The Thin Veil Of Empowerment

I want to talk to you today about a very sensitive issue. This happens in many dojos worldwide but i don't want to focus on that today. I want to focus on an even more serious issue. I want to focus on women's self defense. As a martial artist i don't believe there are instructors out there that want to teach something bad on purpose. I think people who say that are negative people that only want to tear things down. However i do believe their are many martial artists who are well meaning but actually do more damage than good because they don't understand the issue when it comes to women's self defense. So i want to talk to you about what a women's self defense course should be and why i believe it.

The biggest problem i see is that most of these course tend to focus on empowerment alone. Now i want to say this right off. You must have empowerment as a part of any self defense course. It doesn't do any good to have great techniques if the students will never be empowered to use them. A course without empowerment is pretty much useless. However a course with only empowerment is very dangerous and could get a student killed. The fact is learning how to punch and kick and yell loud while standing still isn't going to do any good. I've seen some of these course where they even teach wristlocks and fingerlocks for self defense. So why do I scoff at this? One need to only have a rudimentary study of human physiology to understand why.

You take a woman who has been battered and is scared and put them in one of these classes for a couple hours and show them this stuff. You think if something goes down and all they've done is stand in one spot with a compliant partner and do this slow that they won't panic when it actually happens 10 times faster than they trained? So what happen to the body when it panics? Well first of all when your heart rate gets above 115 beats per minute you lose the ability to perform fine motor skills.
What constitutes a fine motor skill? A perfect example would be a wrist lock or finger lock. Get it now? Someone teaching a woman to perform a technique she doesn't have a chance in hell of pulling off. Thats pretty dangerous to me.

The fact is this goes much deeper. Dojos today simply don't pressure test their own techniques. Pressure testing means they've tested the techniques at full speed in scenarios where things such as heart rate increase are mimicked so they know for a fact that the stuff they teach works under the conditions they are teaching. It's simply regurgitating the same thing they were taught which could have been for a completely different circumstance. Now i have black belts in 5 martial arts. Three of them are 5th dans (Midori Yama Goshin Jujutsu, Shin Shin Jujitsu, and Koga Ryu Ninjutsu respectively) This not withstanding i will make the bold statement that none of these ranks qualifies me in any way to teach women's self defense, and none of yours do either. A martial arts rank only qualifies you to teach to curriculum you learned to get your belt and thats all. Otherwise if I had a black belt in one thing it would mean i had it in everything. Women's self defense is a separate issue all together and must be treated as such.

Now when I was doing my research on this subject i tossed my martial arts out the window. I interviewed social workers, Police officers, victims, and even attackers in jail to get the info I needed. I did this because i understood it was an important issue and needed the respect it deserved. I didn't care about promoting some dojo or some art. I only cared about protecting women and put my own ego and knowledge aside to get to the truth. By understanding the real issues and how attacks go down and what leads up to them i then put together my program. I believe this is the right way to do it.

As I mentioned earlier most of these courses tend to focus on empowerment alone which can be very dangerous. If the well meaning instructor doesn't understand the issue then you could be empowered to put yourself in a situation where you should've ran. By using techniques with a low physiological success rate thats a good way to end up dead. As far as physical techniques the consensus among the experts is that target aquisition is best. Pick 5 areas on the attackers body that could be hit from anywhere. Some good high line targets would be the eyes,throat, or ears would be good. Low line targets that could be used to set up high line targets would be inside of the thighs, instep, or groin. Notice I said the low line targets were setup targets not the main targets themselves. Alot of these courses focus on the groin as a primary target. This is a HUGE mistake. Most men are hardwired to protect this target. It's one thing for them to be standing there and you whack the ol' nads and drop them. It's different when they are hopped up on drugs or adrenaline. I promise you they won't feel it like you think they will. It can turn a rape into a murder fast. It is however a good set up target to bring the head forward and maybe drops the hands to get at a highline target to by the time to make your escape. Yes i said escape. This isn't about winning a fight this is about living or dying... Get out of there!

Even with that physical knowledge it isn't enough. Because nothing is %100 percent and all life is precious. The fact is the education is much more important than the physical stuff. If your doing the physical stuff then it's because you screwed up at least 5 times and missed alot of signs to get there. Things like understanding when your being abused emotionally,cycles of violence, crime trends in your area, how violence escalates, what makes a psychopath tick. Things like this could help you never be in one of these situations. On our website (www.stonewalltactical.com) if you go to the article section you will find two links. One for pre-incident indicators and one for women's self defense support material that has clickable links for further study. This info is yours for free to begin your education that is so important.

I want to say something now to the potential instructors that could be teaching these courses. When you teach these courses you need to spread the educational material throughout don't put it all in one spot. Your going to feel pressure to make everything entertaining. Don't buckle to that. You cannot let the students dictate the content. Some will think the educational portion is boring but you need to make it clear that it IS the most important part. The students have a responsibility to understand they are there to be informed not entertained. This stuff could save a life someday and you need to make sure they know it. This is a serious issue that deserves respect and reverance. When it comes to the physical portion let them try the techniques a couple times to make sure they know how to do it, but as soon as that happens make sure the attackers in class stop being compliant. It does know good to fill someone with false empowerment. Make sure they can do the techniques and feel how the body changes during them. This will also help with the educational material and bring more focus to it when they understand this isn't easy. They need to really understand the issue not be lied to. This is why techniques need to be simple and direct because it will increase their success rate unders stress. If your going to teach then teach the truth and do it right.

In closing I want to tell you a true story about a girl i met. I'm not going to use her name because the family still lives in this area. I only met her once and learned of all this later down the road years later. A friend of mine was dating her and had been doing so for a couple months. She was separated from her husband going through a very ugly divorce. She was deathly afraid for her life because she felt he was dangerous. She always had someone staying with her in case he came by. She once made the statement to my friend that if he kills me promise me you'll hold my hand. He of course promised he would. One night she heard something outside and thought it was him so she called a friend to come over and he did but saw nothing. He did agree to stay on the couch. No none is exactly sure how it went down but the guy on the couch was found shot in the back of the head in the front yard and she was shot to death in her bed. The husband is now in prison serving a life sentence. When my friend got there the body hadn't been moved yet. He asked if he could hold her hand. He was told he couldn't because her hands hand been blown off when she went to cover her head in fear. This is a sad story but it's completely true. This is how these things happen. All the empowerment in the world would have never saved this girl's life. Education however, might have made a difference. There was help out there. Alot of women's shelters in our area keep their location hidden from the public. She could've been safe there. At least til things blew over. The police weren't told either they could've got more involved, but no one was told and she never knew she could've done it. Empowerment is a thin veil that is nothing without education. You put them together however and you may have something special. So please respect this issue and do the work. Life is beautiful and precious and this has to be done right. I hope if your an instructor that you won't be offended by this but instead use it as a call to action to make a change. A real change for a real solution that could help someone special. Because everyone has somebody that loves them and will miss them when they are gone. So together lets make a difference to insure when someone reaches out that there's a hand there to hold them. thank you