ICS Founder, Brian Braham

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Braham grew up with a fascination for combat sports, such as Boxing & Kickboxing. His Uncle and Father both competed in Boxing, so he learned basics at a young age.

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In 1984, after being heavily inspired by Bruce Lee, Braham began his journey in Martial Arts by training at a Tae Kwon Do and Hapkido school. Classes took place at the local recreation center on cement floors, where students went full contact, often resulting in bruises and having the wind knocked out of them. This was before schools became commercialized and pampered their students by giving them belts in order to retain their interest and handling them with kid gloves to avoid frivolous lawsuits.  

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From ’93–’94, Braham taught Tae Kwon Do at a different school but sustained a serious ankle/instep injury that sidelined him for 6 months. During this healing period, Braham had time to reflect and reevaluate, leading him to the conclusion that he wanted to seek out a more practical combat orientated style of martial arts. He chose a class that took place in a small basement where a student of Masaaki Hatsumi taught Togakure Ryu Ninjutsu. Braham remained with the school and watched it blossom into a larger operation that was ran out of an office complex. After training Ninjutsu for a few years and having the honor of attending a seminar taught by American Ninjutsu Master, Stephen K. Hayes, Braham sustained yet another injury; this one to his left shoulder while performing dive rolls.

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While taking time off, Braham felt the urge to compete. His love for Boxing never faded and he had done well in point fighting, so he decided to begin training in Kickboxing and Boxing. For the next 4 years, Braham took a year of Jeet Kune Do, a 4 week seminar in Aikido, studied Tai Boxing, and trained and competed in open-class Kickboxing (similar to Tai Boxing).  

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In ’98 Braham joined a Kenpo Karate school where he was asked by the lead instructor to help teach the black belts how to spar/point fight for competition. This was an eye-opening experience. While sparring with one of the black belts who was of the same age, height and weight as he, Braham quickly ended the fight with a left hook to his opponent’s nose that snapped the protective bar on the headgear, cutting the bridge of the black belt’s nose. This was not intended, but Braham quickly realized his experience in the ring was far more valuable than all the years of martial arts he had encountered, as he had just easily handled someone who outranked him and only had experience in traditional martial arts.

 

At that point, Braham sought out a Boxing and Kickboxing coach who would take him to the next level. After finding such a coach, Braham ended up competing and winning the High Desert Kickboxing Championship and a state Kickboxing title. Braham also sparred with professional heavyweight boxers like Louis Monaco. Monaco didn’t have a lot of wins but ended up with 57 fights under his belt against some big names, like Vitali Klitschko. Sparring with individuals like this was an amazing learning experience.  

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Braham retired undefeated from Kickboxing in 2001 after meeting his wife and making the decision to find a career path that could support a family. In 2005, Braham supervised security at a high profile site. The security contractor asked Braham to create and teach a self-defense course for the security team.  ​

Eventually Braham was asked to create a new security program for a college campus, where he worked as one of the Security Directors. From there he became an armed supervisor at a level-1 trauma center/Hospital, and then spent the next 10 years as Director of Security at another high profile site in Downtown Denver. 

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At the time, Krav Maga was attracting a lot of attention, so Braham joined a Krav Maga school and studied the style for 16 months. Although appreciative of the experience, he found himself frustrated that he had learned nothing new, just a slightly different approach to what he had already been taught. This experience ultimately led Braham to begin working out a defense system for himself.  

After spending a few years on a simplified and real-world approach to combat, Braham began to write articles for his future website and piece together what is now the guide for ICS. Braham continued training in empty hand combat, edged weapons, and firearms.  

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In 2019, the security contractor Braham worked for became aware of his background and offered him a position as self defense instructor. Braham was then certified as a defense and NRA firearms instructor.

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Now with over 38 years of experience, Braham has made it a priority to teach others what he has developed; a system that only focuses on truly effective techniques and is packaged in an easy to learn and streamlined approach to combat.