The answer to the question above is simple: ‘everyone’! Yes, every single person, regardless of age, can benefit from self defense classes. If you want to feel safer on the streets at night and live life confident that you can handle a difficult situation brought about by a thug, self defense classes are for you. Choosing the right class for you is a different matter entirely as not all self defense courses are created equal. Some are run by professionals with decades of experience but there are some charlatans out there eager to take your money and offer nothing but clichéd nonsense in return.
Contrary to what you may believe, not all self defense classes focus on martial arts. In fact, many of these classes bear no resemblance to a Karate or Jujitsu school at all. One criticism of martial arts schools is that they promote set patterns which leaves students vulnerable to real-life attacks. At Sandoval Freestyle Karate, we aim to teach our students a form of Karate that will protect them in the event of being attacked.
What Should a Good Self Defense Class Should Teach Me?
First of all, you should not require an advanced level of fitness to take part in such a class. Most assaults last little more than 30 seconds, so the goal should be to take the sting out of an attack and escape from the breathless attacker. As such, you don’t need to be involved in sprinting drills or anything of the kind. A good self defense class will gradually incorporate fitness drills into the program, so that practitioners will feel fitter in a couple of months.
An important part of self defense is awareness of your surroundings. The best way to defend yourself is to avoid the attack altogether! You need to learn how to identify a potentially dangerous situation and use common sense to keep you out of harm’s way. For example, sit in the back seat of a taxi when travelling alone as you have two escape doors instead of the one available to you as a front seat passenger.
Self defense classes should also give you the confidence to be assertive in a threatening situation. Many women ‘freeze’ when faced with an attacker. A good self defense class will not only teach you how to fight back, it will also give you the confidence to shout and make enough noise to make the attacker nervous and even back down.
What Should I be Avoiding?
Self defense classes promising ‘secret knowledge’ or ‘black ops tactics’ are more often than not a scam. If you are a novice, it makes no sense to try and learn knife-blocks when you don’t even know how to assume a self defense stance! Believe it or not, there are even courses that claim to help you disarm an attacker with a gun! Many tragic incidents have occurred because of this, as students are encouraged to make foolish mistakes when in a dangerous situation.
Time to Take Action
To clarify, if you haven’t already joined a self defense class, now is the time to change that. We all have the right to defend ourselves so why give thugs the upper hand when we can take control?