The document discusses Tony Blauer and his self-defense system called SPEAR (Spontaneous Protection Enabling Accelerated Response). Tony explains how SPEAR originated from a military combat stance and tactic. He describes how the acronym SPEAR was developed to represent the phases of the body's response to danger: spontaneous protection, enabling aggressive retaliation. Tony emphasizes increasing awareness over physical defense techniques to avoid dangerous situations.

1. ARI
Now I am speaking with Tony Blauer a total bad ass and creator of the spear system which is a
self-defense system, so Tony thank you for talking to me.
TONY
Hey how are you doing man, a happy to be here.
ARI
Thank you again for taking time to talk to me. Right away, let’s just know what SPEAR is?
TONY
S.P.E.A.R is kind of a cool acronym, I say cool because it was originally just an icon trying to do
and as well put in the military back in the early 90s, you know we talked of being the tip of the
spear in a fight and now is an age-old metaphor of the real warriors that tip of the spear, you
need to attack and move towards a danger, so just a metaphor and out of that involve a, kind of a
combative tactic we modified are our stats our hands form the shape of a spear or combat stance
and whatever somebody did it, of course we will just who charge it and impale it using our
forearms and a very tactical efficient manner in our CGI down at the Naval special warfare down
in the early 90s and because it was a go to move we've been using for several years and are in
our seminars when we identified it in our and our lesson plans Willows capitalized it because it
was kind of like a noun was the spear and so the guys who are in the military are fanatics about
acronyms they thought it was an acronym and they said you know what does this mean, and I
said what do you mean what’s mean and they were like what spear mean and I know it’s spirits
just an icon is just move the spear like oh shit, we thought it was an acronym because you
capitalized it. I was in Europe about a week after this training ended and I was going will it be
cool if that was an acronym and I sat down and it kind of like the brief when we would explain
the rationale we talk about the body’s cross extension reflects the start of flesh the physiology
and everything that happens at a unconscious/subconscious level in a confrontation. When your
body prepares for danger, if the stimulus is introduced too quickly, what happens is your body
gets this micro or major flinch and your hands will move up to protect your head and take the
shape of kind of this odd spear shape and if it charges right here in an incredibly fast explosive
position because you are supercharged by the speed in this flinch response.
Here it is a highly technical for Skype call, but I don’t always explain it is your body has the
spontaneous protection, it’s a start of flinch and what you need to use is the kind of the kinetic
energy that is created, you are going to take that and launch that energy into the assault, and if it
ever got bad and slowly you are going to sit here and look at this whiteboard with the letters
SPEAR are and I wrote down spontaneous protection and I sat for about half an hour staring at it
and came up with all these different phrases and settled on aggressive retaliation Spontaneous

2. Protection Enabling Aggressive Retaliation and then about two years later as the long course and
community started to pick up on our training methodology, we modified it because it was just a
litigious community, aggressive retaliation could be misconstrued in so many ways. So
eventually, you know its 20 years ago, it’s now a Spontaneous Protection Enabling Accelerated
Response, spontaneous protection referring to the body start a flinch response accelerate
response using the kinetic energy to move towards the danger and it’s a pretty cool acronym and
that’s the short story.
ARI
Thank you, I mean it’s definitely a cool acronym it’s a very intense sounding thing and yeah I
love how you put the logo in it, you have the hands in a position and it makes most sense, so it is
mainly for self-defense or can use it offensively?
TONY
You know it is interesting you know if you are using a firearm for personal safety and I said to
you, is that used for self-defense or can you use it offensively, your answer would be depend on
the scenario, of course all of them is a good Samaritans law-abiding citizen would be in defense
but when we do our courses we talk about the idea of protection versus defense you know we do
a ton of public speaking, you know and motivational talks into all different groups and so I’m
huge on words as icons and what we talk about and we used the idea of I'm going to teach you a
personal defense concept that transcends everything in other words, you don’t need to protect
yourself or your loved one is the single greatest skill you can possess and is the only skill you
want have and you are hoping you have to use.
It’s an interesting thing, you know you can be in the middle of the biggest business deal in the
world and you know you try to pick up some girl or you know you are gambling in Vegas and if
there were sudden violence directed at you or someone you cared about, none of that would
matter, you would stop it will supersede anything you are doing, but at the same time if you ever
been close to violence, you know if you think about the feelings we had post-9/11 we look at the
stuff in the news what’s going on the Middle East and in saw the assaults against children, stuffs
like that you owe me a lot if you try to stop me, because you need to unless you are in the
community, you need to change the channel really quickly and so on what I do is now circle
back around to our philosophy and our protocol of methodology is, there is no defense in our
system because defense means the bad guys already started doing something, so if we want to
get to what we call the left of the ambush, how do we improve our awareness at all levels so that
what we do is protective so if the just purely from the semantics point of view if you train with
me, we won’t let you use the word block or defend and people are like but why would you just
semantics it just means that the bad guys hitting you now and you let him get that close tonight
you have to defend yourself.

