Personal Safety

https://headliner.ai/personal-safety-mp3

Uyi Agbontaen

Hey, guys. Welcome to another episode of The Point of View. I'm your host, Lee Ed Pontine, on today's episode. I'm speaking with Nick Wood, self defense expert and personal security consultant. He works with a number of clients, from actors to actresses to supermodels. And I mean, super models. Check out the episode. I really hope you enjoy Nick Wood.

Nick Wood

Yes.

Uyi Agbontaen

How are you, sir?

Nick Wood

I'm very well, sir. How are you?

Uyi Agbontaen

I am pretty good. Thank you for joining.

Nick Wood

Thank you for having me.

Uyi Agbontaen

How have you been?

Nick Wood

I've been surviving the chaos, right. Still alive. Still smiling. That's the way forward, isn't it?

Uyi Agbontaen

Yeah. It's been an eventful year.

Nick Wood

Absolutely.

Uyi Agbontaen

Yeah.

Nick Wood

Absolutely. It made you question a lot of things about yourself. Your direction, where you're at, where you're going? Because we had all that time to do. So we did.

Uyi Agbontaen

Actually, one thing I know about you is that you were somewhere very interesting while all this craziness was going on, correct. Where are you?

Nick Wood

I was in Togo.

Uyi Agbontaen

Togo.

Nick Wood

Now, if you never heard of Togo before, don't worry. I never heard of it before, too. Coming from New Zealand, my now fiance is toge. So we went to go visit her home country for a couple of weeks. Obviously, this was during the third lockdown, so we end up staying there for about two and a half to three months. How was this mind blowing? Life changing?

Uyi Agbontaen

Have you been to Africa before?

Nick Wood

I've been to Kenya. Yes, but there was more. It was a quick trip, like three months in the country. You get to see a lot more than you would normally would do in two weeks to join us. Three months in Togo. Wow. All the way up to the North, east to west.

Uyi Agbontaen

Very different to being here in London.

Nick Wood

Absolutely.

Uyi Agbontaen

Did it give you a bit of perspective?

Nick Wood

It did take things for granted, really. But the thing is, when you travel to these kind of certain countries, you come back and you're like, why am I complaining about this? And why am I complaining about that? And then once you get back into your routine, here are complaining about things again. You know what I mean? So sometimes it's really important to take that step out just to get recollected again. Reconnected again?

Uyi Agbontaen

I know. So I haven't been there. But my family are from Nigeria, right.

Nick Wood

Very close. What's the Nepot of Togo land.

Uyi Agbontaen

It borders Togo. So historically, possibly because with Africa, as you probably know, most of the countries that are in Africa are countries that were founded through colonialism.

Nick Wood

Correct.

Uyi Agbontaen

So where they say it's Nigeria since, like the late 1800, early 1900, it wasn't Nigeria before. It was a set of different regions and kingdoms. So there would have been a part that might have been part of land.

Nick Wood

Okay.

Uyi Agbontaen

And there would have been a part that would have been part of Ghana.

Nick Wood

Got you.

Uyi Agbontaen

But then the British came and they kind of said, this is our section of Africa. We're going to call this place in Nigeria because the River Niger goes through there.

Nick Wood

Does that make sense?

Uyi Agbontaen

Yeah, as well. So it's possible that there is because it's a border. So it's very possible it was part of Nigeria that were part of Togoland. I'm not exactly sure. But that's like most of Africa, everybody realizes that Africa is kind of a new continent in the sense that it's been there, obviously, forever. But a lot of the countries are countries that weren't more than 150 years old. There are very few countries like Africa. Most of them have been made by European powers, shifting borders around, which is why people share language or culture and food and dialect and religions in certain parts, and also why there's conflict because some people were just stuck together and they didn't like each other. But European countries said we're going to colonize you and you put it together, and there you go. What are you guys fighting?

Nick Wood

Yeah. Exactly. Stuff.

Uyi Agbontaen

Yeah.

Nick Wood

How to say study of Africa. I think it could be something that I want to look deeper into, really, the history of it.

Uyi Agbontaen

There's a lot to study. And what's really interesting about Africa is that a lot of the history that we know is from a European perspective. That's what's really fascinating, because a lot of history has been lost either because it was not recorded as in literature or because it was ignored. So a lot of our understanding of African African contexts has come from European writers or American writers and their perspective on Africa.

Nick Wood

Which is kind of interesting.

Uyi Agbontaen

Even the idea of Africa. It's a very Western thing, like the idea of being African. It's not a very African thing to be African. Recently, African people consider themselves African. But let's say, 60, 70 years ago, they didn't think of themselves as African because they thought themselves as their own particular community. Some are African. I'm Europe. I'm not African. I'm Egyptian. Do you know what I mean? So I was kind of African consciousness. It's a very Western thing that's kind of been put on Africa. And now people from Africa are kind of absorbing. Actually, I'm an African.

