Members of HSD Combat are looking forward to a exciting year ahead leading into the Millennium. Chief Instructor of the Harrow based club, Steve Dempsey who developed and introduced Han Soo Do to the Martial Arts world has announced plans to extend HSD beyond Harrow and the local area. Steve say's that for two years now we have been laying the foundations for the growth with regular articles in the Martial Arts press, visiting other clubs, training at seminars and generally spreading the word of HSD.

Although recently we have had to reduce the club size due to a change of venue,  I feel that the time is right for the growth as I recently received many letters from the North of England and even more from Ireland where HSD seems to be creating a lot of interest among instructors and senior students wanting to know more about the teachings of HSD and the possibility of opening clubs or switching their present clubs to HSD methods.

Steve says we are in the process of developing an instructors package for interested instructors and hope to have a couple of new HSD clubs open by the end of the year. We also have plans to back these up with a couple of seminars to be held towards the end of the year.

Steve says that the reason for the interest in HSD is the flexibility it gives the instructors and the students within a HSD class. The student has much more input into the actual sessions than the traditional martial arts class and it is the students strengths that are brought to the forefront and developed, Steve says "lets be honest its your strengths that you would use in a real attack situation and therefore it should be these that are tested in a class environment to ensure that they are practical enough to work in the streets. It is important that HSD Instructors are flexible in their approach and encourage their students to look and train in other styles of combat. This only helps to enlighten students and progress these new techniques in a HSD class. I am a firm believer in cross training and looking at all the areas of combative training, we then basically strip these down to there basic form and incorporate it into HSD format.

Steve says we have used HSD for teaching women in self protection courses that have proved highly successful, junior classes and senior students that have trained for many years in other systems from traditional to modern. HSD teaching has no real boundaries and as I have said, it allows the instructor the freedom to bring much more into the class.

HSD students are also given the opportunity to try the techniques out in competition if they so wish to do so, however this is a fairly new development because until recently we have not found a forum that allows us to use many of our techniques without being disqualified etc. However the development of Totalfight in this country has changed that and we actively support this format of competition.

HSD Combat is based at the Harrow Martial Arts Centre in Rayners Lane, Harrow, UK and train on a Wednesday night from 7.30 pm until 10pm. HSD Combat is the centre for the teaching of Han Soo Do. If you are interested in knowing more about this forum for training please feel free to come along or contact Steve Dempsey by Email.