3. I want you to always be moving on the bad guy and again it’s semantics right its semantics but is
just having a far more progressive mindset.
ARI
Okay, that’s actually really interesting to me that the awareness has begun, because I talk a lot
about awareness and what I do as far as productivity efficiency and if you like people have the
sort of the blinders on a lot of times and some of it is because of technology some of it because
people are just burnt out and also I think some of it is just as people just simply not aware of
their surroundings and when you’re driving a car or your walking down the street, you know
there’s, what I am thinking of right now is that it was like five or six months ago that series of
attacks where people were playing the knockout game.
TONY
Yeah, I think that this also resurrected I just saw a couple things in the news this week.
ARI
It was awful and the videos of it are a really awful and for people who don’t know it’s basically
where these teenagers or whatever around the country, it’s a game basically to see if you can
knock somebody out with one punch randomly on the streets and the videos that I saw, what
always struck me about them was the people were pretty much just completely unsuspecting just
walking on the street and somebody came up and just knocked them out and it later on just struck
me that like if it had a little bit of awareness maybe it would’ve been a foot farther away, I don’t
know, you know what am talking about?
TONY
Yeah know, I presented grieving, you know you and I are guilty of this to maybe to a lesser
degree because we can talk about it, you know how many times that you know stepped off the
sidewalk because you are just finishing a text or you know something you know we have loads
of emails with our phones, you know if someone's iPhone rings and like you know if you’re at
the bus stop or on a train or in a restaurant, look around and look at how many people look at
their phone, so we hear a beep, you hear a vibration we get you know suddenly we are not
looking at where we are not staying in present, you know our scenario so, I’m guilty of it, you
are guilty of it, you know you don’t text and drive but it’s okay for us to do a little bit because
were better you know whether by making a joke you know it’s infelicitous, but of course 100%,
but I mean I wrote pretty intense blog on the knockout game which you should take a look at if
you just Google Tony blauer.

4. ARI
I have actually read it, it’s a fantastic article, I definitely read it and for some reasons, I guess
that's why the knockout game came up in my mind.
TONY
So, I mean that’s the biggest thing is to change your awareness and just you know because, if
you suddenly you know we teach you know simple protocol called the three D's DETECT
DEFUSE and DE-ESCALATE, DETECT and avoid DEFUSING DE-ESCALATE and then now
the last D is DEFEND. In most martial arts self-defense systems focus almost exclusively on the
physical defense part, there's some I don't mean to be this interrogatory sense of lip service
around the awareness and the verbal message lip service because the truth of the matter is, if you
ask somebody you know would you rather have greater awareness and not be near situation or
would you rather get into your serious skirmishing fight most people, they had truth serum would
say I really don’t want to fight and so if that's true then most of the training should be around the
first to these and are not, that's why I said lip service you know pisses of a lot of self-defense
instructors and that's my job is to be provocative because they should be providing a service that
makes people safer and that doesn't mean you know it’s like tom and drown proving stop but not
teaching them about rip tides and how read Karen's and have a look at flags and you know how
to read the ocean before they go in or even just the awareness of to walk up to a lifeguard and
you know where can I go, where should I not go, how far is too far and just changing that
awareness, although to certain cities I travel a tremendous amount in your most like businesses
training law enforcement military, I will ask people where is the best place to go to meet some
friends, where is the good place to go, you need know what am asking is where do I need a gun
to go, where should have an escort, what street should I not go in, you know what I mean. So
what I'm doing is actually enhancing your my personal radar in my intuition and making myself
safer by focusing on the first D detect and avoid.
ARI
This is particular interesting to me to because I practice or I mean, I learned, I mean I'm a yellow
belt, which is not very high but am a yellow belt at the crop McCaughey, which is via Israeli
Defense martial arts system for people who don't know it and I'm curious on your take on that,
but what I found was that you know I've learned how to defend myself against specific gun
attacks and knife attacks and all this stuffs and I honestly I don't walk around thinking like, you
know I can take anybody that goes at me but one thing that it definitely has taught me is that
whenever and in a situation where I get like the hairs on the back my neck or even if and not just
if I'm around other people, I do find myself to all sort of planning in case like that guy turns
towards me or this guy puts something out of his pocket, or whatever it might be, so I feel like it
just makes me more aware, makes me more comfortable and I don't necessary let my guard down
and what drew me to crop McCaughey was the efficacy of it I don't want to spend years and