Nick Wood

Yeah. Makes sense, too.

Uyi Agbontaen

It is interesting.

Nick Wood

The older I get, the more I want to dive deep into it.

Uyi Agbontaen

Yeah. So you're from New Zealand, from New Zealand.

Nick Wood

Originally born and raised.

Uyi Agbontaen

One thing I know about New Zealanders and Australians is they travel a lot. My theory is that you guys are so far away.

Nick Wood

That's not a bad theory already. That's pretty much it. But once we're out, we're out as long as we can before we go back. Yeah.

Uyi Agbontaen

You guys want to see the world Australians and New Zealanders, I think, are some of the most well traveled people.

Nick Wood

Yeah. I have to agree many of my travels.

Uyi Agbontaen

So you never felt lonely?

Nick Wood

No, not at all for me. I like meeting people from all around the world. I think I'm going to learn a lot about myself and where we are at the moment on this planet. So I think traveling is something that everybody should do in one way or another. Even if it's just a small trip, we can trip away. Or if you could do those big backpacking missions. Cool. I mean, I think in a way, it kind of finds out who you are in society, too, because you're learning more about yourself.

Uyi Agbontaen

Obviously, you teach at Roger Gracie Academy, which is a very prestigious school in London. Roger Gracie, if nobody knows Roger Gracie is because they're not in the martial arts. He's a legend.

Nick Wood

Absolutely.

Uyi Agbontaen

In the martial arts world.

Nick Wood

Goat.

Uyi Agbontaen

Yes. One of the most phenomenal people you could ever meet.

Nick Wood

Absolutely.

Uyi Agbontaen

As a martial artist and incredible person. But there are very few people who like him. But you also have a big client base. I see you teaching and coaching one to one. Right.

Nick Wood

Correct.

Uyi Agbontaen

So when someone comes to you and someone will learn, you've got so many different areas that you could teach. What do you do?

Nick Wood

I find out why they want to learn. What's the reasons have they been abused before? They want to lose some weight, or they just have a passion for martial arts, but never really had that time to do it or just didn't have the guts to do it because it's quite easy to walk into a martial arts Academy to start off.

Uyi Agbontaen

It's very hard, actually.

Nick Wood

Oh, man, it's daunting. But when you do it, you realize it's just people like us. We all start from the same places you've got nothing to worry about.

Uyi Agbontaen

Yeah. You just have to get your foot through the door.

Nick Wood

But through the door.

Uyi Agbontaen

Right? Do you ever have people contact you and say, I'd like to start, but I don't feel like I can.

Nick Wood

I get there quite often. But then I say, Well, you're going to go to school when you're smart enough.

Uyi Agbontaen

Good point.

Nick Wood

Now is the best time than ever. Yeah, but you can't do it now until tomorrow. That's going to get you fit. We're going to go to gym and just training, work on your cardio, then come to the ipads and realize ipads is a completely different training regime. It's going to destroy it no matter how fit you are. For example, our training sometimes is there to push you past that limit.

Uyi Agbontaen

Well, I remember the first time I learned Tide boxing, kicking those pads brutal.

Nick Wood

Oh, my gosh.

Nick Wood

I was like, oh.

Nick Wood

After one round, every more rounds, you got to do you're like what?

Uyi Agbontaen

Yeah. You could be sick. And I even remember the sting, the sting of your skin and your Shin against a pad.

Nick Wood

Right. You've got soft feet. You've got those blisters under your man.

Uyi Agbontaen

I used to train on wooden floors at the Bob Green Academy.

Nick Wood

Yes, man. A huge respect to Bob Green.

Uyi Agbontaen

Another phenomenal martial art.

Nick Wood

Absolutely.

Uyi Agbontaen

Just like Roger in the sense that when you meet Roger Gracie, you wouldn't think he was a martial artist. And you wouldn't think that he is the best in the world, right? He's very unassuming. He's tall but unassuming. He doesn't look like a gentle giant. And Bob Breen small, very slim, talks with a stutter, a dangerous man.

Nick Wood

Absolutely. I was actually the Cross Brothers that recommend me to train with brains. When I was moving back down to London, they said, I said to myself, I want to kind of the trainer. I said, Train Paul Brain, but he was in all street hogs and square, right? It's a little bit far from where I was. And I was like, boom. So I did a couple of the JT Cali reunions with them and stuff like that. It was quite cool. But once again, phenomenal mushroom.

Uyi Agbontaen

Yeah. Someone comes to you. Your first question is, why do you want to train?

