no. when it came down to it he was far too strong for me and my brain failed me anyway
For instance, my class taught to scream “fire” instead of “help!!” Yelling there’s a fire makes people run out and help.
I started taking American Kenpo karate in the early 2000s and it’s not a “women’s self defense class” but it’s a very self-defense oriented style of karate. I got my black belt in 2007. I also dabbled in “tactical Hapkido” after that, which focuses a lot on wrist locks for self defense.
Anyway, I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve had to defend myself, even though I’ve walked around cities and campuses alone enough. But I am quite a tall hefty woman and look very strong so I’m sure there are better targets for people wanting to do harm to women.
Karate did boost my confidence 10-fold, though. Our house was robbed in 1997 and it made me very afraid to stay home alone. But once I had a year of karate class some years later, I was able to move out of my parents’ house and be here in my castle all alone all the time. Not sure if I really just grew out of the fear from the robbery or if it was really the karate, but I know I felt more confident.
Anyway so now I am not only a tall hefty woman who looks strong, I also have a bit of a “yo, seriously?” feel about me, and do mentally prepare for confrontations when I am in skeevy situations, but I hope I never have to test it out.
I’m not a woman but have taught lots of them self-defense.
[QUOTE=monstro]
The best thing I can do is just mitigate my risk by walking where there’s other people (like avoiding alleys) and being aware of my surroundings.
[/QUOTE]
You learned two of the key lessons I taught already. Better to learn those - and apply them! - than to learn “moves”.
A couple of years ago, I was walking in a semi-sketchy part of town, alone. About a half block ahead I spotted someone who, for whatever reason, set off my spider-sense. I am about 195 lbs., a weight lifter and a black belt.
I stopped where I was, turned around and walked back to the last corner, and went two blocks up to a busier street, and continued on to where I was going. IMO I had just “won” a street fight, and it was because I am trained enough to know that I waste less energy walking a few blocks out of my way than to get into a fight, especially because I might lose.
Most of the time, the battle is won or lost in the mind, before the first blow is struck. That is one of the first and one of the most important lessons in any realistic martial arts training, and it does not refer only to confidence.
Regards,
Shodan
PS - Best wishes for the safety of all women.
I’ve been told I’ve wear a mean face when I’m out and about. It’s not intentional, but it seems to make certain panhandlers think twice, at least.
Also not a woman, but wanted to pass along an article, written by a purported former police detective working Robbery. Either Loach or Lumpy mentioned this article in another thread here, and I liked it so much for its plain language explanation of the mentality of armed robbers, how you can spot them, and what to do once you do, that I’m mentioning it here again: Street Robberies and You: The Basics. The language is at times profane and the grammar could use some work, but IMHO, it’s well worth your time to read. FTA:
Basically, it’s as Shodan wrote above me (paraphrasing): the best self-defense technique is to use good judgment to avoid the fight in the first place.
The lady scolding me yesterday irritated me, and I’ll tell you why. She kept focusing on how dangerous the city is, and how “bad” the neighborhoods are that I walk through, as if I haven’t spent my whole life living in supposedly dangerous and bad neighborhoods aand cities and thus don’t know how to handle myself. It was Ms. Exurbia lecturing Ms. City Slicker about how The World Really Is. Like she was the one who grew up with a different set of crackheads breaking into her house every year, and I am the one who has always lived out in the country.
It’s funny how people equate quiet tree-lined streets with safety, when in my experience this is where shit is likely to go down. I always look for streets populated with people, even if they are only winos and guys on the corner. Residential streets are certainly pleasant, but if I’m walking in the early morning or the evening I’d rather walk down a street with businesses. There’s more police, pedestrians, traffic, survellaince and places to “escape”. Since I’ve become a daily walker here in Richmond, the only place where something went down was when I was walking around on the “good” side of town on a residential street and a naked dude stepped out from between some houses to flash me. If he had been clothed, I would have pegged him for one of the rich dudes who lived in the neighborhood. You can’t judge people or places by their covers.
If I were going to advise someone on how to be safe, I’d try to dispel them of the notion of “good” neighborhoods. I don’t care where you are. Never drop down your guard and be “situationally unaware”. Bad guys are just waiting for people to do this.
I spent 5 years helping my instructor teach a Women’s Self Defense Course which students signed up for at the local community college and trained for at my instructor’s studio. We were both very aware that the main reason she offered the course is because there was a lot of demand for it among the Community College students, therefore there was a high-percentage-of-the-enrollment-fee offer from the Community College, therefore there was both a population to teach and money to be made. One of the big reasons they wanted my instructor, in particular, to teach the course is because she was one of the few women+ running her own martial arts studio and the students seemed more receptive if the lessons came from a fellow female.
