Self Defense for Women

Series Summary

Self defense classes have become flooded with Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) moves in recent years. MMA has gained in popularity since the first Ultimate Fighting Championship won by Royce Gracie. It is so popular it will soon become an Olympic Event and was actually set to be included in the 2004 games but lost its place at the last minute. MMA fighters have historically trained in a specific martial art such as Muay Thai Boxing or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu before combining the techniques; however, recently students have begun to train specifically for MMA with other students and a variety of trainers. MMA is great for practical fighting and in self defense situations. A wide range of techniques can be taught to those who want to stay safe, giving them the wisdom of many styles of traditional martial arts. In this free self defense video series, martial arts instructor Darryl Johnson teaches you safety tips for urban settings and basic self defense techniques. Darryl covers where to park in parking lots for the best security and how to reduce threats by safe habits. He also covers striking, kicking and other responses to threatening situations. You will learn self defense for hotel rooms, underground lots, confined spaces, bathrooms, and carjackings. Darryl also offers tips for dealing with a gun or knife on an attacker. Remember, only strike to save your life; give up valuables without putting your life at risk.

Video Transcript

"In this series, we're going to talk about some things women can do to keep themselves safe while traveling or when they're out and abroad. Today, I'm going to be assisted by Zandra in demonstrating some of the techniques for self protection as well as some of the situational awareness things that need to be done to keep women safe when traveling. We're going to be covering some key attack points today, things like parking lots, and ATM's, as well as how to handle threats that it might be in a hotel situation. Some of the things to take into consideration with the psychology of the male attacker with a female victim. The problem we have with traveling women is they often look a little bit out of place which makes them appear on the radar for the perpetrator who wants to attack them. So we want to do things like keeping our focus steady, avoiding the cell phones, keeping our attention on what's going on, making sure the cars are safe, making sure you're not in a place where danger could be present and being really aware of your surroundings. This is the biggest problem we have with self defense is putting yourself in a situation that would require you to have to defend yourself in the first place. If we can avoid that, then we can really minimize the dangers to any women traveling or even women traveling locally. "