Nick Wood

What is your reason? I train a lot of actors and actresses. So for them, it's like, I just want to be sharp on the movie set. Cool. So then let's work on a little bit of everything. Let's do a little bit of boxing, a little bit of kickedboxing, let's do a little bit of Cali, let's do a little bit of craft. It was very important to learn how to blend it all together, which I think JT is greater than from the long distance. You go to the trapping, you might go to the greping, or you might disengage back to the long range. Again.

Uyi Agbontaen

I agree. I think if you're versed in a system which is fine, sometimes you can't see outside of that system. I think JKD is one of the unique areas where actually allows you to see the connections between different systems. But there is no style exactly. It's just two arms and two legs. Bruce Lee was onto some ship right ahead of his time, ahead of his time. Incredible. And most people haven't even heard of Jkie to his day. And you say, JK, what's that? It's the start of Bruce Lee made Bruce Lee.

Nick Wood

Bruce Lee?

Uyi Agbontaen

What he actually could fight.

Nick Wood

Well, that's what I think. They've laid him to the movies. Once you read his books, I used to do a lot of cars, especially with Craig. I do a lot of cars. I think I used to know about these four or five Carters. And when as soon as I read, Bruce Lee was saying, you can spend your time doing the carpet when I'm spending time doing better work or shutter box. And one of the things you're saying, and it just resonated with me. I was like, yeah, that makes sense.

Uyi Agbontaen

It's more applicable. Just as a philosophy student, he's amazing. Anyway. So you don't have to go to Bruce Lee for the fighting system, just his outlook on life.

Nick Wood

Absolutely right.

Uyi Agbontaen

Being honest to yourself, expressing yourself honestly, his mindset, his mental strength was incredible, setting goals for himself and achieving them because this little guy from Hong Kong, China, says, I want to be number one box office in the world. And they're like, Man, you're like, five foot seven and you talk funny. You don't see very well. And you're Asian. How are you going to be number one box office in the world? And he fucking did it. You fucking did it.

Nick Wood

Wow. Yeah.

Uyi Agbontaen

Incredible. An incredible person just absorb what is useful, absorb everything. And then if it doesn't work for you, that's fine.

Nick Wood

Discard.

Uyi Agbontaen

It doesn't work for you, man.

Nick Wood

Exactly.

Uyi Agbontaen

Move on to the next thing.

Nick Wood

Exactly. That's why the kickboxing classes, because kickboxing is a certain rule set, right? But for me, I kind of like to say striking, because I like to titrate the guys and elbows and knees and clinch and taking some flashy kicks on Taekwondo and stuff like that, because if they ever want to translate it to Emma, they're going to fight in a cage sometime. They've got the tools to do that because I don't want to be confined. I want to be able to nervously express yourself. So I'm just going to use my hands and kicks. What I'm hours, and I know it's more Thai based, but for me, I like striking, because then you can put it in the may. If they want to fight, they can. If they want to fight kickboxing, just take away those tools and then you can fight kickboxing. At least they've got everything there for them.

Uyi Agbontaen

So do you find actors and actresses, and then you've got the people who want to learn martial arts, make for self defense. And then you've got the people who are actual fighters who do you find is easier to teach.

Nick Wood

It's a good question. Everybody has their own way of learning. Some might take longer than others. Of course, when you get someone who's already seasoned, then I don't need to sit there and be like, doing all the foundation with them. Like, here's a step forward. Here's a shuffle forward. Here's how you pivot. This day. You throw a job. It's more like putting more tactics and strategies together and maybe some other techniques that they may not have in the Arsenal that I could probably offer to them. Show them when it comes to beginners. It's like an empty canvas.

Uyi Agbontaen

Yeah.

Nick Wood

You can build them up. And it's quite exciting in a way, too, because you can see the formation.

Uyi Agbontaen

Yes. And there's no question in.

Nick Wood

Yeah, that's a good point. No questioning. Exactly. Because sometimes when you go to a professional or someone who sees them, they've come from a certain style. Then you have a slightly different approach than what I get it. Yeah.

Uyi Agbontaen

How do you find teaching actors and actresses?

Nick Wood

To be honest, I don't see much of a difference. So with regards to actors and actresses, I guess they probably have a little bit more, let's say focus, but it's not the word I'm looking for. It's because they are training specifically for something that's coming up on the horizon. Where you've got someone you're training that doesn't have anything in the horizon that they're training for. It just becomes a little bit more.

Uyi Agbontaen

They're more disciplined for that particular task that they need to do.

Nick Wood

But then you get some other people from the other side that have the same participant, right? Individual? Not really.

Uyi Agbontaen

The groups, as you know, in London, we recently had the horrific murders of Sabina Nessa and Sarah Averad. What I noticed is a lot of women felt concerned about personal safety.

