Learning to Fight

The Women’s Safety Page

Self-Defense

It may take years to develop the sort of skills that will enable you to go wherever you want, whenever you want without any fear. However, any amount of fighting skill/self-defense that you learn will increase your safety. The more you learn, the more chance you have of surviving an attack. Different attacks require different approaches. Sometimes its better to run, sometimes to talk your way out, sometimes to co-operate and sometimes to fight. What you can do in any given situation depends on what is available to you. If you're wearing high heels and a tight skirt then running is probably out. If you have no fighting skills then you won't have that option. However, if you do some self-defense or martial arts training then you give yourself more options. OK, so you won't be able to take on a six strong gang after a few weeks on a self-defense course but you will probably be able to fight off one man if he's not armed. Many people (usually men) try to disuade women from doing self-defense courses with arguements like "But that will be useless against a gun." So what, if its useless against a gun, if its useful against other attacks then you have just increased your chance of survival.

There are usually some self-defense classes run in every area from time to time. There are two main drawbacks of these classes. Firstly there is no or little regulation about who can run them. Secondly, whilst you might learn some useful tips from a short course (there are usually between 6 and 10 classes) you will forget most of it in time. It takes constant practice or at least prolonged training for any fighting skill to be of any use. Remember that the average attacker is involved in such confrontations on a regular basis, that means that they have plenty of practice.

Most self-defense instructors are men. Many come from a military background or the police, others are martial arts instructors. All these have one major drawback, the skills they have learnt are designed to be used by young, very physically fit men. As such they are not the best moves to be used by women who may be much smaller than their opponent and are likely to be much less fit than the average soldier or police officer. The tactics the police use are designed to enable an officer to restrain an attacker until help arrives. For the police help is easily obtained on their radio and they usually have a partner close by. For the average citizen being attacked in the street they have no way of calling for help. At the other extreme the army training is usually to kill the attacker, which is not necessarily what you should do in the normal world. Although the instructors will adapt the techniques to suit the situation of a woman being attacked in the street many have problems in truly understanding the different techniques required.

Some self-defense classes are very good, unfortunately most are not. There is little no way of knowing beforehand whether a class will be good or not. If you can find a class run by women then you are probably on a winner. You will undoubtedly learn something useful in any class, the problem is working out which moves would actually work in real life. However, to keep up the skills you have learnt I would suggest that you practise regularly after you have finished the course. At the very least you should go through the moves by yourself at home. Its much better if you can find a friend who you can regularly practise with

Aware is an organization dedicated to women's self-defense, as such it courses and its web page are highly recommended. Aware Courses

Martial Arts

‘Martial Arts’ is usually taken to mean fighting techniques that have originated in the Far East. Actually it simply means the art of fighting, as such, sports such as fencing and boxing can be classed as a martial art. As you are unlikely to be carrying a sword around with you we will not deal with fencing here but we will deal with boxing.

Martial arts have three basic purposes, some incorporate all three whilst some are heavily orientated to one. The first purpose is fighting in a real (not sporting) situation. The second is for sport. The third is an art form. Those that are basically an art form originated in Japan when the ruling classes stopped fighting each other. They needed something else with which to keep themselves fit and alert and as a non-lethal way of establishing oneself in the pecking order in a society which had previously done this through fighting. Those which are basically a sport have derived from either the art form or the pure fighting form mostly since the end of the second world war when fighting styles from the far east were imported to the west and became commercialized. Those which are purely intended for fighting in self-defense or to defend others are few and far between as it takes a certain sort of discipline to spend many years mastering something and rarely be able to put it into practice for the purpose for which it was intended.

Those that are primarily a sport have many inherent drawbacks in a real fight. Unfortunately they often try to convince people that their sport represents true fighting and would be useful as a form of self-defense. None of the sports ever have more than one attacker yet this often happens in a real attack. All of them start with combatants facing each other yet often a real attacker will attack from behind and the victim will have little chance to turn around before the attacker has made their first move. Most sports have combatants of roughly equal weight, this is not exactly compulsory in real life. Any sport that uses weapons has both combatants using the same weapon, this rarely happens in real life. All sports have some limit on which tactics may be used, this does not happen in real life.