5. years learning something literally the first class I went to I learned something that was useful and
interesting, so I mean even if I went to crop McCaughey, please be totally transparent with me.
TONY
I think the answer comes back to something I've always said Freeman coaching out for 35/36
years and in coaching when I started and how long I started training, though professionally
getting classes, I would say that it's never the style it's always the coach, the instructor, the
mentor you know on paper, crop McCaughey is certainly a lot more like easily efficacy, you
know depending on its lineage it's definitely considered one of the most strict oriented arts but I
would say this like am huge and across the community when I say huge, I mean into unlocking
the future I'm very embedded and added across the self-defense programming, but I have been
across part of this since 2006, and I have been to places where you know I'd disappointed in the
coaching you know the places where the coaching outstanding but they're both facilities were
called crossed right, so you know you got hundreds and hundreds of crop McCaughey Studios
I'm sure there's some that are outstanding and somewhere and somebody is just going through
the motions because they just don't get it or they are not there yet, or they are doing it for the
money or whatever but, you know am of on a tangent, what I'm saying is that, at the end of the
day it always comes down to your instructor that everything works in a demo everything fits
theoretically on paper is the next best thing the sliced bread so you know I'm not try to be careful
this is my answer, when I get asked up on TV and so they asked me about stuff, you know what
do you think about this restaurant I go doubt it really depends on the chef you know and so
whoever is cooking your class if he was good then you have got good instruction
ARI
I think that's a very fair point, I was fortunate, I trained under Ron Mizrahi who's been training
since he was 7 under the founder of crop McCaughey.
TONY
It is pretty close to direct lineage you know, you know I have seen, also let's talk about you know
my program, you know I got hundreds of trainers around the world, I see have seen stuffs on
YouTube of guys training where I mean, not just the founder the system am mortified, I'm like
how do we get that off YouTube, because if somebody looks at that, you know it is weird
because it's this person went to the class, they graduated in our instructor development program
and we do the best we can and we not about the money with this stuff, the mentoring the
coaching of what we try to do, well when someone leaves there, you know we have no idea what
their work ethic is after, right everyone knows it's like a first date everything goes great, so when
people come to our train the trainer program is that first date everyone's mind full of respectful

6. and asking great questions and taking notes and you know your later you look at the expression
of their take away you are like oh! Okay sorry so.
ARI
It’s exactly true, I've seen that with cross fit too, I was with cross fit for a long time and I still do
a lot of Cross Fit style stuff but is the same thing you know that the level I coaching courses is
two days basically, it really does depend on that person's ability to take it somewhere after I
believe.
TONY
What you're getting in a two-day course like cross fit or RDR course is just 2.5 days is a recipe
and methodology of philosophy and an invitation to join a community of open-minded
professionals trying to make the world fitter make the world safer, if you got hidden agenda
ulterior motives or a you know of a work ethic that again like on the first date you know if male
or female someone said like hey here's everything that's wrong with me on the first date, a lot of
people wouldn’t get a second date right, like a year, you say if I'd known that first met so but you
know this applies to ensure a you know someone contacts you for some of your coaching and
that and skill said you go look here for your do with your email your try this out here is what you
have to do and you are given a recipe in mentoring, and in like a month later you check in and
are still overwhelmed and screwed up not doing it in and you know there you know it's like they
are only doing a 90% of the time, so this just doesn't matter, the student has to follow the lesson
plan to the key for a certain amount of time that's agreed to where you can then say, look I need
to measure these results and if I am more stressful are more fearful or less tired or whatever like
maybe this is in the program for me but you have to give the program a shot first.
ARI
One of the things that you talk about a lot which I love is about devaluing yourself as a target.
TONY
Yeah.
ARI
So how does that sort of plan this, how do you get in that, how do you even because in some
scenarios and I've heard you talk about that it wouldn't have even occurred to me honestly.
TONY
Like which ones, do you remember?

