Purpose
Street Defensive Tactics (SDT for short) is as the name implies wholly and solely focussed on defensive tactics, that is street self defence.

That means we train for a very broad but clearly definable set of circumstances. The chaos of a street confrontation involves potentially being at varying distances from your opponent(s), from kicking distance to body-to-body. You may be standing, seated or on the ground, there may be one or many opponents and they may be armed. It may be dark, the ground hard, uneven and/or slippery and the space confined or crowded with others who may be neutral or potentially hostile. The threat may be anything from simple verbal harassment through to something life threatening. And in all instances the emotions of fear and anger will be present in the situation with their attendant degradation of psychological and physical functioning. This is the nature of confrontations.

SDT is foremost a tactical system that emphasizes choosing the best (read 'smartest') response for a particular circumstance. Confrontations occur in stages and the response is dependent on the stage. For the 'fight' stage that response may be escape, compliance, talking to defuse, posturing or fighting with a degree of force anywhere along a continuum, or any combination of the above as required to achieve a chosen strategic objective. For any given confrontational circumstance, the choice of threat response is unique to the individual concerned.

Significance of the Name
The term "Defensive Tactics" is used to distinguish it from martial art systems but more importantly to highlight the fact that SDT is a "tactical" system at its core and not a traditionally based technique system. In that sense SDT has a similar orientation to the defensive tactics systems taught to the police and military (but SDT is NOT a military system). The term "Street" indicates its intended use as being on the street in the civilian or security context and not in the ring as a sport or in the training hall as an 'art'.

Systems
SDT is really an umbrella system with Krav Maga at its core and Wing Chun, Doce Pares Eskrima, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Hock's Scientific Fighting Congress (SFC) and Pangamot (Jiu Jitsu) as specialist systems that serve defined needs. The relationship between these systems is defined in the overview section of Systems.

Content and Method
The core content of SDT matches its mission - that of street self defence. But it is holistic in the sense that we pay attention to the complete set of skills and knowledge required as defined in our skill hierarchy and argue that there needs to be more balance to the heavy technique orientation of most systems.

But most of all SDT is about method. Any rudimentary study of the science of learning will tell you that method is fundamental to successful knowledge transfer and skill development.

Ultimate Purpose
Although it has a self-defence focus, the ultimate goal of SDT is to develop the individual. Responsibility must be taken for whom we are how we act and the consequences of those actions. If the majority of the world were well advanced on that journey, there would be much less need for fighting and therefore self-defence training in the first place.