Starting a womens self defense class

[Groinstrike]

Our academy is starting to offer womens self defense classes, i am partially in charge of the content of these classes. Just want to hear some ideas of what the content of the classes should be?

[Montana]

Well, first of all, I'm absolutely 100% AGAINST women's self-defense classes.

Why?

Basically, they're a total waste of time, energy and if the women are charged for the classes, their money!

Look, anybody that's been in the martial arts for very long knows that to be any good at it, you need to develop muscle memory, which is done by countless repetitions of techniques and continued practice of those techniques for basically the rest of your life!

A womans self-defense class is what...once per week for maybe 4-6 weeks for an hour each time? That's not nearly enough time to develop muscle memory as is needed.

And when those women "graduate" from the class with their little diplomas saying that they have successfully passed Master Joe Blows Womens Self-Defense Course and they think they can really defend themselves, but in truth they only have a false sense of security and a week from now will forget 90% of what they learned, then what good was it?

I'm sorry, but I would instead encourage these women, through entry level, introductory classes, to join an actual martial arts class where they will actually learn something worthwhile and that will, in the long term, stick with them and do them good if they need it.

On the other hand, I had a friend a long while back by the name of Jerry Lemm that taught an EXCELLENT 2 hour women's self-defense class.

What? Only 2 hours long, and after my previous rant, it was excellent?

Yes, and you know why it was excellent? Because nowhere during the entire 2 hours, did Jerry teach as much as one martial arts technique! Nope, not one!

So, how do you teach womens self-defense classes, and not teach and "self-defense" techniques?

Thanks for asking!

You teach awareness!

Little things, like pay attention to what's happening around you. Like not making yourself a target. Like not having a car license plate that says IMAQT, IM2HOT, SARAS, SUSIEQ, etc that identifies your car as driven by a woman. Also don't hang all that foo-foo stuff on your mirror that identifies your car as a womans car.

It makes you a potential target ladies!

Jerry's 2 hour seminar taught these women valuable self-defense techniques that would be remembered and easily used on a daily basis, not just practices a few times with a compliant partner, then never used again and useless when needed.

Otherwise, good luck with the classes! lol

[tallgeese]

Awareness is a good skill, probabily the most important to talk about and make women, well aware of, but there are plenty of good things women can take away from something like this.

For one, maybe they'll get into and decide to get involved for years to come and countless reps. Not a bad thing.

Or, it might be insightful into the realities of assaults on women. Many women, while the might intellectually acknowledge violence, don't fully understand the realities of what an attack will do to you. Let alone how to even begin to react.

This brings us to point three, mindset. Combat mindset is critical in any encounter. Sometimes, this might be the only thing an individual has to work with. Mindset is something that most martial artists don't deal with enough. Certainly, most soccor moms don't even consider it. This is the perfect setting to plant that seed.

These last two are really best taught and demonstrated against a full armored attacker (I like Blauer's High Gear). This kind of training leads us to another positive- realizing just how lousey it is to have to defend ones self. It's hard, way harder than most people realize. This will reinforce just how importance awareness and critical thinking in regards to situations is. Because it will certainly show them that they never want to be in a position to have to do it again.

I'd suggest easy stuff that is fairly instinctual on the tactical side. Escapes from grabs, emphasising early movement. Eye gouges and knees, due to ease. I'm not suggesting, before the argument starts, that either of these are fight enders, but they are a tool that is quick to use and helpful in creating a reaction from an attacker. I'd emphasis using this reaction to effect their escape.

Remember, classes like this aren't about fighting. They are about escape and evasion. Some resourses I'd cite for mindset:

Gift of Fear by DeBecker

On Combat by Grossman

Sharpening the Warrior's Edge by Siddell

These are all good works that have good (in most cases) scientific backing to what we all talk about anyway. I'd spend time with the class in Siddell's research as to the qhysiological effects of combat and what to expect. This goes along way to mitigating panic.

Don't neglect talking about use of chemical agents. Both the pluses and minues. Get a training simulator to use as well. It's going to quickly show them that it's harder to deploy under duress than they think. It will put actual scenarios in their head.

I'd also scoure Dept. of Justice's website for assault statistics and trends. They publish something every couple of years. It can be useful for class discussion.

Lastly, rep the crap out of them. Then rep them against an armored attacker, then run scenarios. The more real the better. Pull some local police report on battery's, assaults, and home invasions to get some localized trends that are relivent.

Lastly, a friend of my up north and I were talking about this a while back, use some local womens resource center to have a speaker about who to talk to if something does happen. Further, espicially if you have young women, they can work on some of the women specific socitial pressures that put them in bad positions. They can do this way better than we can.

Good luck. Let us know how it's coming.