7. ARI
The ATM one, for one is a great one, I know that one was a popular video, but the carjacking
ones too it's like how you know, it's hard to think like what's going to make you less valuable or
something not necessarily.
TONY
What we do it was fun and you know correspond with the a business buddy of mine, you know
we do some business and he said to me because of what I purchased from him in our relationship
he says you give too much away online if you really want to monetize this thing, you know you
have to do, and I say you know, that's what I do you know I want to make the world safer that's
what I want to do since I was a teenager and so I started to figure of different ways to generate
income enough through my seminars and speaking and are our online audios and DVDs
whatever, but there's certain things am not going to do and which brings me full circle to your
question is, because like the real answer would be well you know for 99 bucks you can sign up
for the seminar but you know, the bottom-line is one I want to do, is I want the bad guys to lose
and also my life has always been about, it’s about how to enhance people's safety and
survivability and so what I am about to share now is devaluing yourself, this is all you need to
know, does it change if you get to do it in a scenario, does it change your life at the seminar, we
just said, it was last week, I can remember which this was, just know these are our annual
personal defense and spear system camp In Las Vegas, where real people from all over the
world, you know come in to train and a bunch of them are heading into different Q&A's after
some of the lecture physical blocks where people commenting on how they had all of her DVDs
had studied the stuff and now finally getting to do a live, was so different and so one of things
that we talked about like even in the post viewing of the ATM I encouraged people to actually go
to an ATM and try out the strategy that we described and most people won't, for your on the
spot, so you actually see ATM video, you studied thoroughly great, have you gone to ATM and
tried it.
ARI
Absolutely I did actually.
TONY
You did awesome I'm so proud of you.
ARI
I will tell you why, very simple thing, my instructor Crop McCaughey told us a story a while ago
which I don’t even know if it is true, but its stuck with me and I've always thought of this, he
said that there were two cops who had trained gun takeaways basically and they trained and
trained, because what he was telling us was, because I was training with my partners, he was

8. like, when you're done, you know don't just hand it back to a guy like walk away and take second
and give to partner and let them do it, he said that these guys basically trained gun takeaways
over and over and over and they would take away and hand it to a friend and then they would go
back and forth and apparently one of these cops got held up at a liquor store and he took the gun
away from the robber and any handed it back, because of that muscle memory, so and apparently
he was killed. So I never even its not a true story, it always stuck with me and for me it was
always like any time am going to practice in the art and I think about the things I want to make it
as realistic as possible so yes I have actually done that on ATM.
TONY
Good you are one of 3% of the population that does that. And I asked us because we talk about
the ATM strategy and devaluing yourself at every seminar, because it isn't just the ATM safety
it's understanding this reverse engineering strategy and it's well simple, and so bad guys only
want one of three things, here's a recipe for you and your audience bad guys only want one of
three things: You property, your body or your life and it's a really short list and we created a
really short list because it's scary, but it helps you make decisions faster, the only thing going
into your brain has a bio computers DOS system are you going to programming and you got to
decide and act on it, you know one of the reasons why victims of violence exist to the degree
they do is because of this cognitive dissonance of trying to correct it may be only wants this
maybe exist or what if this, you know that list of what are the possibilities could be endless right,
so if another model Maximus that everything is possible but not everything is probable, in other
words, what's probably is about to happen here, so if am getting held up at an ATM, you know
does this guy want to put me in the trunk and take me into a secondary crime scene and kill me,
could be, it’s a possibility, does he want to beat me up, could be, it’s a possibility. I'm at the
ATM machine, does he want my money, pretty sure that's the one right, because am at an ATM
machine, now after he takes my money might be punch me in the face or shoot me, yeah, but by
understanding just that simple thing, when you're in the scenario, the selection you make a
property, body, life will be obvious incongruence with the scenario you are in, so people run into
a bank and they go everyone on the ground, get your hands up, you know if I said to you, ARI
multiple-choice guys are robbing a bank you know is it because they want to steal everyone's
new Nikes or they wanted the money in the vault, you know multiple-choice guess one and you
know you can stand and say if you want the shoes then I go out you know they took the shoes
ironically but they got the bunny first because that's why they went to the bank, and you know
making this into a cartoon simple for people, you know it’s is different again listening to it over
Skype, you’ve got to identify what the person wants then you start thinking creatively, how do I
devalue myself, so in the carjacking one, that was one that like you are like try to stop the band
but a carjacking in because the way martial arts in self-defense is taught, you know we are
always subconsciously try to figure how we are going to do like a Chuck Norris Crescent kick, to
knock the gun out of the guy's hand or am going to do like a Jackie Chan, you know Jet Lee your
jump up in the car and do a back Handspring and you and the reality is somebody's doing a