Nick Wood

Yes.

Uyi Agbontaen

What's your kind of perspective with regards to what you just said, then?

Nick Wood

Is people want to do much for us if something's already happened. I think there's the wrong way to be doing something. So nothing does happen. Not saying that something cannot happen. We're not invisible. But I think everybody should understand their environment. Situational awareness, body language, understanding your own vulnerabilities. We all have some sort of ego up there thinking we can handle ourselves. But when it comes to the crunch, have you not dealt with any kind of pressure before? I felt like I knew my shit. You know what I mean? I thought, okay, I can handle myself. But you just entered into a competition, and then you realize, oh, I'm going to deal with all these emotions in adrenaline. Oh, okay. Yeah, there wasn't there in training. So I think that everybody should have a sense of understanding about their environment and their own personal awareness. I think we lack that when you look at and you see so many people with their mobile phones in your hand, you're the perfect person should be attacked because you're not paying attention at all. I could just ride my bypass you and just smash the phone off your hand. Not saying that I don't find myself in that situation, but I'm trying to reduce myself in that situation because there's a lack of awareness, lack of awareness. And it's an attitude of never happened to me. But I bet you you know, someone that knows someone that's been attacked before, right. So it's closer than you actually think.

Uyi Agbontaen

It's interesting. You said that because even when you're studying a martial art, there's not much in terms of talking about the awareness of threat. It's like if someone does this, you do that. How do you know a situation is developing? How do you know when you need to be ready? Do you know what I mean?

Nick Wood

Yeah. What an accuse for me. If I see something, if I hear something, or if I hear something that's the creative things are getting a little bit comfortable with yourself in the situation. First and foremost, the last thing I want to do is go into a fight.

Uyi Agbontaen

Yeah, I think that's something that if you know how to fight you realize I don't want to get.

Nick Wood

Fighting every day in the Academy. I'm the first one to back down.

Uyi Agbontaen

Yes. In my opinion, it comes with when you want to have a confidence anyway. So you don't feel need to like, I need to fight to prove myself. But I think also it comes with I know a lot of dangerous people. So I know the consequences of a fight, right. And I don't think everyone has that understanding of one what they're capable of, but also what other people are capable of. I don't know if you heard this guy called Jeff Thompson.

Speaker C

Got all of these fears, and one of them is, I'm a second down in karate at the time, but I'm still afraid of confrontation. And when I talk to my teachers, they try and encourage me to solve that in the dojo. But the dojo is too controlled, even when it's hugely physical, it's still controlled. They didn't talk about the pre fight, the infight the post fight, the adrenal dump. They didn't talk about the fact that someone is going to stand in front of me and say, I don't give a fuck that you're a black belt because I'm going to find out where you live. I want to come around your house when you're having tea with your mom. I want to bite your nose up and put it on your fucking throat. I don't give a fuck about shutting down and that terror of this guy, not caring. He might not be able to fight the tide in the bath, but that immediate confrontation of posturing it triggers the flight instinctiveness. And the flight instinct is so powerful that I've watched Legends run away from fights and bottles.

Uyi Agbontaen

He was one of the people who changed my perspective on martial arts because I like you.

Nick Wood

I love the karate kid chopsticks and kitchen flies.

Uyi Agbontaen

Yeah, this is the shit, right? And then watching the Kung Fu films and Wish you and flying through the air and stuff. And then Jeff Thompson comes along and he goes, That's not how Rolfeying works. And he's like, oh.

Nick Wood

He'S kind of right.

Uyi Agbontaen

That's not how Rolfeying is.

Nick Wood

Chaos.

Uyi Agbontaen

It's chaos, chaos and scary.

Nick Wood

Absolutely. And was a Bruce leader said this. He said, Amongst the chaos, you've got to find the opportunity. I always say this to people. Is this if someone attacks me in a certain way, say, I've got ten people here and they all attack me in a certain way the same way. And I defend myself the same way back. Each one of them is going to have a different reaction to my defense. It's great. It's not black and white.

Uyi Agbontaen

No, it's not a great area.

Nick Wood

And that's what chaos is. And amongst that chaos, you've got to find that area where you can't execute it, that Sydney might not be valuable in that situation. It might be somewhere else.

Uyi Agbontaen

How do you prepare for the stress of it?

Nick Wood

Focus on your breathing, ma'am, you've got to be relaxed. You've got to be calm. And even though it's a stressful situation, I mean, if you get too tense, you can lock up most things. If you get experience and something, you become a little bit more sweet condition to it.

Uyi Agbontaen

Right?

