The Martial Umbrella

“Martial Arts focus on the pursuit of skill, discipline, and personal development through a structured often ranked system of movement, tradition, and philosophy, commonly centered around aesthetic and sometimes fantastical practice of grappling, striking and weapons. Combat Sports emphasize using a fighting style for symmetrical violence in agreed-upon competition under controlled rules to win points, titles, and trophies, often showcased as entertainment, prioritizing athletic performance and safety rather than survival and realism. Self Protection centers on proactive tactics primarily using mindset, posturing, and awareness to avoid real world threats; functionally beginning long before physical violence, optimizing preemption and ending with escape. Self Defense focuses on being reactive to spontaneous assaults or ambushes with practical and proportionate threat response or ‘use of force’ against violence attempting to flip the makeup of the attack especially from a position of disparity. Combatives, in contrast, strip away ritual and sport based limitations to emphasize purely functional, efficient, adaptable, and often brutal methods of neutralizing subjects under extreme pressure using asymmetrical violence for survival. Together they form a Martial Umbrella covering character development and artistic expression, athletic performance and sport competition, proactive and reactive threat response, and extreme survival methods. Each very valuable in their own context when properly understood and trained.

There are many fusion schools and styles that blend these elements. Knowing where your desires or needs sit under the umbrella is crucial when choosing an academy for your martial journey.

Here at GCA we focus on the overall pursuit and character development from Martial Arts, the athletic performance from Combat Sports, the proactive strategies from Self Protection, the reactive response training from Self Defense, and the proven extreme situation survival methods from Combatives. We do all this from our well controlled environment using pressure training methods to keep skills functional and humility optimal. For more clarification, we do not offer sport competition. What we instill students with will prepare them to thrive in a world that is sometimes very unfriendly.”

- Zane Forrest