Many years ago I was on a podcast and got asked what I thought was the best martial art for street defense.
I answered: “Art is for a museum.”
The interviewer paused, thinking about what I meant. I continued: there was a time when people fought, and it was not for sport. It was for their life.
He looked intrigued, so I went on.
How do you think cavemen fought? You think there was a caveman kung fu or karate school? That after a long day of hunting and gathering, Mom dropped the kids off at caveman karate and went to get her nails done?
I’m joking, of course — but the point is serious. The world has always been violent.
When our ancestors fought, they relied on instinctive, intuitive, natural movement. They had no choice. There were no codified, choreographed, complex motor-skill systems like the ones that clog the internet now.
Like my maxim goes: violence doesn’t care what martial art we practice. And it didn’t care in 80,000 BC either. You won or you died.
(For my contrarians reading this — yes, I’m generalizing an evolutionary probability. I’m old, but I’m not that old. This is intuition and abstraction, not an eyewitness report. 😉)
The oldest spearhead ever found is roughly 400,000 years old. They found it near ancient bones, and it was clearly used for hunting. Here’s my theory: when early humans were truly hunters and gatherers, they didn’t fight each other, because they needed each other to stay warm and to survive. They hunted together.
Then, around 100,000 years ago, ancient man began exploring the planet. Imagine you’re tired from a long day of hunting and gathering, and you look up at a ridge and there’s a dozen cavemen you’ve never seen — dressed like you, carrying long pointy sticks, eyeing your food and your fire.
And that, my friends, is when fighting started.
Formalized martial arts are only about 4,000 years old — the earliest known depiction of an organized fighting system is wrestlers painted on an Egyptian tomb wall. And we know humans were fighting for their lives tens of thousands of years before that. So how did they fight? What system did they use?
They used the only system they had — the one that was already installed.
When something sudden and dangerous happens, the body startles — the hands come up and the structure protects itself before the brain has finished figuring out what’s going on. Nobody taught the caveman to flinch. Nobody had to. It’s the system that predates all systems.
As populations grew, violence grew with it and weapons evolved. Sudden survival violence never went away — it’s still here today — but managed violence became the norm, and a business, and evolved into organized military and sporting forms of combat — codified, choreographed, beautiful to watch.
That is why I say art is for a museum.
In the 80s I began studying neurobiology, kinesiology, and psychology — specifically, how the startle-flinch could be converted and weaponized into a protective countermeasure. That research became the SPEAR System®. It’s built entirely on the central nervous system, which is why it works for anybody, whatever their training background — the raw material is already inside you.
In 1985, Joe Jennings, the owner of Panther Productions, saw my demo tape and exclaimed, “Holy shit, you guys are really fighting!” He filmed and released the Panic Attack series on VHS. The first tape was based on a program I called Cerebral Self-Defense — my way of reminding people that the mind navigates the body, and everything starts with managing your fear. That program eventually evolved into KNOW FEAR®. Those years of force-on-force training — Fight Club before Fight Club was a movie — inspired the impact-reduction gear you know as HIGH GEAR®. In 1993, a presentation at the American Society of Law Enforcement Trainers started a cascade, and 30+ years later the system is used by military, law enforcement, and public safety professionals around the world.
There’s a fuller chronology of the journey here.
My mission since 1980 has been to make the world safer, and the only way I can do that is by training conscientious instructors. Whether you teach martial arts, defensive tactics, combatives, or concealed carry, our research will complement what you’re already doing. If that speaks to you, get in touch.
Because when the shit hits the fan, we’re all gonna fight like a caveman anyhow. Might as well learn how to do it with finesse.
Stay dangerous — see you next Saturday.
Coach Blauer
Bring My System to Your City
P.S. — If this article made you think harder about the role psychology and neurobiology play in the real self-defense moment, understand this: that research is teachable. You’ve built your school, your students, your name — certification in the SPEAR System® attaches four decades of research and a worldwide reputation to all of it. And that credential means something because the standard behind it is protected. Regardless of your training background, I promise it doesn’t replace what you teach. It complements it.
Start here: https://blauerspear.com/spear-cert
Keep scrolling, below you will find every way to train with me & a few articles worth your time.
Ways to Train
1️⃣ LIVE ONLINE — Tactical Garage Gym: Train live online. New members can use GARAGE50. Join here.
2️⃣ IN-PERSON — Elite Training Retreat: June sold out quickly. Register for October.
3️⃣ CERTIFICATION — SPEAR L1 Apply: Grow your business. Teach what works. Learn more here.
4️⃣ TRAINING LIBRARY — Tactical Library: 900+ classes. The vault is open. Join here.
Go Deeper
If this caveman story makes you smile, this article gives it teeth. I break down why complex motor skills get harder just when we need them most, and why working with your neurobiology is not a shortcut — it is reality. Read it and tell me what stands out.
Mission Statement
My mission is to make the world safer, one good person at a time. Everything I build — the SPEAR System®, Be Your Own Bodyguard®, Know Fear® — exists to give good people the tools to protect themselves and the people they love.
If this hit home, you probably know someone who needs it.
Forward it their way.
Looking forward to getting the Tampa Bay LE community back to BTS certified - the call to action:
“make cops safer again”
Saw this on the street as a cop. The guys who survived close-quarters weren’t running a system, they were running their nervous system. Training doesn’t replace the flinch, it just teaches you what to do the half-second after it fires. SPEAR gets that in a way most defensive tactics programs never did.