Nick Wood

So for me, it's distance control management. Make sure I'm keeping my distance, making sure I'm near the exit. I'm not taking my eyes on what's going on. If I can't remove myself from the situation, I'm breathing steadily slow, trying to keep my heart rate down. Don't have to go too high and start freezing or anything like that. And verbal defense if it's directed to me, verbal defense yellow out something. Get that back away and leave me alone.

Uyi Agbontaen

That's another component that people don't talk about. The verbal side communication side of things.

Nick Wood

It's the thing that you're going to use first, if you can't get out of the situation and you want to try and talk the way out.

Uyi Agbontaen

I remember a long time ago there was a guy as a martial artist in the UK. His name was Mike Finn. He was in the Guinness World of Records for having the most black belts in as many systems. He used to be a police officer. And he said one thing that I thought was quite true. He said, People ask me, how long do I need to train to be good enough. And he said, I tell them, if you trained once a week for a year, you'd know, enough to get yourself into trouble.

Nick Wood

Wow. Well put.

Uyi Agbontaen

So what do you say to me when they're like? You know, I want to learn, but I want to learn quick.

Nick Wood

That's impossible. Okay. I'll show you the road, but you've got to walk it. So if you're not with me, then you're going to be practicing outside, doing your own work every day. I used to come back from training, and before I even jumped in the shower, I used to jump in front of the mirror and just do all the techniques again in front of the mirror. First thing I woke up in the morning before I even brushed my teeth. I had a shower go back into the mirror. And I'll just revisit those techniques again. So I say to them, I said, look, if you could only afford once a week, which I get the finance thing called get some classes in if you can't do some classes, cool. Here's some homework for you to do. And I'll know if you don't or not, because you're going to come back. And if you say no, we're starting again, then you're not doing the homework. So I'll be honest. One is okay. Two is better. Three is more. But it's very important for you to stress test your training depends. We're talking competition, sport, combat sport, or we're talking self defense. You have to stress test it, obviously. Now these lockdowns that were happening. A lot of people doing online training. I obviously was doing online training. So teaching classes online, we did it because we had to. But for me, I think masterclass is an online learning thing for me personally. Unless you're in a school and you can test that thing, you are learning as your homework and coming into the Academy and training with your peers. Absolutely. But if you're sitting there home and trying to learn just straight up a YouTube channel and not really putting yourself in a situation where you're really testing it in a live situation, in a way, you're kind of cheating yourself a little bit. You have to be tested.

Uyi Agbontaen

It's a good point. You mean, actually about the YouTube? We live in a digital age. There's YouTube, there's Instagram, there's TikTok. So people now are exposed to thousands, hundreds of thousands of videos on self defense. How do you sift through all the crap to find the Nuggets?

Nick Wood

It's not easy. You've got to test the Nuggets.

Uyi Agbontaen

I'm sure you've seen some hilarious videos.

Nick Wood

Absolutely. You have to test it as a self defense. I feel like you have to learn how to fight, because if you attack me and I defend myself in a certain way and the defense wasn't very good, now we're fighting, aren't we? Because you're just going to keep winging on me. So now I've got to fight back. It's normally like you try and grab me. I'm going to do, for example, Jackie diagram if I get away with that.

Uyi Agbontaen

Cool.

Nick Wood

But if not, never fight it right? Yeah.

Uyi Agbontaen

Because, I mean, there are some great teachers out there.

Nick Wood

Absolutely.

Uyi Agbontaen

And there are some teachers who are like, well, I'm not too sure if that's the right person to be teaching.

Nick Wood

Absolutely. If you like the technique and you think it works and go try it. Not on the street. Of course. You've got to go to a club or Academy or dojo for me, it's the only way you've got to test it yourself. You've got to feel it yourself because you can easily put yourself in some sort of crazy world in your mind, thinking like, yeah, it works. And Caroline, about your life thinking architecture stuff. And really you've learned the absolutely wrong techniques. There's not really a good technique to finger it's a knife, except for a good pair of ranges.

Uyi Agbontaen

Yeah, I don't know what to say.

Nick Wood

But this is what I say to people, too, because a lot of people say I'll run. Okay, you'll run.

Uyi Agbontaen

Okay.

Nick Wood

So what happens if you say you are now 55 years old and you've got a 24 year old with a knife and outrun them. Let's say you're pushing a buggy with your kids and you've got your wife a few and you're the ATM or something pulls up, my fellow, you're going to want to leave your family there. So good. Pair of range is great. If you can. If not, then you want something like an equalizer stool that you could pick up or something that you could use as improvised weapons to try and distract them, hit them or throw at them to create some distance. And if not, then you got to go inside. You're going to try and disarm that knife. And that's only if you got no other means of getting away. That's scary.

Uyi Agbontaen

Life is terrifying. It's terrifying. People underestimate how much harm a knife can do.

