Advanced Training
Students can usually figure out the strategies and tactics to surprise empty-hand and weapon situations, and can quickly adapt to other categories with a little prompting and help. These advanced modules, however, can be life-saving: and the more the student remembers when placed into a situation without warning, the better than student will survive. Advanced Training is not necessarily harder than other training, but requires constant refreshing and review. If a student is given five minutes to make a foot-high fire using items found within 100 meters, can he? If asked to rappel down a cliff wall with no review time beforehand, what were the critical things to remember? Chongdo’s advanced training modules take the skills learned in other modules and twist them into common but difficult situations.
| Advanced Training Modules | Description |
| Agility and Balance | Students learn basic agility skills and control of their balance on multiple axes. The result is a student faster to escape from danger, and more comfortable in precarious situations. Obstacle course-type training is used to put these skills to use. |
| Posture | On a basic level, a student who slouches or shuffles along is less likely to respond to an immediate threat. On a more practical level, solid posture and physical positioning provides a “force presence” to potential threats to stay away. Students will cover not only the rationale to good posture while standing, sitting, or walking, but also where to sit in a busy area, how to move through a crowd quickly, and use body language to help de-escalate a situation. |
| Rope Techniques | Students learn the basics of rope work, including knot tying, the use and application of various types of ropes, rapelling, belaying, care and storage of ropes, and survival lashing and tying. |
| Climbing Techniques | There are numerous things to climb! Our students are taught the fundamentals of rock climbing (including scaling, bouldering, traversing, anchoring, and more), as well as more common scenarios such as climbing trees, fences, walls, ropes, and even ladders (including one-handed climbs and more). |
| Firecraft | The ability to properly build, burn, and control a fire is a serious life-saving skill. Students learn how to build different types of fires, ranging from common tools and techniques to primitive skills. In addition, students learn to get fires going under severe weather conditions for purposes of warmth or signalling. |
| Tracking | Tracking is an under-rated outdoor skill that provides a great deal of entertainment as well as life-saving value. Students will learn to find tracks, interpret them, and follow along the trail. Finding supporting clues along way, tracking is one of the better ways to learn about people, animals, and nature. |
| Survival | A survival situation can begin at any moment, and the more one knows, the greater the chance of escape. Students will learn how to assess a situation, prioritize their needs, and get to work. In addition to the basics of sheltering, foraging, water sourcing, and signalling, students will be taught how rules change when supplies are missing or damaged, or if the student is injured. While no survival training program can prepare a student for every situation, often even the smallest bit of experience changes the odds in his or her favor. Also covered are common but pervasive myths about survival techniques and equipment. |
| Navigation | Students are expected to know the basics of navigation, including orientation, way-finding, and map-reading. Methods include compass-based systems, map creation and interpretation, dead reckoning, and modern global positioning tools. Students will also learn non-land navigation. |
| Environmental Operations | The above modules are intended to provide a best-case toolkit of skills. However, that’s rarely possible. Students will learn how the rules change in a wide variety of environments that include night, forests, jungles, mountains, open water, swamps, rivers, deserts, cold weather areas, shorelines, and more. For example, a basic survival technique in one region may kill you in cold weather; driving through a sandy desert can change the vehicle’s handling dramatically; high altitudes can produce subtle but lethal illness. For each environment, students learn to identify its different categories, and how basic skills are changed, for better or worse. |