History Of SEPS (Situation Effective Protection System)
SEPS as a system was conceived by Gershon Ben Keren and Andy Rallings, two reality based self-defense instructors who
had both found similar problems and difficulties when teaching people how to handle real-life violence.
Below is a brief history of their experiences and how SEPS was developed.
SEPS Co-Founder: Gershon Ben-Keren
I have been involved with martial arts and self-defence for over 25 years. I was originally a Judoka studying and competing in Judo from the
age of 8 through to my mid-20s, winning regional and national titles. I also during this time studied traditional Japanese Jiu-Jitsu and
aiki-jitsu: basically I had/have a love of all things grappling (I still practice submission wrestling and BJJ – Brazilian Jiu-Jutsu).
In the mid 90’s whilst training in Israel, I discovered and started practicing certain Israeli reality based self-defence systems that were
referred to by the generic name, ‘Krav Maga’ (meaning contact combat in Hebrew). One of the things that immediately impressed me about the Israeli
approach to self-defence was the simple idea of presenting a problem and finding the simplest solution to it. For the next 10 years I studied
with some of the top Israeli instructors both in Israel and the UK (including Eyal Yanilov, Haim Gidon and Moni Aizik) and took instructor
certification in two of the systems.
With a strong traditional martial arts background (2nd Dan Judo, 1st Dan traditional Ju-Jitsu) and a strong grasp of reality based combat i.e.
the Israeli systems, I felt I had a fairly comprehensive approach to self-protection however I became aware through my teaching that I was more
and more advising disengagement and non-conflict solutions to common self-defence problems rather than promoting physical techniques. This was down
to the simple fact that many of the students I taught had not grown up practicing martial arts and did not possess the strong foundations that
martial arts training gave them. Asking them when under stress to disarm an aggressive attacker threatening them with a knife was asking a lot
and didn’t always seem the most sensible first option.
Much of this became patently clear to me, after I became a Redman scenario based training intructor (where the instructor and students, where
highly protective clothing and are allowed to up the levels of force considerably) and started doing scenario based training, setting up
and presenting violent and aggressive situations for my students to solve.
To read more about self defense and scenario based training, please click here
An Academic Approach To Self Defense
At university I had studied a social science program (graduating with a BA Hons in Social Sciences) and spent much of my time and research looking
at the causes and effects of violent behaviour. I had also spent time studying ethology and socio-biology, especially around the subject of
aggression. Although this work and research had always coloured my approach to self-defence it hadn’t ever really driven it. Taking a step back
from looking at always engaging with violent individuals using physical techniques, I started to look at how certain situations caused individuals
to respond aggressively and how this aggression could be switched off by certain other responses (something which happens all the time with
animals).
To read more about self defense and ethology, please click here
Through further work and research, with my colleague, Andy (someone who had recognised and made the link between situations and violent behaviour,
through his work in security) we started to design a methodology for dealing with aggressive and violent situations. Instead of only being able
to prescribe simple advice to my students I could now teach them a set of skills and a path to follow. As, Andy and myself developed this approach
we recognised that a name was necessary to describe this system of dealing with violence. Andy came up with the acronym SEPS: Situation Effective
Protection System to give a name/label to what we were teaching.
To email Gershon about SEPS Self Defense Please click here
SEPS Co-Founder: Andy Rallings