Our top 3 points of emphasis:
Think ahead: Don’t get into a shitty situations.
Be Aware: Learn to read basic body language, Know who and what is around you. Know and plan where/how to escape a shitty situation.
Basics: Learn simple techniques that can be applied to multiple targets and know how/why/when/where to apply them.
…Corollary: take a real martial arts course rather than a self-defense course.
Nevertheless 80% of the students* simply wanted to learn how to pull free of a wrist-grab or a choke-hold or a bear-hug. My instructor and I would repeatedly emphasize that we are not able to teach execute maneuver Y in response to situation X for every possible situation. Furthermore, those trying to thoroughly learn execute maneuver Y in response to situation X would do themselves more harm than good because they would then walk out at the end of the semester with a level of self-confidence that was over-inflated and they could find themselves in situation Z – at which point saying, “Wait! I didn’t learn that one, can you try something else?” is just not going to work.
What we did teach and emphasize has been posted by others already: Learning to stay alert, know where you are, know where others are, know how to conduct yourself when alone, in crowds, indoors, or outdoors is more useful than knowing combat techniques or carrying a weapon. The weapons (and combat techniques are special kinds of weapons) are a last resort if you failed your awareness and preparedness checks.
And now the shitty information that I would issue on the first minute of the first day of every self-defense course:
-
Most acts of violence come from someone the victim knows – arguments with friends and relatives, rapes by friends, relatives, impatient dates, disputes between sellers and buyers, disgruntled coworkers or fellow students, etcetera. So the first step is to pay attention to the people you know and BE COURTEOUS (if not truly nice) to them.
-
If someone really wants to hurt you or kill you there is nothing you can do about it. Doing so simply takes time, observation of your habits, and planning of the attack. On the other hand, few of us are really so important that we will be targets of that sophisticated level of premeditated attack.
-
The stuff that drives most people to the self-defense courses is the fear of random acts of violence. See #1 and #2 above and then work on your awareness and preparation (which we will teach you throughout this semester…) and know that the combat techniques should really just be your last resort.
…and then my instructor would teach most of the class and I would do a guest appearance later to teach self-defense against knife attacks. And, strange as this may seem to the average reader, my foundation for that stuff was some fundamental Tai Chi, rather than the hard-style karate I knew even better. That was because I didn’t expect the self-defense students to be able to do the hard-style karate stuff without actually training in hard style karate for a couple years – and they only had a semester for the whole course.
Invariably, at the end of my guest-teaching session, someone would raise a hand and say, “Those were fun, and neat for knives. What if someone has a gun?”
“Good point!” I’d channel my former instructors, “And what if he has a grenade? Or a machine gun?”
Some got it; some didn’t. The point is to learn to deal with what you can, not just give up because there are still many things you haven’t learned to deal with.
—G
+In town, in the state? I dunno. I guess its pretty rare for a woman to keep pursuing the martial arts and make it into a teaching career; most studios are opened by men.
*I personally diverted about 10% of those students to our regular classes. The other 10% would either drop the class knowing I was right, or drop the class and look for another instructor who was willing to promise miracles.
I feel a big part of self defense is self confidence, it is overcoming what is holding one back from living life by believing you can learn skills to make it safer to do so. But it is only fear that holds us back.
This is not to say that those skills can not be used for the greater good, but it is to say that those skills were never needed for one’s safety, just overcoming fears.
He probably was one of the rich dudes who lived in the neighborhood. Nothing says flashers can’t be rich dudes from the good side of town.
KanicBird, I’m not stomping on you personally, but I feel I need to quash that idea quickly.
I’ll grant that, in a limited sense, confidence can help you stop being a victim. However, one of the reasons we emphasized the awareness and preparedness over attitude and scenario-handling was to try and mitigate the self-confidence a lot of self-defense class students were trying to acquire through their participation in the class.
Boosting self-confidence is a nice thing, and there are lots of neat little tales about giving clumsy kids a good luck charm and seeing them stop tripping over their own feet and walking into door frames, only to reveal that the charm was nothing more than the harp on a lampshade or some other odd-looking trinket*. In the real world, though, it can be dangerous and harmful to boost a person’s confidence when that confidence is unwarranted – which is often the case with a six- or twelve-week self defense course or the purchase of a purse-sized pistol or cattle-prod.
Let me put it another way: My current Tai Chi instructor grew up in Hawaii and says he had a knack for being able to spot
a) The tourists
b) The locals
c) The locals and/or non-locals who were there to prey upon the tourists.
And it wasn’t that the tourists looked like they lacked confidence. Many were rich or high-powered for whatever reason and were well-placed high-powered people from the Mainland or from Japan or other countries. The problem was that they were being tourists (because, after all, that’s why they were vacationing in Hawaii) and it was obvious they were looking at the scenery and not at the road/walkway/whatever.
