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Phase 2: Concentrate on Your Ground Game

In phase 2, I want you to turn your focus to ground fighting for three months. You can choose judo, sambo, wrestling or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I recommend BJJ because it mainly focuses on the ground. Be careful as there are many different types of BJJ schools out there and many focus on sport training and you become fodder for their competitive fighters if you don’t choose wisely.

I highly recommend that you find a school that offers Gracie Combatives. Gracie Combatives is the famous Gracie family’s beginner program for adults. In this program, you will learn the 36 core techniques of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu (also known as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or BJJ) in a fun, safe, and cooperative environment. Each one-hour lesson addresses one standing and one ground self-defense technique, which are further broken down into simplified drills or “slices” to facilitate the learning process. You can start the program at any time and participate in any class without previous experience and, since safety is the number one concern, there is no competitive sparring in this program.

Although Gracie Jiu-Jitsu consists of over 600 techniques, studies of real fights conducted by members of the Gracie Family have shown that 36 techniques have been used more often and with greater success than all the other methods combined. Unlike sport schools, this course was developed solely for combat. Initially developed for the U.S. Army, Gracie Combatives is the only course that is entirely dedicated to the mastery of these 36 essential techniques. You need absolutely no experience to start this program. Three months is not very long, but you will know more than the average person in that short time.

If you don’t have the time or a location near you, an alternative is to get the International Warrior course from TRS Direct. It offers some ground tactics as well as standup.

Phase 3 – Study stick and knife fighting

For phase 3, I select stick and knife fighting for about three months. Why, because in real life situation you are more likely to find and use a stick or knife (or something close to it) almost anywhere and they are likely legal to carry in most areas. Sticks and knives are relatively simple to use proficiently.

Arnis, also known as Kali or Eskrima, is the national sport and martial art of the Philippines. The three are roughly interchangeable umbrella terms for the traditional martial arts of the Philippines (“Filipino Martial Arts,” or FMA) that emphasize weapon-based fighting with sticks, knives, bladed weapons, and various improvised weapons as well as “open hand” or techniques without weapons.

A bonus is that Arnis also includes hand-to-hand combat, joint locks, grappling, and weapon disarming techniques that will enhance your standup tactics. Although in general, emphasis is put on weapons for these arts, some systems put empty hands as the primary focus, and some old school systems do not teach weapons at all.

If you don’t have the time or a location near you, an alternative is to get the Enigma training or all three of the Street Defense courses. They will provide you with stick and knife training as well as hand to hand offer by TRS Direct.

If you want training in ALL these skills, pick up my Special Agent Combative Course which gives you a little of each.

Phase 4 – Take a combat shooting course

I consider defensive shooting instruction to be an incredibly serious and important undertaking; it is literally life & death material. I am not talking about just a regular shooting course, I am talking about finding a program that focuses on developing reasonable levels of skill for the most likely events you could face in as efficient a way as we can and then expanding the circumstances under which you can expect to be able to apply those skills when they need them most. To be able to apply them Intuitively, without cognitive focus on the mechanical skill performance. That is the heart of a combat shooting program.

A good combat shooting course won’t be designed to make you the best shooter you can be on the range. Instead, the goal is to help you quickly develop fundamental skills that you can apply in a worst-case scenario defensive shooting situation.

If available, find a course, or take a second course, that focuses on engagements inside of “double-arm distance.” The chosen course should feature a significant amount of retention work, unorthodox shooting positions, introduction to some combat shooting concepts and a variety of less-lethal options.

If you really want to be unstoppable, I recommend you also take a combat shotgun course. Your ability to make ammunition selection, continuity of fire, malfunction clearances, and transitions to the handgun will keep you in the fight. The defensive shotgun is a demanding weapon system, but extremely useful. You will now be in command of one of the least-understood but most prolific weapons systems available.

Finally, if you really want to go high-speed, that a carbine course that is designed to expose you to an efficient method of defending yourself with a semi-automatic rifle during a dynamic critical incident.

Now if you REALLY want to shoot like John Wick, enroll in a Defensive 3 Gun Class. This class will combine the use of a handgun, carbine, and shotgun into one course. A good course will cover marksmanship, manipulations, carry methods, safety, care and maintenance, combat mindset, and much, much more about how to manipulate all three weapons you have learned to shoot.

OK, that’s it. If you follow these four phases, I have mapped out in this article; you WILL become an unstoppable warrior able to handle any situation in which you find yourself. Have fun and train hard.

Click here for more self defense instruction taught by Derek Smith