PDS Personal Defense Systems

06/04/2026

Reading comments on posts about the attack on the Heritage Trail in Murraysville, I am shocked to see every fourth or fifth comment talk about using wasp spray. It absolutely does not work. You are only going to escalate the situation. Use proper pepper spray made by a reputable brand.

05/18/2026

🤔An influencer said if you're this accurate, then shoot higher. 100s of comments later not a single person mentioned that if your this accurate, then decrease the time inbeteween shots.
☝️Real violence and target shooting are not the same.

05/04/2026

🎒 ▶️ Special Offer ◀️ this spring and summer for the class of 2026!

🏫 At the end of every summer we get the phone calls inquiring about getting a few classes or private lessons for their young adults who are about to go off to college, or starting off in the working world. While this is helpful in certain areas of personal protection, its not enough time for most. We would like to incourage you to start in the spring, where the coming months can offer usable skills across the board in areas of violence prevention, personal protection, and self defense combatives.

🎒 Sign up within a month of graduation and recieve a weekly private lesson on PLAN A training over zoom or in person. This opens up your class time in person for Plan B.

✔️ PLAN A is real prevention and life skills that become habits of living, only being reinforced as time goes on. 📚 Boundaries, Intuition, Understanding Fear Responses, identifying attackers and types, grooming and scams, acting sooner with less force, the role of trauma, ect, are only some of the topics you will cover in depth.

🟡 But of course, we do train hard, and have a ton of fun! The confidence to defend yourself really helps earlier when it comes to saying no - louder and with more conviction. The confidence in your own wisdom and intuition helps to guide you away from someone who would be a bigger problem in the future. After all, for women, over 95% of assaults are by a known person.

‼️ Let me repeat that.
➡️ Over 95% of assaults on women are by a known person. ⚠️
Theres a lot more to this than fighting, wouldnt you say? 🧠

For men its a different story. Keeping the ego in check, and deescalation 🤝 are our first tools. ❓️Not what you thought perhaps?
This is much easier with the confidence 💪 to handle things should they get worse. 🔪

Of course kids👨‍👦 are different yet. Each developmental stage 🎒 will have a different self defense perspective, but tricky people and bullys are a common theme, and truthfully, that doesnt change as we go into adult hood. 📌

🚩🚩"Self defense!"🚩🚩 Ive said it a few times here but im not a fan of the phrase. Its used to quickly imply what we do. What we specifically do is Personal Protection, and Violence Prevention. Even down to the combatives, we are pro active and not defensive.

This is real life insurance. This isn't a lifelong path to martial art mastery. This is an efficient roadmap to a safer life, but by default, a happier life as well. 😁

🔶️ Helping others. 🫴
The root of PDS is helping others and with that said, I must say over the years its been proven to me repeatedly that learning to articulate to someone exactly how and why they are in a dangerous situation, greatly increases the chances that they will shake the denial, and start to see whats truly happening. After all, most of us would hope to have the courage, insight, and fortitude to defend our loved ones, before even our own selves. 🙏

● ➡️ Private Message, or call us today for more information.
● • 📞 412 445 6298

04/30/2026

Super congratulations to Mary Ellen Nelson for earning her black belt! Mary Ellen was one of the 1st 2 students when PDS started ongoing classes from 6-12 week programs. She has missed, literally, only 3 classes in almost 8 years.
The last thing we are is a "pay your dues and youll get a black belt" kind of school. This was earned through continuous effort and a deep understanding of the underlying principles supporting the system, sub systems, and the countless techniques within them. Mary Ellen is here for the journey and understands there is no destination.
She is in some ways the heart of the program, and I often think of her as the mother of PDS. During down times she would always push me and insist, "you need to keep going, people need this." And here we are almost 8 years later.
We train at PTK Pittsburgh, half our class also trains Kali, and due to our own training and principals, Dumog feels somewhat natural. Dumog is Filipino grappling for combat. Mary Ellen is not in the Kali program but we opened the doors to her anyway for dumog class. Its always a joy seeing the faces of folks looking up from the ground at the 69 year old woman they just met and possibility underestimated....
Congratulations Mary Ellen. This is an incredible milestone for an incredible woman.

04/13/2026

Stun guns are not only worthless, but also illegal in Pennsylvania, the state we are in.
The more you know....

04/08/2026

⚠️A good friend who has dedicated much of his life to keeping others safe has worked very hard to create this resource.

👊I have been researching and training self defense, personal protection, and violence prevention since 1999, and I have not come across anyone else who truly looks at the full spectrum from domestic abuse and bullying to LE defensive tactics. From setting boundaries to weapons based entanglements. From home security to fi****ms.

📋This is a wealth of information and is only growing.

https://www.facebook.com/share/14ZwgcJHnWW/

This page supports all aspects of community outreaches, networking, events, organizations, advice, tips, discussion.
My goal for the person who follows us is to gain education, connections, and awareness within the self-protection mindset.

04/07/2026

Yes! We have youth programs!

04/06/2026

💥We just posted a variation of the inside figure 4 (kimura) where you have an option other than verbal commanda to get them off their leg.

👊Here Kelly shows another method, her preferred one.

✍️Ill be taking notes!

04/04/2026

Secret to surviving violence is not in technique

04/03/2026

👊The class has been mostly advanced students (I suck at marketing-come be the new person, we need to practice basics) so we have been doing a lot of WEAPONS BASED GRAPPLING. This is good for you because the internet sucks at weapons based grappling.

👎The inside figure 4 is commonly known now as the kimura. A recurring issue with it is getting your leg trapped on the bottom, which is bad.
👮‍♂️A certain famous system for LE defensive tactics used verbal commands like, "get off my leg." Well, verbal commands don't do much in the middle of a scuffle.
📷Still use them of course so the 8 people recording it and the internet don't misinterpret your actions.

✔️So heres a solution.
🧐About 10 min later Kelly showed us her preference which is much easier, and I will post that soon.

🙏Please learn and practice Plan A so you don't have to do any of this.