What is Chongdo?

Chongdo is a combat system, designed to give its students the broadest range of skills possible. The students’ goals are to Survive and Achieve: from the survival skills of empty-hand combat, weaponry use, and wilderness training to the achievement skills of leadership, project management, and team building.

• Like a martial art, we teach our students an intense course in hand-to-hand combat, using the hands, elbows, knees, and feet; we also cover escapes, ground-fighting, grappling, and a diverse set of real-world weapon techniques.
• Unike a martial art, we do not teach complicated forms, wear traditional uniforms, or utilize out-dated techniques from far-off lands and very different times. Further, unlike nearly all martial arts, we teach modern scenarios, vehicular techniques (for students over 16), and firearm usage (for students over 18 with need or interest).
• Like a sport fighting system, we teach live, active drills against resisting opponents, as you would find on the street, including ranged fighting, ground-fighting and grappling, and the vital transitional techniques that merge the two. Students will not be taught against compliant partners, but instead learn that real-world techniques must be fluid, flexible, adaptive, fast, and powerful.
• Unike a sport fighting system, the student will not perform for entertainment, trophies, or awards. Points are not awarded. Students will learn to survive a variety of complex and confusing situations, not just on the mat or in a ring.
• Like a survival school, students will learn to navigate, orienteer, build shelters, study the weather, perform advanced first-aid and react to trauma situations, recognize and provide safe drinking water, build fires, and use basic engineering skills to salvage survival components.
• Unike a survival school, students will not rely on expensive survival gear, such as fire steels and thermal equipment, but rely only on what they know they can do. For this, we teach survival strategies and principles, rather than only teach survival tips. And like all Chongdo studies, our courses are vetted in the field under the worst conditions before they are approved for students.
• Like a so-called mixed system, students are exposed to a variety of studies, any of which can be useful under worst-case circumstances. Students are not exposed to one and only one strategy, but learn that certain studies work better under some situations than others.
• Unike a mixed system, students learn a single organizational approach, so that there is no break in understanding, or hard transition from one topic to another. For example, our grappling techniques do not originate from one system, and our kicking techniques from another system: they are one, integrated system. Similarly, our survival studies or firecraft skills are not mere add-ons or hodge-podge assortments, but are also part of that same singular, integrated system.

Click on our Studies link for more comprehensive coverage of our training syllabus, and to see how our components all fit together.