The locals, of course, knew where they were going, know which tourists to approach or avoid, and knew who to ignore or monitor.
The predators were watching the tourists and the locals. Regardless of their tourist costume or local costume or ‘industry’ costume, they had their eyes looking to see who was clueless/oblivious/preoccupied and who knew the local situation.
My instructor brags that, before the age of ten, he could tell who was who at the beach just by watching to see what a person tracked or ignored.
A last historical example of the danger of confidence:
At the end of the 1800’s there were a whole lot of reasons the Chinese didn’t like the British and other foreigners and really wanted to kick them out. Things came to a head in 1899 with the Empress Dowager supporting the rebels, among which was a secret society that claimed to have astounding martial arts abilities, including the ability to withstand bullets. The Boxers, bolstered by their confidence in their secret combat techniques and imperviousness to bullets, began an uprising that lasted hundreds of days. It was eventually suppressed by Western troops who mostly shot the Boxers and thoroughly proved their confidence was horribly misplaced.
Go ahead and lack confidence if you’re out of your depth; go ahead and look un-confident. Just make sure you’re aware and take due precautions, regardless of your level of confidence.
—G!
A Man who truly feels
No Fear
is either a complete idiot
or a corpse.
*The Monty Python group showed this to hilarious effect in Erik the Viking.
You’re right. Poor phrasing on my part.
The day of the incident, I told a coworker about it. It just so happened that on the same morning, a guy was arrested for indecent exposure just a couple of miles from where I was flashed. I looked at the guy’s mug shot in the newspaper and it looked nothing like my flasher. My guy was older and bald. The other guy had a mustache. Plus, their MO’s were different. My guy was just standing there looking dopey, naked except for running shoes. The other guy had been stalking a woman from his car. But my coworker, who hadn’t witnessed anything, insisted it HAD to be same guy based on the crazy logic: “How many white guys are going around flashing people?”
Richmond’s population is mostly white. And the neighborhoods in question are mostly white. I was kind of pissed off at this coworker for being so stupid.
Monstro, if it helps, she’s probably being obtuse on purpose, at least subconsciously so. People like to think that they have a handle on life, and that bad things only happen to people who aren’t watching out, or to people not like her.
Therefore, rich white suburban dudes can’t be unhinged or perverts, because rich white dudes are her neighbors and OBVIOUSLY her neighborhood is safe and her neighbors are nice people.
It’s not purposeful stupidity, it’s a coping mechanism.
That’s one benefit to being depressed, anxious, and pessimistic. Life is awful and unfair and unsafe, so it’s perfectly congruent for me to think that my so-far courteous and friendly rich-ass neighbor might also be a secret perv, I’ll probably never know one way or the other, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it even if he is.
No worries not taken personally
I stumbled upon this and felt the need to provide my thoughts.
First off I am not a woman but I have spent the last 15 years teaching women how to protect themselves from crime and violence. I have had students come back years later to inform me that they had to use something I taught them to either avoid bad situations or to escape near-assault.
Honestly I haven’t yet read every response to your post but I did read some. There were some good suggestions and some questionable ones. This is pretty common when it comes to self-defense training and education.
Let me begin by saying that there is more to personal safety and self-defense than just physical skills. The physical skills are the least important of everything you can learn. Statistically speaking the majority of bad situations can be dealt with through mental preparation, awareness, simple escape strategies, and verbal self-defense skills. With proper education and training you can see bad situations before they turn bad and deter criminal attack long before it turns physical.
Let’s start with the essentials-
Mind-Set or mental preparation is THE most important component to protecting oneself. There have been tons of reports of people successfully surviving attacks and verbal assaults with absolutely NO previous martial arts or self-defense training. The common denominator was and is the presence of the appropriate Mind-Set. At the same time there have been tons of reports of highly trained martial arts succumbing to criminal attack. The common denominator was the lack of said Mind-Set. As long as you have the appropriate Mind-Set, the physical skills won’t matter. Tenacity controlled aggression beats technique every time! That being said, IF you truly believe you can’t protect yourself on a physical level then you most certainly won’t be able to. Make sense? In real self-defense, it’s not size, strength, gender, or skills that determines the outcome…it’s Mind-Set.
Awareness is the second most important component to staying safe. With an understanding of awareness combined with Mind-Set you can successfully learn to avoid the majority of bad situations. The keys are a solid understanding and a conscious effort.
Even with the best awareness and the appropriate Mind-Set you still may find yourself in an unsafe situation. This is why understanding how and when to escape is important. However, if escape is not an immediate option having simple but effective verbal self-defense skills can quickly deter an attacker. This is accomplished by knowing what to say, how to say it and how to combine words with appropriate assertive body language. Keeping in mind that passive and aggressive words and body language can quickly escalate the altercation.
