If you’re asking yourself the question, “Is this real?” we aren’t surprised. This approach is so dramatically different that people hesitate at first until they get a chance to experience it.
We’re going to share some endorsements from some of the biggest and most respected names in the industry with you in a few moments, but first we want to quickly tell you how this system came about…
IDS Founder and Chief Instructor Todd Fossey has a unique background. For several years, he had a private practice in psychophysiology and lectured at medical schools on the effects of stress on the body and human dynamics. As a part of his practice, he was also a human performance coach for elite athletes and performers, something he took an interest in at a very young age.
During the years of his formal education, he supported himself working as a bouncer where he began studying combatives and tactical firearms training in the late 90’s.
Todd began to realize the training he was exposed to was heavily influenced by Military, Law Enforcement and Competition Shooting but had very little to do with the patterns of violence regular people may be exposed to.
Todd also began to realize how outdated and standardized the training approaches were.
In 2010, determined to create a bonified training program for the Citizen Defender, Todd locked himself in his office for several weeks removing himself from the inertia of traditional training models and applied a more critical approach backed by objective data sets, the science of skill acquisition, and modern training technology.
When he emerged, he realized he had something very different, so different he feared nobody would recognize its real-world value, but seeing the violent direction the world was going he felt compelled to pursue it anyway.
Taking a leap of faith, Todd closed his private practice and opened Integrative Defense Strategies (IDS) to a very slow start. People wanted what they were used to and, they wanted things that went bang! Even fewer saw the value of mixing martial arts and combatives with the handgun.
There were even some in the industry who wanted to destroy the IDS approach or brand the concept as their own.
It didn’t look good for IDS.
Then Todd began posting videos on line. At first nothing happened but it wasn’t long before some of the top minds in the industry began to take notice. Soon people were traveling from around the country to experience what IDS was all about – including some of the biggest and most respected names in the industry.