9. carjacking while I could get injured, while I could get kidnapped, what they are doing his jacking
the car.
If I can read that an intercept that and devalue the car I become part of the devalued process,
though I jump out in that video that you saw, when I jumped out going off shift u know I ran out
of gas, my battery is dead or you know whatever gruesome the scenario, you know you can walk
up to three guys who are about to Jack your car and if you saw three guys up and somebody said
to you, those three guys are carjackers and they are coming for your car, if you ran after them
and say excuse me, I know you guys are going to jump a cable my car is dead, you mean
immediately just as the butterfly effect in the brain, now they might mug you, but what I'm
saying is that the devalue concept has to do with specifically trying to put yourself in the
predator's shoes and going what does the predator wants you and how do I make what he's
looking at of little or no value to him, so he goes you know what I am going to go to the next
person because this particular person or scenario is of no value to me.
ARI
And the good thing to say about that is that it doesn't require a stronger punch to tell somebody
like oh shit! I don’t have any money on me and you know the ATMs are presence like that
doesn't require you to be strong.
TONY
Yeah exactly you know strong of mind, but have no physical aptitude attribute, the thing is how
can I make you or your mom safer, well I can show the M Video, I can show the carjacking
video you know and so that's what happened with that one when it went viral is any bills, I
showed that to every person I care about you know and we do some really interesting feedback
of people literally using that at ATMs and in more interestingly people just adapting it to other
scenarios at the gas stations and you know restaurants and stuffs like that where they intuitively
applied the concept and then they got out of the situation, kind of cool.
ARI
It's incredibly cool and I think it's incredibly alright, and again it helps about awareness because
you do need to be aware of what people like what they want and what they're looking for so that
you can sort of sell it basically so it is a way to regulator it.
TONY
And I feel the idea of also practicing it, because you know you don’t want your first rep to be a
real confrontation ideally.