Just like most things in life, there are no guarantees. Even if you do everything right it’s possible you won’t deter the hardened criminal / cognitive aggressor (the person that woke up and decided to find a victim that day). That being the case, if you can’t immediately escape and verbal self-defense has no effect you should be prepared to physically protect yourself. While there some skills that statistically work better than others in real self-defense, as long as you have the appropriate Mind-Set and the ability to express that on a physical level, techniques will be unimportant. Think of an aggressive feral cat that is scared out of it’s mind. Now try to corner this cat as you bend down to pick it up. Does it protect itself with “techniques” ? No! It uses pure focused aggression! You get the picture.
All of this being said, I encourage you to seek out a solid training course. Forget about martial arts. While they have many things to offer, real self-defense isn’t usually one of them, despite the claims. Forget about crazy suggestions like urinating on yourself or making yourself vomit. Look for realistic scenario-based programs like Model Mugging, FAST Defense, IMPACT and similar programs. They focus on non-physical skills like awareness and verbal self-defense. They also provide simple physical skills that have been shown to work for the majority of people the majority of the time. Keep in mind that these courses are generally offered over a few hours or a weekend and they do not require on-going training like most martial arts “self-defense” programs.
I hope this helps. Remember personal safety is NOT about being paranoid, it’s about being prepared. Just like learning CPR, fire safety, or being taught the best escape route during an emergency evacuation. it’s better to be prepared and never need it than the alternative.
Take care and stay safe!
Steve
I take karate classes, Hawaiian kempo style. We are taught that karate, as self defense, is what you do when you can’t talk yourself out of a bad situation.
There are kid’s classes, and the sensei will ask them “What’s your best weapon?” “You voice!” they yell back.
We are all told there is nothing shameful in running away. We aren’t supposed to feel invulnerable because we’ve studied self defense. we are supposed to do just enough to be able to get away and run like hell, yelling all the while if needed.
I have never had to use it in real life, but I was assaulted once in my own home, by a stranger who broke in, and I froze, unable to react. I don’t think I would now, the instruction I’ve recieved would at least give me the confidence to try and defend myself.
Way back before we were married, my wife drove to the corner store one day, made a purchase, and left. Within a few minutes, literally five or less, another woman was abducted from the parking lot, and murdered. Why wasn’t it my wife? Well, it could have been the luck of the draw… or it could have been that she had her dog with her, a not huge but by no means small mutt. There’s more than one way to defend yourself.
Since everyone’s chimed in on the actual benefits of self defense classes in regards to changing your psychology, body language, awareness, etc. I’ll add this.
If you want to truly learn some combat skills, look for a school that teaches grappling and ground extensive techniques. Some people call it"dirty" fighting. You’ll want to expect a lot of sparring, with the real potential of injury. A good instructor will focus on triggering that fight or flight mode and rush of adrenaline that happens in a physical confrontation and learning to work through it. Find a self-defense school like that, and you have a chance of actually surviving/escaping or prevailing in an actual fight.
I agree that the activation of adrenaline during the training is essential. This is an important factor for preparing students for the reality of violence. The programs I previously mentioned specialize in adrenal response training.
In regards to an emphasis on “grappling” and sparring. There is a huge difference between symmetrical training methods and asymmetrical training methods. Grappling and sparring are symmetrical training methods based on sport and match fighting. Unfortunately they offer little for preparing a person to survive and escape violence (asymmetrical assault). Grappling and sparring in the traditional sense require a higher degree of skill and a greater investment of time and energy. Not really conducive to skills that need be learned and applicable right away. They can also build negative habits that can increase the potential for serious injury or worse. However, grappling and sparring can offer inoculation to contact and the ability to take blows but these are things that can easily be accomplished with proper asymmetric adrenal response drills.
In self-defense the focus should be on “anti-grappling”, those vicious skills designed to prevent an attacker from taking the victim to the ground in the first place and those skills that allow the intended victim to get back to his/her feet as efficiently as possible. Maybe what was meant by “dirty fighting”.
Steve
Yes, I know self-defense (my real estate office made it mandatory, for good reason), and it definitely saved my life once and probably helped me avoid a bad situation several other times.
I fought off an attacker by hitting him in the jaw, hard enough to break his teeth. I still have a scar on my knuckle from one of his teeth that imbedded in it. I also fought off an unleashed dog that attacked me by hitting him in the balls.
Several times cars have almost hit me, and then the driver offers me a ride. I always say no. One guy got very insistant, so I grabbed a fence behind me and screamed “I SAID NO!” He drove off.