A letter to Emmanuel

22 June 2010

Re:  Mr. Emmanuel Manolakakis & Fight-Club Training

Greetings!  As Associate Professor of Kinesiology in the Faculty of Health at York University, I am honoured to recommend Mr. Emmanuel Manolakakis as both owner and senior instructor for the impressively effective violence prevention and self-protection training program he designed and teaches at Fight-Club.ca:  his aim is to inform, motivate, train and test your students so they will be readily fortified with lifelong awareness, confidence, and fitness to resolve conflicts with avoidance if at all possible.  A Kinesiology graduate of York University as well as internationally-recognized expert in threat assessment & personal safety, Mr. Manolakakis has mastered the dynamic Russian martial art of Systema but applied it as a gifted life-coach to instructing all kinds of students to protect themselves from violence.  He does so from the very first contact  by compelling attention, respect, enthusiasm, and involvement without coercion or “tough love” of bootcamp approach but rather through human interest, body awareness, and witty humour meshing with acute sensitivity to his students and their inner fears.  He is most excellent at “reading” his participants as well as identifying dormant capacities that they don’t ‘feel’ they actually have; as he transmits his knowledge, tactics, and techniques, he affirms both core beliefs of self-worth and relaxed alertness to move away from danger of violence without panic.  He encourages every student to find self-motivation to practice skillsets, attitudes, actions, and strategic avoidances that advantage them beyond others’ expectations and their own self-limitations.  I have witnessed these effects of his expertise among my own Fourth Year Kinesiology students; they all give him standing applause at the end of  two-hour workshop and even years later talk admiringly of his extraordinary results.  Some have attributed to Emmanuel’s sessions as having saved their lives or those of loved ones.  While having fun and absorbing skills, they substantially reduce risks of violence for those they love.

All the recent evidence from the health research community points to such precisely targeted training as a key factor in combining the physical fitness, the self-discovery exercises, emotional confidence, and strengthening of mental focus to do one’s best in and out of school.  That base of critical conditioning then expands to tackling other areas of challenge in maturing lives toward well-balanced adulthood with security.  The emerging new science of exercise and the brain treated in Dr. John Ratey’s revolutionary survey “SPARK” (2008) confirms that motivated aerobic exercise physically transforms our brains for peak performance; such training proves the best defense against mood disorders, ADHD, addictions, control issues, lack of focus, health threats, & underperformance, not to mention both fortifying the immune system and avoiding violence through awareness of relaxed alertness and prevention training.

Mr. Emmanuel Manolakakis trains students as whole persons, not as recruits nor weekend warriors.  He gives them optimal workouts, true, but guides them to discover self-motivational confidence by giving them tools and scripts in each demonstration that inspire them to believe in their ability to detect threats and to neutralize risks as well as to feel resilient to cope with situations, no matter what the challenge.   I write to encourage you to measure his promise of success with the 2004 New York City elective program called “Beat the Streets” (wrestling training)  that was so astonishing in its positive appeal to youth with life-changing results that other major cities with other alienated, indifferent, underachieving and unhealthy  students in terrible circumstances such as Detroit and Chicago followed immediately with the same sure outcomes for students matching anything in our schools. Mr. Manolakakis has especially shaped his early intervention program to impact youth uniquely so that the practical, motivational, and acquired skillsets transfer to personal & academic growth through self-confident maturation and intensified awareness.   As I have witnessed, his instruction produces beautifully balanced positive results with positive relationships.  In my thirty years of university teaching, nothing matches this affordable and cost-effective sessions he offers.  Everyone benefits from striving for peak performance; his expertise opens gates assumed to be locked for life.

The lessons which Mr. Manolakakis presents (wonderfully enhanced by his accomplishments, superb fitness, vivid presence, and fascinating stories) uplift students to discover their own hidden strengths in every dimension of their lives:  physical, emotional, psychological, social, spiritual.  I saw that proof in the eyes, bodies, attitudes, and awareness of my own students, even in years after his single presentation.  Though some think of this training as all about fighting and aggression, the opposite is true:  this instructor comes across as caring, committed, calm, flexible and relaxed.  The art of this form of ‘martial art’ is to avert conflict by intelligent self-worth, the ability to both stand on one’s own two feet or to move swiftly out of harm’s way if necessary.  Positive memories of his program will be lifelong recall of the exercises, strategies, scripts, and techniques as well as the inspiration of healthy self-belief enabling one to act instead of freeze in the face of threat. This may be the ultimate stress-reduction program because especially the young bury deep their personal security apprehensions.

Under his care, Mr. Manolakakis will model for students how good it feels to love learning and to acquire the strength of self-awareness & safe assessment of others.   I recommend Mr. Emmanuel Manolakakis most highly as Senior Instructor offering his program to bring out the best in the students.  In my estimation, he triangulates three goals of personal and academic growth: self-confident awareness, deeply lasting impact, and lifelong positive benefits of violence prevention.  Few initiatives can equal the good he does for so little so quickly.  Please contact Mr. Emmanuel Manolakakis for his elective program.

Respectfully yours,

Gregory Malszecki, Ph.D

Associate Professor, Faculty of Health

LaMarsh Centre for Violence & Conflict Resolution