Nick Wood

Absolutely. People forget about the withdrawal cuts, so I might be a block. But when you pull the knife out to go to the hotel, you might cut me on the way out. Yeah, it's difficult. I think when it comes to knife, you've got to really do, like, a two on one hand control wrestling. You've got to get in close. You can't be very far away or you have to be so close.

Uyi Agbontaen

That's the scary thing someone said. The thing about life is a knife doesn't run out of budgets. You don't need training to happen.

Nick Wood

Any angle.

Uyi Agbontaen

Yeah.

Nick Wood

I don't think people should shy away from life defense training. I think it should be important, especially where you are. You've got to study the disturbances and annoyances of the places that you live in. Like, if I was in like, a country where kidnapping was a popular thing, where they'll come and kidnap you with a firearm, then cool. Then loan your gun disarms. I'm not saying that you're going to be able to do a John Wick, but I have this big belief it's better having than not having to use than needing to use it. And you don't have it. Some people say to me, we believe in this gun disarming stuff that you teach. I said, look, I only reteach gun disarming to actors and actresses for the movies and then people who work in the private security industry or military. If someone comes to me. So I want to learn just for the sake of it, I'll show them. But it's not me going out of my way. Okay. I think you shouldn't get the fit. It's not something I put forward for me. It's like, okay, you live in London, OK. So we need to do some nice stuff. We need to learn how to use a knife, to feel the knife, to understand and respect the knife.

Uyi Agbontaen

In fact, knife crime in the UK and London is one of the things that people are very aware of, because it's always on the news.

Nick Wood

Absolutely.

Uyi Agbontaen

If you don't live in London, UK, knife crime is a massive thing here. I think you're right. I think if you live in South Africa, you might want to worry about gun crime. Car jacking, for example, machetes machetes. Yeah. Exactly. Making it relevant to your situation is a smart point.

Nick Wood

Yeah. That's why it comes back down to, like, what's the first thing you say to a potential client? What are you training for?

Uyi Agbontaen

100%. I remember hearing one story. There was a martial artist in America. I used to teach in Harlem.

Nick Wood

Okay.

Uyi Agbontaen

And taught one of these kind of traditional martial arts. And his student came up to him and said to him, Can you stop a bullet? Because this kid lived in a project, right? He's seen guns and the martial art said, yeah, I can stop a bullet. The kid said, Bullshit, man. How can you stop a bullet? That's crazy. He said, I can stop a bullet by not allowing a situation to escalate to the point where someone wants to shoot me, which goes back to communication, right? Or awareness. Yeah.

Nick Wood

I think that's the key. Obviously training for all the actions and actresses. As we mentioned, some white choreography.

Uyi Agbontaen

Have you tried some choreography?

Nick Wood

I done a little bit. I helped Carol De Levine for the Beats by Dre. Ad. She put me on the edge as well, which was quite a fun experience.

Uyi Agbontaen

Yeah.

Nick Wood

Keanu Reeves.

Uyi Agbontaen

He got an honorary black belt. Yeah, I think from the Kodakan in Japan, which is like the Mecca for judo. Yeah, he got an honorary black belt for demonstrating beautiful judo in John Wick because he trained hard for it. Have you seen the training and the gun work? Amazing. Jason Born comes and starts stabbing people with pens and pencils.

Nick Wood

Holy shit. This stuff is great.

Uyi Agbontaen

John Wick is popular. John Wick is popular and a beautiful display of martial art episode. Fantastic with Filipino.

Nick Wood

Amazing.

Uyi Agbontaen

It's amazing. When I was a kid and I used to watch the martial art movies, I loved watching them. But then when you start to learn the martial arts and you can recognize the techniques that have been used.

Nick Wood

Holy shit.

Uyi Agbontaen

I just pulled out a flying triangle.

Nick Wood

Whatever the hell it is, what you as this movie.

Uyi Agbontaen

Man, do you know what film does? A triangle in one of the earliest films? One of the earliest films has a triangle angle in here. Triangle stroke, armbar.

Nick Wood

Lethal Weapon.

Uyi Agbontaen

Lethal Weapon into the Dragon. No, this is after the Dragon. No. So enter the Dragon. Yeah, there's, like, armbar, right. There's a guillotine in a way of the Dragon. Lethal Weapon. Mel Gibson puts the guy into a triangle, choked him out because I think it was the Machado brothers who did some of the choreography back when nobody knew what you're was in. Triangle in Lethal Weapon. If nobody knows what a triangle is, just go and watch Lethal Weapon end of the movie sound moves and takes the guy out with a triangle. It's not a great triangle.

Nick Wood

But it's a triangle trick. Otherwise, go YouTube type in BJJ triangle.

Uyi Agbontaen

Yeah. First watch the movie, then see how a real triangle.