It will be necessary to use different tactics depending on the size and build of your opponent. If there is more than one attacker this does not simply make it harder, there are different tactics which should be used such as throwing one attacker to land between you and the other attacker or pushing one onto the knife held by his accomplice. If you are attacked from behind there are many effective tactics that you can use which will not be learnt from a sport. If the attacker has a weapon you will have to use different tactics than if he were unarmed. If you have a weapon you may be able to use tactics that you would not learn from a sport. All sports limit themselves to certain types of tactics, boxing using only punching, and judo using only throws and holds. In real life you want to use whatever move is best for the situation, you do not want to limit yourself in any way to a certain type of move. All sports, of course, ban moves that cause too much damage or are felt to be ungentlemanly such as poking someone in the eye or kicking them in the groin. Essentially they ban the very moves that you want to be using in a real situation.

Those martial arts that are essentially an art have numerous drawbacks. Most restrict themselves to a certain type of tactic and try to perfect that tactic. So, for instance, karate uses punches, chops and kicks but never uses throws or holds. Judo on the other hand uses only throws and holds and never uses punches or kicks. (Both judo and karate are primarily sports but I use them as examples that are more familiar to people.) The attacks they train to defend against are equally stylized. As art forms are not used in competitions however they can use those more nasty (and effective) moves such as a kick to the groin but they do it semi-contact (i.e. only just touching the target). Art forms are about perfecting a style as a form of self-discipline and mental training. Whilst they may have their uses in self-defense that is not what they are designed for and they are not particularly good at it.

Any sport-orientated martial art will improve your reaction speed and keep you fit, they will also teach you some fighting skills. Any art-orientated martial art will teach you some useful tactics but these will be limited in their use in real life and you may have to achieve a large amount of skill before being able to use them properly.

I will rate them with a star rating for more detail you will have to see the book.

Boxing *

Judo *

Kickboxing/ Thai boxing **

Tai Kwon Do **

Karate *** (This varies alot from club to club, some might only rate 2 stars)

Shotokan Karate ****

Aikido *

Jujutsu **** (Numerous schools and styles here but all are pretty good)

Win Chun Kung Fu ****(There are numerous other forms of Kung Fu which vary in their usefulness.)

Ninjutsu ***** (There are several groups which call themselves Nijutsu which aren't. Only those actually affiliated to the Bujinkan rate 5 stars, the others could be good or bad)

Directory of self-defense and martial arts clubs

Fighting Tactics

As well as the physical skills needed to fight there are some more general tactics in actually fighting back.

Most attackers will not expect you to put up any effective form of fight, therefore you will have the element of surprise. This will be your main advantage and you must not give it away. Whatever tactics you might use to talk your attacker out of an attack never give him any warning, in any way, that you are about to fight back. Do not appear confident or threatening. You must wait for him to make his move, he will be less able to respond to your attack if he is trying to attack you. Basically once he is moving it will be harder to him to change the direction of that movement in order to defend himself. You should however make your first strike before he actually hits you or grabs hold of you. As he is likely to be stronger than you, once he hits you or gets a firm hold on you it will be much harder to fight back.

You should try to estimate what strengths and weaknesses he has. If he is large and muscular he may be stronger than you and be able to use his body weight to his advantage but he is unlikely to be able to move fast so you should use tactics where you maneuver more. Also with a heavy attacker one of the best targets is the knee, this will already be carrying alot of weight so attacking it will have more effect than with a lighter person. A lighter built attacker will be more agile but will be weaker and more easily maneuvered than a larger one. With a strong attacker you need to attack places which have little muscle such as the groin, neck or face. Using pressure points is also useful if you are trained in pressure points.

If an attacker is on drugs you need to consider how this may affect their abilities to fight and their likely reaction to pain. If an attacker is on drugs which appear to be making their voice slightly slurred, they talk slowly or seem slower in their movements then their reactions will be slower and you need to use fast tactics. You also need to consider that someone on these type of drugs may be more injured if they are thrown or knocked over as they will lack the natural reaction to stop their head hitting the ground. You therefore need to consider the possibility that if you knock them over you could well kill them. The type of drugs that slow people down also usually have some pain killing effects therefore tactics that rely on pain to stun the attacker may not work. People who are on drugs which speed them up will react very fast to anything you do but you can use this to your own advantage to get them to overreact to something as they are likely to focus more on fast and flamboyant movements. You may for instance fling your arms in the air and as they are moving up kick the attacker in the groin.

Do not do what we see in so many movies where the woman kicks the man in the groin then runs off. He groans for a few seconds then catches her up. Once you have made the first attacking move, keep attacking until you are sure he will not get up until you have got safely away. You must not give him chance realize what is happening and start to fight back so you must keep up the momentum of the attack.

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