Women's Self Defense Seminar

Last Saturday, my cousin Toni and I went to a Women's Self Defense Seminar.  I saw the link for this seminar posted on facebook on one of my running groups group pages.  I've always wanted to go to one of these seminars and thought this was a great time!  There was a Christmas special he was offering, $10 for 2.5 hours!  Sweet! 

At first I was a little freaked out to find that it was in a residential neighborhood instead of in a gym somewhere.  Then I found it was in someone's garage.  I was wondering how serious this was going to be.  Also, my cousin and I got there right at 2:00 when it was supposed to start, we were trying to get there early but that didn't happen.  When we walked in, there were no other women there, just 4 guys!  Uh, yeah, we were a little freaked out.  But then the women showed up and the instructor started the class.

The point of the seminar is not to learn all kinds of kickboxing moves.  The point of it is to learn some moves that you may be able to use in order to defend yourself if you are being attacked.  They are defensive moves.  Back when I was about 11 years old, my dad signed my brother and myself up for some Judo classes (we went to like 8-16 weeks, I can't remember because it was a long time ago).  Judo is a defensive form of martial arts that is supposed to subdue or immobilize someone.  This self defense class was a combination of different defensive martial arts, including Judo.  Therefore, I remembered the purpose of it and some of the moves I learned way back when.

The fun part?  We actually practiced on live people!  When appropriate, they wore helmets, pads and cups for protection.  A few things we learned:

1. The wrist grab - if someone grabs your wrist, you pull your arm towards where their thumb is and twist out of the hold.  This will work for either arm. 

After you remove your arm, you can try to defend yourself (basically hurt or immobilize your attacker so you can get away).  So the next thing we learned is to poke their eyes with our thumbs.   After that, take the bottom part of the palm of your hands and hit your attacker repeatedly in the face with force moving them backward.  Now, you can either get away or do my favorite...kick in the groin!  Ouch!

2.  Grab from behind - if they grab you from behind, there are a few things to do.  The first, if their arms around around your body and arms, you do a move that resembles the superman!  You thrust your butt back as hard as you can as you fling your arms forward (in kind of a superman position).  Then to immobilize them, you take your elbows (reminder, they are behind you) and elbow them in the ribs/chest several times as hard as you can, then do a backward kick (cuz we can and we are awesome!).

If they grab you from behind but your arms are free, you put your hands into fits and hit the tops of their hands with your knuckles as hard as you can (it really does hurt) and they will let go.  Then repeat the above steps (elbow and kick).

3.  If they are coming at you to grab at your neck - Poke them in the eyes with your thumbs before they grab you!  Then grab behind their heads and pull down.  Take your knees and knee them twice in the chest.  The next is hard to explain but you cub one hand by their chin and the other at the top of your head and twist them down to the ground.

4. Grab around neck from behind - take both of your hands and pull their arm down a little (so they don't choke you). Step with one foot to the side of them and simply bend over.  They will do a little flip and end up on the ground.  Then you can take your foot and slam it into their ribs.

There may have been more things we learned.  These were just some basics.  He actually had us each stand in the center of the mat for 3 minutes while the "attackers" came at us from the front or back and we had to try to defend ourselves using our new moves.  It was a little intimidating at first to think we had to do this for 3 minutes!  It seemed like it would be such a long time!  Actually it went by quicker than I expected.

Our instructor then put together a video montage of us doing our 3 minutes.  I have attached the You Tube video montage!  Note, the face masks are pretty hard but we were getting so much into it and afterwards, I had a sore side of my hand from the hammer punches to the mask and it got all bruised and swollen!  lol

The lady in the yellow shirt was awesome!  Basically she towered over these attackers and just started pushing them out of her way.  Pretty funny!  I'm in the purple t-shirt.  My cousin is in the gray v-neck with sweatpants. Enjoy!  See if you can recognize the moves I explained above!  Look closely and you will see some groin kicks!!

All in all, we had a great time and learned some great moves.  Will we remember to use them if being attacked?  Hopefully we will never have to find out.  But the key is to just do something!  There is no real wrong way to defend yourself.  If it gets the attacker away from you, you did the right move!  Maybe I'll have to test it out on some of my dates!