10. ARI
Right exactly. So the last question I love asked on the podcast interviews is what are your top
three tips or piece of advice for being more effective and you know, that can be whatever it
means to use to you, so the top three piece of advice you can give to people to be more effective?
TONY
Wow there are certain stuffs that I'm incredible effective in other things that I look at and I go,
why don’t I apply what I teach is this part of my life you know so, I suppose every subject matter
expert has a conversation. I would say I love to turn this around and ask you to be more specific
with areas of my life you know whether it's a business relationship or self-defense.
ARI
I said business.
TONY
Well I am a huge multitasker even though there are some theories that people can’t Multitask or
should not multitask, just the nature of the art temple by brain and the bandwidth that I'm
running at, like right now as you can see me I got like three computers open in front of me
because this is way faster for me to have all the screens open to do this stuff and to do one thing
at a time. It's not optimal and I found out that might balance for effectiveness for me is one is
executing on a goal be very clear on what you want to accomplish each day or each week of each
month and just attack it just like a fight, you got a go at it hard, when I do that, that is also mostly
psychological gratifying so you know, to me effectiveness is when you have your emotional
psychological physical system congruent, you know and so you sense that euphoria when you
achieve something when you are writing whether a proposal, whether you are clearing out your
email, you know when you did the last step, you probably stood out from your desk, and you
kind of hi5 yourself, wow that feels great.
So you know having a specific goal when you are going to attack it and accomplishing it
following through is massive and its nothing new, I mean everybody talks about you know
writing down your goals. I think some people focus on having a bigger goal too soon as
supposed to recognizing that like a wheel you got all these spokes and maybe what makes the
wheel stable and turn for me getting somewhere is the goal but you have to build this bike and
you actually need to manually put in the spokes to get the wheel rolling to get to the goal, so
understanding the interconnectivity of stuff so that you don't go, hey! my big goal is getting here
but recognizing that you are not going to get there if you don't work on this small goals, so
seeing the medical cognitive the deeper understanding of what you need to understand is huge, I
think a lot of people lose that and I see that in self-defense you know what people go and just do
this and I will go yeah! but you know there is a lot of little things going on here that they are not

11. addressing, so big one is having goals understanding that the subsets of goals of the supporting
goals are our tantamount to accomplishing in the big goal and then having this metacognitive
awareness is a deeper understanding of those things, so those are two big ones that kind of
probably a little bit worth the answer, I don’t know if you have a clearest summary of that made
sense.
ARI
That makes total sense and the definitely not just Apple bit in the business, those are really good.
TONY
Other than that man, if you saw me like I'm a total mess, in that I'm all over the place I mean like
you know people see me on social media like Instagram and Facebook and you know and they
go wow, you have it so dial in, I suppose I do for me, but it's not it's I wish you know like
literally every time I bump into a business person that I look at as a mentor or guide or an
influencer someone successful, you know I'll ask them similar questions, what are you using, do
you have a secret art, do you have a program, you know how do you manage all your tasks, how
do you do that and you know everyone seems to be the same boat, you know we are
overwhelmed with email when we projects in and the other thing that I found that has work
really good for helping me sleep better and also get my day focused is what I'm winding down
my day is really kind of deciding what would make me happy tomorrow if I dug into that or
accomplish that and having that list, even if I don't get to it, you know it's there purged for my
brain I got on paper and try to hit back, the other thing I look for is man training workout, do
something physical, intelligent physical, work on your body, your body needs movement, not
just sitting at a desk and you know screwing up your head posture, back posture, you are going to
regret that no matter what measure of success you achieve.
Absolutely I would caution everybody to not, I don't care if it’s a relationship issue, business
issue, if you look at the old clichéd metaphors, your body is your temple type of thing, you are
going to take your body blah blah blah, it's so true I have gone in and out of that over the years
and it's the one thing that I will I regret not being consistent of and I do train all the time, but it’s
been forced sabbaticals which I'll never take off again, so I would tell everybody, workout every
day, find the time that works for you, because it really is the fountain of youth as we get older, is
that regenerated source of energy and focus and I will tell you this, the Cross-Fit diehard
workouts that scare you and workouts that push you create the greatest adaptation you can have
and that's mentally and psychologically, forget what it’s doing to your body, if you have a good
coach you are not going to hurt yourself, but overcoming obstacles in your training your physical
self will make you way better in business, in personal life.
ARI

12. Awesome I love that, so we are going to put links on everything in the videos and in shutouts,
what’s the best place we can find out more about everything you have going on?
TONY
Well it really depends on where you at, if I post something on Instagram almost every day that
feeds my Facebook and Twitter, so if you like what, you know where's Waldo, what's Tony up to
what's he doing in a few visual like that following me on Instagram, if you're more cerebral and
you want to read about our stuff, you know it's tonyblauer.com or tonyblauer blog or across the
defense site, so you know these all are different sites with different scopes and focus, but so is
number of sites and then you know my personal Facebook feed is just Tony. Blauer.
ARI
Awesome, we are going to post all that, Tony it’s really been great talking to you, I love this
stuff and I'm sure its familiar. So thank you so much.
TONY
Thank you I appreciate it.