You’ll notice something new on the site – the incorporation of my other pursuit, Pastless, into Pramek.
For those who have been around Pramek awhile, you might be thinking, ‘Ok, what the heck? Is Matt going soft?’
For those who have heard me on numerous personal growth podcasts, you might be thinking, ‘Ok, how did I end up here?’
A while ago I noticed there was something key missing in martial art and movement health training. It was something people talked about on the side of the training room or the gym, or they had personal conversations with their teacher or instructor about. I’ve had it asked of me a million times, and heard it asked of other teachers many times. The question is always the same…’How do I build my personal confidence?’
Allow me a moment of divergence…I promise it’ll make sense.
When I started Pramek I noticed that often times martial art made little sense beyond basic technique. I wanted people to have a way of learning martial art that made sense, and over the years I get tons of emails saying, ‘I’ve never seen martial art taught this way before.’
When I created CLM, I noticed that no one seemed to have the basics of how people learn, how to test people, and how to understand what the teacher-student relationship is. I get many emails from people saying, ‘Thank you for the CLM – it makes such a difference in understanding my students.’
When I noticed that people needed more science in their movement health, I developed The Helix & The Gear, then partnered with ESIK on Warrior Mode, and then created Mission Specific Fitness for law enforcement. Today people around the world are teaching the way we teach movement, and we see organizations like Onnit using our movement teaching methods.
Pramek has a history of innovation – from the first video embedded PDF’s in the martial art industry to partnering with Sage Dynamics to combine two methods of studying combat.
When I started Pastless, I wanted to separate it from Pramek – so I created something new that people outside of martial art could use that was based on Pramek. The problem with that separation became evident when I had another student, in a long line of students, asking me, ‘How do I become more confident in my job? How do I take my confidence in the training room and transition it to the office?‘ It struck me, about 6 months ago, that what I had created separately, at it’s base, could not be separated – physical, mental, and spiritual confidence do not exist in individual vacuums. They are tied together, like the helix and the gear of our logo. The helix and the gear represent the human experience – one of the freedom of being human, but also the mechanical side of our learning and actions.
I decided it was time to bring Pastless home – to Pramek, and create a new area of study – one of our confidence. Without confidence we can not fight, move with assurance, or operate under stress.
How does one teach confidence? How does one test it? I test it all the time in my climbing, hiking, fighting, teaching, writing, my career – I test my own will to voluntarily take on tasks that test my known limits and FEAR. They test my ambition, my capabilities to match my experience and world-view against the world as it is. But, how do I bring this to others – to become as confident as I am put myself out there, teach thousands, over a million minutes viewed on Youtube, to create dozens of instructional videos, to sell thousands of books, to create a new learning system, be the bleeding edge of my career. In the face of today’s reactive culture where one’s ‘here’ is always more than their ‘there’, what I do takes a lot of confidence. But what you do takes it too…no matter the job, from police officer to soccer mom.
6 months ago I wanted to figure out how to teach it…and you are seeing that begin.
Just as we began to incorporate CLM into everything we do, the Pastless methodology will more and more permeate everything that we do and teach. You’ll see it, sometimes very blatantly, and sometimes discretely. Pramek has a lot to offer anyone who decides to take up it’s study – one area that it should include is teaching the student to be confident in their actions. It’s missing in other arts, it’s subjective in other arts and systems of martial art and movement…in Pramek, it will not be.
Don’t worry, I’m still gonna roll crazy to show what we do works…I’m still gonna say, ‘stab them in the face’…I’m still gonna partner with incredible teachers to bring you new content. For you martial art and movement artists, this inclusion of Pastless as it grows will only make you better and stronger. For those who are looking for a place to build their confidence, you will find some methodologies you’ve never tried or seen – and by working with them, working with Pramek, you will find confidence you’ve never had.
Let’s be honest – if you can’t teach a student to be confident in your methods, or if your teacher can’t tell you how to be confident in what you learned – what is the use of learning? Who wants to walk around doubting everything they have learned? I’ve had some of the best teacher’s I respect befuddled by the question, ‘How do I become confident?’
I want to bring that answer to people, the same way we’ve done everything else.
In closing, I want to relay to you a story I have told on a few interviews. In the news recently there were stories about dozens being injured from burning their feet at a Tony Robbins seminar. I talked to a few folks ‘in the know’ and they told me something very disturbing – they attributed all of this to people taking selfies while doing the fire-walk. Crazy, right? What kind of nonsense – you’re walking on fire, put the phone down! It made me wonder, at a Pramek seminar, when we do the jump rolls over numerous people – when we do king of the hill – when we do the DPT arousal phase – when someone has to teach the class…how many people have never taken a selfie. I’ve never seen it. How many people have never gotten hurt when doing something that they are proud of and tell others about. In Pramek it’s about that moment, and the teaching encourages not taking selfies, but instead, being confident in the self.
As we push forward into late 2017 and then 2018, CLM 4 releases, new courses on Udemy release, new instructional videos release, my book Pastless releases – I want you to remember something. Even this, combining the the concepts of martial art, movement health, and personal growth – it’s a gamble. Confidence is not what other people think of you. They can’t fight the fight for you…they can’t get up off the ground for you or break through your range of motion limitations…only you can. As Dr Shvets told me, ‘only you look in your mirror.’
Remember that – what we are beginning is about making you more confident in your skills and thought processes in this ultimate training scenario that is self defense against life.
May I recommend a free copy of OPEN IN CASE OF LIFE (right click to download and save) to start you off?