Nick Wood

Yeah, exactly.

Uyi Agbontaen

Being a New Zealander.

Nick Wood

Yes.

Uyi Agbontaen

The common thing is getting confused with shame in the accent.

Nick Wood

There is a difference. There is a difference. All right. I don't know how to explain this because I might get in trouble by my Australian friends. It's kind of slightly different culture, too. I've been a culturally. It's quite different similarities in an accents, for sure. How would I explain it? Well, I find Australians a little bit more nasal when they speak get Amate and we're a little bit more deep in the throat. This is how I kind of explain it. I could be totally wrong. So I'm sorry if I.

Nick Wood

Like, a lot of people don't know the difference between Kiwis and Aldi British people. Let me break it down here. The sound originates from the base of the frontier is like boring shit you've ever heard in your life? No emotion all the way through to the end of the sentence.

Nick Wood

I always think South Africans a little bit deeper down in the gap, because obviously, since I moved over to the UK, everyone started mistaking me if I was Australian at the beginning. Now people are asking me if I'm South Africa.

Uyi Agbontaen

I used to not be able to identify the difference between the accents, but I think that watching a lot of New Zealand movies, right? Kiwi movies. I think I can hear it now.

Nick Wood

Yeah. You probably also hear it through the slang. We have different slang from Australia. What are some similarities?

Uyi Agbontaen

Okay. Give me some sign.

Nick Wood

Actually, Australia's mysterious too. We say choice, which means good, right? That's pretty choice. Sweet as everything's. Sweet.

Uyi Agbontaen

Yeah.

Nick Wood

Good. Yeah, I'm sweet. Sweet as we say a all the time. It's called a sweet as a yes. And then sometimes too, we answer a question before. Yes. I don't know. So you might ask me stuff like and I'll be like, yeah. Nah. So it's like, yeah, I bullied your question, but NASA answer just things like that. We have our ways. But even those different cultures, we do have a little bit of similarities.

Uyi Agbontaen

What brought you to London? How did your journey kind of manifest yourself here?

Nick Wood

Okay. So are you ready for this one? When I came back to New Zealand from Japan, I obviously had the itchy feet to travel again. So with the money that I made in Japan, and then I met a lot of Kiwis out in Japan as well. And one of them was actually living from my city as well. So we kind of reunited when he came back from Japan. And we're chatting one day. And we just said triple again somewhere. And we're just talking about like a Roundable trip. So we looked into it, the pricing and that sort of thing. And we thought, okay, let's do a run the trip. So we end up getting the tickets. We've got our big backpacks with proper backpacking. Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Lao, Hong Kong, China, India, UK, Italy, Sweden, Jamaica, Miami, Brazil, Costa Rica and Chile. So you land on a continent and then you travel to the surrounding countries and then you fly out another country. Like, if you bought tickets, all those countries across fortune, but we kind of try to make it as much as a budget as possible.

Uyi Agbontaen

Right?

Nick Wood

So I only supposed to be here for six weeks. I got caught up in a scam in India, thinking I could trust some people, which we no. Yeah. Being naive. Kiwi traveling, meeting people thinking they've been friendly. And as you know, I only arrived here for $150 on me in the middle of winter. And I've been here about 15 years.

Uyi Agbontaen

What was the scam?

Nick Wood

Precious stones?

Uyi Agbontaen

Come on, you got to elaborate now.

Nick Wood

Okay. So now let me tell you the story. I sound stupid even going through this. But I was 24 years old. We basically met some locals in Go off, and they invited us to their house. Long story short, we vibe and they said, look, we can show you a lot of nice places that you've never seen before. If you guys want to come and stay at one of our houses and save your money, staying at the skies house with the profession that we're staying. And we said, no, they dropped us off. And then the next day we were thinking about it. And maybe they could show us some new places. And it's quite cool to be in the arms of the Indian people to show us India. So we contact them and said, maybe we would do it. A couple of days later, they're saying we deal with precious stones. And they started dropping those questions and saying, if you can help us get some stones over to them, you buy them off us. Of course. But when you take to London, someone puts them up off you and they'll give you some money, this sort of thing. And we're just simply going, we can make extra money for driving me. I had no idea about any of this sort of thing. Now me being at the stage of my life. Now I'm thinking like, you're idiot. So anyway, long story short, we went through customs lawyer, the banker was in on it. Everybody was in on it. It was like a syndicate. Wow. Yeah. And we only realized that we got played is when they dropped off of us at the airport. And as soon as we got on the plane, we just went all of a sudden. Then we'd like, doesn't feel right, does it? Because we just got caught up in the hype. Yeah, it is what it is. It is an expensive lesson.

Uyi Agbontaen

But, hey, you're here now.

