The Founders

The late Wayne Roscherr and I expanded and further developed the RAT syllabus. I initially began developing the foundations to the RAT approach during my national military service in South Africa in the late 1980s.

Wayne was my Jiu-Jitsu teacher and found value in the RAT approach. Together we developed the first formalised learning syllabus in the early 1990’s.

Wayne contributed numerous principles and techniques that still form a large part of the training today. This syllabus was used to teach numerous students, amongst them members of a Special Forces regiment, naval armaments security personnel, VIP protection members, police personnel, night club security, and numerous civilian members who have been successful in competitions of all types. However, over the years this small group scattered all around the world with most of the practitioners finding a place in grappling and eclectic martial arts, such as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and MMA, which both align well with a RAT practitioner’s fundamental training.

With the increasingly geographically dispersed learner group, I undertook a project to investigate how effectively martial arts could be taught and learnt online in my PhD topic: RAT Online: Design, Delivery and Evaluation of Constructivist Computer Supported Martial Arts Learning Environments. It was pioneering work and now we are now offering a number of our online courses to the public.