PULSE Magazine | November/December 2018 Issue

We as First Responders must be able to detect these incidences as they are playing out and be able to deescalate them and if necessary be able to use nonviolent postures that can easily and effectively segue to defensive techniques that allow us to gain and maintain positional domi- nance. This is the one of the very best aspects of the Spear methodology and why we are so passionate about bringing it to our providers! When both myself and Andre pitched our idea to the Association we offered to pay our own travel expenses to the course in Grand Prairie, near Dallas. When we announced our plans to go to the Spear course after the Association graciously agreed to pay our tuition, a very interesting thing happened! Many of our fellow medics here in ATCEMS as well as a Hays Co. EMS employee and a few good family and friends donated their own money for our travel expenses! This was not only unexpected but a bit overwhelming. When we entered in to this project, we had no idea how much support and interest we would ultimately receive. It's been pretty amazing to say the least! In fact, while initially working on this project I contacted Tony Blauer himself via email explaining what Andre and I saw as the issues facing our particular job specialty and how we had adapted Spear techniques to the back of the ambulance before we had any formal Spear training. Basically we got in the back of ambulance with MMA gloves and boxing head gear and truly pressured tested what we saw as the most common situations we encounter. We found using the limited understand- ing we had of Spear to be highly effective! Much to our surprise Coach Blauer himself responded to my email and wanted to speak with us personally over the phone to see what he could do to help us with our research and answer any questions we may have! In fact we ended up speaking several times via phone and email. Coach Blauer is the founder and CEO of his company, Blauer Tactical Systems. He certainly has plenty of well qualified instructors that could have spoken with us. Honestly I was never so bold as to ask to actually speak with him.

I emailed his assistant, Jenny Montes, who is always helpful in answering my many questions. It was Tony himself that asked us to jump on a call with him to answer our questions and see how he could help us! That’s not something you see a lot of CEOs of any company doing! He asked that we send him some videos of what we were doing with Spear in the ambulance environment to see both what we had come up with and how he might improve on what we were doing! Again, I don't know of any CEO that takes that kind of personal interest! Coach Blauer runs his company and still teaches both nationally and internationally. To say he's busy is an understatement, yet he took that valuable time for us. We were already Spear advocates however Coach Blauer's personal assis- tance certainly sealed our conviction. Andre and I are planning on offering Spear classes in the same delivery model that Will has pioneered for his Jiu Jitsu classes. We've also spoken with the CE folks about possibly offering a Spear class as part of CE in some capacity. We may also be offering Spear training at the Union Hall. Something we've also been working on is bringing this training to other departments in the region. Our larger goal is to help not only our people here at ATCEMS be safer, but all of our First Responder brothers and sisters. I've already spoken with Hays Co. EMS as well as a few key individuals with Star Flight who are personally interested in learning some of the Spear methodology and we are working on coordinating with them on possibly doing some Spear introduc- tion training with some of their folks who are inter- ested. Andre and I also had the opportunity to show a few of the folks from both Cedar Park Fire and Westlake Fire some of the Spear Proof of Principles Drills. These drills and the explanations behind the SO WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

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