Nick Wood

I'm here now.

Uyi Agbontaen

Yeah. So things took a turn for the better.

Nick Wood

So watch out for the scamspeed.

Uyi Agbontaen

I remember when I went to Thailand. I never got like, scams in Thailand, but I remember Thailand wherever I go, I like to kind of learn about the culture. I always get a talk book to kind of do some reading about what's the history, what's the place to see. So I went to Thailand. I got a tool book and one of the things is they look out for the scams in Thailand. Right. So one of the scams, which you've probably seen it before, is you want to go to see a Museum or you want to go to the Royal Palace. And they'll say, no, palace closed today. You have to go somewhere else. We take you somewhere else. That's one of the scams.

Nick Wood

Oh, wow.

Uyi Agbontaen

That's what they say, right? Say, palace is closed. We take you to another place. Beautiful shrine. You see it. It's good. And I knew about it. So we were staying in Chinatown, in Bangkok and said to the guy at the hotel, okay, can you get us a taxi to the palace? That's where the reclining Buddha is. And the first taxi comes along. No, palace closed. Right. I take you somewhere else. All right. Palace close today. Somewhere else. Call another one another taxi comes. Okay. I take you to palace. So he takes us to the palace. It doesn't drop us at the entrance of the palace. But we didn't know that he dropped us off somewhere else. Palace is massive. Oh, my gosh. They dropped off somewhere else. And so we're walking walk, and we get to a gate, which we think is the main gate. The guy is there. Palace official today. There is ceremony. Palace closed right now. You come later on. Okay? Yeah, it's closed now, but we can take you to somewhere else. Same thing. I was like, I know this, right?

Nick Wood

So I'm like, okay.

Uyi Agbontaen

Let me just keep walking. No, don't walk. Palace closed. I'm like, let me keep walking. Round, round, round, round. Palace is open. I'm like, God damn it. Luckily, I don't think we got scammed anywhere, but I was just aware, like, this is a common scamming. Yeah, it's very funny. And what they do is they drop you off at some shop that sells crap, basically, right there's, like some tiny little Buddha in the corner. That's the Trine. Really. They just want you to buy shit. And then the taxi drivers get all these petrol tokens.

Nick Wood

Absolutely. Yeah. The way of the world, man.

Uyi Agbontaen

Yeah, but, hey, you've got a story to tell. So you also set up a security company, correct? How did you get into that?

Nick Wood

So a couple of the guys, they're both ex military. One of them had a merit from security company before one of them said, look, your skill set, you could run some really good courses for cross protection officers because they can't carry a firearm here. A lot of them are not trained in martial arts, because if they come from the military, 99% of their training in conflicts with the firearm. Now you take that away from you. You got to learn how to control people, restrain people, disengage from people. And even though one was a close patient officer at the time, the other one was looking for banks of Africa, like doing threat reports on any kind of hostile situations going on in Africa. So we just said it's former company Destroy, this executive security consultancy.

Uyi Agbontaen

Is there a difference to your approach to teaching and training for someone who wants to learn about security, personal safety compared to someone who wants to learn self defense?

Nick Wood

Absolutely. This is how I break it down. You have passive defense. Aggressive defense and security defense. So passive defense is like someone who is drunk and disorder and suspended. The pub sticks you up in your face and spin over. You don't want to sit there and push them away and be aggressive to them. You probably just want to push yourself away and have your hands up there and just say, yeah, mate. Cool. But I've got to run. You've just been passive. You're trying to defend the situation, create some space and get out of there passively. But then you've got aggressive and this means like, you know something's going down, you can't get out and you have to deal with the street by any impossible to get out situation obviously not go over the top, start kicking them on the ground and things like that. But do what you can to diffuse it to get out. And then the security base, which is more about control and restraint. And then obviously with the security team, you've got to work as a team unit. So it's different kind of training.

Uyi Agbontaen

Really cool, man. We've done just over an hour.

Nick Wood

That went quick.

Uyi Agbontaen

It went quick, bro. Where can people reach you?

Nick Wood

Okay. Instagram is at Nickwoodnwmainsforniquoodmartialarts. Our website is nickwoodmarshallarts. Com, and the security company is Dub escanden. Com. That's executive security consultancy.

Uyi Agbontaen

Oh, and you've got some really cool stuff to see on Instagram. Your Instagram page is really interesting. And you got some stuff on YouTube as well on YouTube too.

Nick Wood

Which is Nick with Marshall. Some self defense episodes on Deer been a pleasure. It's been an pleasure.

Uyi Agbontaen

It's been a great talk.

Nick Wood

Awesome.

Uyi Agbontaen

Okay, guys. So that was it. Share subscribe appreciate support. I see you're in a couple of weeks.