The VITAL System History
VITAL, or we should say
V.I.T.A.L. is an acronym for Violence Intervention Training
for Anyone’s Life. That is a fairly concise description of
what it’s all about. It’s about putting effective tools and
strategies into ordinary individual’s lives so that they
may have the best chances of avoiding, escaping, and/or
surviving violent crime.
The VITAL system began its design in 1999 by Charles
Hepburn II. At the time, Charles was the Senior Instructor
for a large martial arts school near Baltimore. Although he
had been teaching and training in many styles of martial
arts, he could never really find something that suited his
needs.
Tae Kwon Do, Hapkido, Daito Ryu Aiki Ju-Jitsu, Brazilian
Ju-Jitsu, and Kenpo, although each having their own merits,
never really satisfied Charles. He was always searching for
something he just couldn’t put his finger on for sure.
In 1999, serious amounts of studying and investigation led
Charles to believe nothing currently out there would do. He
decided to create his own martial arts style. This new
martial art would put the very best elements from all
styles of into one system. It was to be extremely
comprehensive, modernized, and most of all practical to
use.
The name of this new martial arts style was Meta Mu Do.
Meta meaning “more comprehensive” and Mu Do meaning
“martial art / way”.
After collecting several hundred books, videos, and DVDs on
every conceivable martial art, police defensive tactics,
military combatives, extreme sports cage fighting, street
fighting, women’s self defense, and many other sources of
violence information, Charles began to assemble the
elements of Meta Mu Do. It was going pretty good for a few
years. Including only the best stuff, and cutting the
fluff, the style was shaping up fairly nicely.
However, in 2004 Charles took a college class on Personal
Safety Issues that gave him a paradigm shift in his whole
approach. In the class, they read Gavin De Becker’s The
Gift of Fear. They talked about many forms of violence
besides the stereotypical street fight, such as: sexual
assault, child abduction, child molestation, domestic
violence, stalking, sexual harassment, etc.
It was as if Charles had been perfecting all the shades and
tones of the color red, thinking that was the only color,
only to have revealed to him all the other colors violence
can be.
Charles began to realize that Meta Mu Do, while very
practical for someone who was physically skilled (by way of
years of practice) in a bar or school yard brawl, it did
nothing to help victims of many other forms of violence. It
served only those who had the time, money, devotion, and
other requirements needed for long-term skill building of a
martial arts style.
Meta Mu Do did nothing for those who had very little time
or motivation to learn effective self-defense. Moreover,
Meta Mu Do was focused primarily on the skillful execution
of techniques, rather than equipping someone with limited
abilities / skills with comprehensive tools to avoid,
escape, and survive violence.
So after about 5 years of development, Meta Mu Do, as a
martial art style was scrapped. All was not lost however.
It was a valuable learning experience that ultimately led
to the creation of the VITAL System.
So, a new goal was established. A new paradigm (underlying
concept) was used in building the VITAL System. Instead of
the concept of piecing together the best of the best from
all martial arts as a starting point (a means), Charles
started with a design goal in mind (the ends).
The problem he wanted to tackle was intentional inter-Human
violence. In that regard, there are several capacities. One
capacity is ordinary citizens, both adults and children,
who are targeted by criminals. Another capacity are those
individuals whom job it is to go towards the sound of
gunfire. These are the everyday heroes we call police,
security, and military officers. These capacities, and a
few others, are those who need tools and strategies to deal
with violence.
So in reference to ordinary citizens dealing with real-life
violence, one has to ask: what are the issues / categories
of violence that could affect ordinary citizens? True,
there is always the issue of bar brawls and schoolyard
fights, but even more than that, what other issues are
there?
So that’s where Charles started at with the design of
VITAL. How can ordinary citizens, with very little time and
athletic ability, be empowered to avoid, deter, escape,
survive, and recover from (medically, legally, and
psychologically) all forms of violence?
This general idea is encapsulated in term we use at VITAL
called Prevail Over Violence. It doesn’t mean to win a
fight. It means to have done everything possible before,
during, and after violence to minimize violence’s negative
affect; and to ultimately relieve unwarranted fear and
worry of violence so that you can live a freer and more
fulfilling life.
Our Mission
Statement sums it up the best:
To empower people to prevail over violence,
so rather than dying as victims,
they live stronger as survivors.