Dont' mess with me!

One of my friends decided that for her birthday, we should all go take a self defense class. I wasn't that excited about it, I've never been mugged, or been in a situation like that, and I'm not one of those people who prepare for the worst case scenario all the time - but it was her birthday and she was really excited about it.

So 8 of us trecked up to W. Hollywood from Long Beach and started our training. It was a 3 hour class and we learned a lot of great stuff. They told us that 85% of attacks are 1 man with no weapon so that's what we'd learn about. So we started off just yelling NO over and over and over again at the top of our lungs. Turns out - we were pretty good at this. Next we learned the stance we should be in, for best balance and power, and then we learned how to hit and knee him until he leaves us alone and we're safe. Our only targets were face/head and groin. And we learned to hit with the heel of our hand and our knee.

Then this guy came walking in....
He was to be our attacker and we had to use what we'd learned to hit him as hard as we could! This started off being a little embarassing, but it ended up fun.


So we all lined up and hit him in the chin, over and over again, then we lined up again and knee'd him in the groin, over and over again, until he fell to the ground, and as he started to sort of get up again, we kneed him in the head! We were so good at it, someone actually broke his chin strap! I'm sure it was me.

Next we had to learn how to talk ourselves out of a creepy situation so that we wouldn't actually have to fight. We pretended to be in dark parking lots after dark, camping, jogging by ourselves, walking our dogs or using an ATM.

We all talked our way out of potentially scary situations, and the guy in the big helmet was pretty good at making up realistic scenarios. My favorite was when one girl said she was at the ATM (she happened to be wearing a Dallas Coyboys shirt). The guy came up and asked her for money, she said she didn't have any - back away please etc....He then said - but you like the cowboys and I like the cowboys, isn't that worth a dollar? The girl didn't say anything, just stood her ground. The instructor then told her to stay whatever she was thinking - so she said "why don't you go ask Tony Romo for a dollar, he just signed that big contract". It was pretty hard to keep a straight face after that - I guess the instructor thought she'd say something like "Look - you're a weird guy who just walked up to me at an ATM at night and I'd like you to leave." Turns out wit and sarcasm aren't that good when talking down the creepy guy - might just make him mad. I'll be sure and keep this in mind.

So after all our practice we got to put it all together - we did what we could to talk him down, but he wasn't havin it - so he started to come at us - and we attacked back. This time he grabbed our hands and tried to keep us from hitting him, but it didn't work - that guy got kneed A LOT! Needless to say we all won - but mostly - we all learned that we're totally tough - and we could stand up for ourselves if we had to! We also learned that guys who don't mean us any harm, will just walk away if we ask them too - and the creepy ones are probably looking for an easier target than the woman who seems really assertive. Hopefully we'll never have to use any of these skills!

If I wanted to learn how to defend myself if attacked in my sleep, or with a weapon etc...I'd have to take more classes, but I think I'll stick to trapeze for my adrenaline rush!