The other day, when I saw this press release announcing an upcoming women's self-defense training course in St. Louis, I was pleased. Self-defense is a valuable--indeed, literally life-saving--skill.
St. Louis Self Defense & Fitness is offering a 3-Day Women's CKM Self Defense course on May 29-31 in St. Louis, MO. This course will teach women how to defend themselves in a variety of situations, including, but not limited to, knife attacks, gun attacks, and sexual assault attempts.
This seminar was developed, unfortunately, out of necessity. In today's world, it is a fact of life that an ever-increasing percentage of the population will be attacked at least once within their lifespan. Attackers can be friends, enemies, family members, co-workers, or strangers. Having the tools one needs in order to defend one's self if key. Women's CKM was developed just for this reason.
I quickly realized, though, that the training being offered is apparently exclusively oriented toward unarmed self-defense. A look at the St. Louis Self Defense and Fitness website reveals that what is taught there is a system called "Commando Krav Maga."
Commando Krav Maga is considered by many experts as the most devastating Israeli fighting system. In CKM, you’ll learn to defeat any attackers, including attackers armed with knives, guns, bottles, baseball bats, etc. In addition, you’ll learn how to control or debilitate your opponent immediately irrespective of size, training background or experience level. Most importantly, you’ll see immediate results with CKM’s easy to learn reality based training methodology. The system is based on crucial and straightforward moves that can save your life! CKM is a complete system, covering all aspects of real hand-to-hand combat and weapons training. The effectiveness of the techniques has been proven time and time again, and they are taught to the most elite commando units and SWAT forces in Israel and around the world. Equally important to the physical and technical benefits, you’ll also be training your psyche to confidently handle any of life’s innumerable challenges.
I am not trying to disparage either St. Louis Self Defense and Fitness, or the Commando Krav Maga fighting style--I have far too little knowledge of either to do so with any authority, and being paraplegic and confined to a wheelchair, have little incentive to attempt to gain much of an education about unarmed combat. I also do not wish to give the impression that I believe unarmed fighting skills to be without value--I have no doubt that such skills can, and indeed should, form an important part of one's self-defense toolkit.
Still, I cannot help but harbor some skepticism about a system that claims to teach students how "to defeat any attackers, including attackers armed with knives, guns, bottles, baseball bats, etc.," and promises to teach how to "control or debilitate your opponent immediately irrespective of size, training background or experience level." How, for example, would that work when the "opponent" (who would be, in a situation for which self-defense skills are intended, a would-be rapist and/or killer) is larger and stronger, and who himself has a "training background [and] experience level" that includes extensive training in that very system--let alone the possibility that he's armed, or is not alone?
Keep in mind also that the above-mentioned press release refers to a 3-day training course. I am not saying that valuable--indeed, potentially life-saving--skills cannot be learned in such a timeframe, but I cannot help but think that it borders on irresponsible to give the impression that anyone can be taught how to prevail, unarmed, against larger, stronger, more experienced fighters--who have weapons--in three days.
An instructive--and tragic--illustration of my point can be found in the senseless murder of Meredith Emerson:
Gary Michael Hilton acknowledged that the petite woman nearly overpowered him when he first accosted her. As they struggled near the Appalachian Trail, Meredith Emerson disarmed her attacker of a knife and baton.
Hilton eventually subdued Emerson, kidnapped her and later killed her. She did not make it easy for him, according to interviews Hilton gave to investigators that were obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Ms. Emerson was young, fit, courageous, and schooled in unarmed combat.
Without pause, Emerson fought back. "The bayonet is probably still up there," Hilton told Bridges. "I lost control, and ... she fought. And as I read in the paper, she's a martial artist." Emerson, who held a green belt and a blue belt in two different martial arts, grabbed the blade. He countered with a baton. She grabbed it, too. They stepped off the trail and fell down a slope, leaving the weapons behind. Eventually, though, he simply out-punched and outlasted her, leaving her with two black eyes, possibly a broken nose--and zip-tied wrists. Another, earlier article describes her attacker (and eventual killer):
Authorities are looking for 60-year-old Gary Michael Hilton as a person of interest in the disappearance of Meredith Emerson.
[ . . . ]
Hilton was described as a silver-haired white man weighing about 160 pounds in a Thursday afternoon news conference. Witnesses said Hilton stands about 5 feet, 10 inches tall with bad or no teeth in his mouth.
Ms. Emerson was tough as nails, a skilled fighter ("120 pounds of pure tough," as described by her self-defense instructor--who, by the way, acknowledges the fact that martial arts skills constitute but one facet of a complete self-defense preparedness program), gutsy to a degree beyond my ability to even fathom, much less hope to emulate--and she was still subdued, raped, and eventually brutally killed (bludgeoned to death with a tire iron), by a 60-year-old man of less than imposing physical presence, whom she had already disarmed.
Again, I am not trying to discourage women, or anyone else, from seeking instruction in unarmed combat skills, and I do not mean to imply that the course offered by St. Louis Self Defense and Fitness is the wrong place to acquire those skills. My point is that unarmed self-defense skills should be considered an adjunct to armed self-defense training, rather than a substitute.
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Comments
As someone who boxed for 2 years and did a little bit of MMA/MuayThai/BJJ, I can tell you that unarmed self defense should be the absolute last recourse. Also, unless you practice disarming an attacker with a firearm with an Airsoft pistol, you have no concept of how fast you need to be in order to avoid being shot. And that level of speed training requires much more than a 3 day seminar.
Also, as someone who is 6'2" 250lbs, I can tell you that size matters as does conditioning. I have trained with women, and they can't barely hold pads for me should I go 100% (I only go about 55% when I have a female holding pads, because I don't want to hurt them, and even then I tend to move them back with just straight punches to the pads they are holding). Its criminal advice to let women think they can over-power a man without some form of mechanical advantage, their bodies just aren't as durable or capable of physical exertion. Also, it should be noted that a kick to a man's groin isn't registered by the brain for at least 2-3 seconds, and in that time he will get a massive surge of adrenaline and likely be very angry...
/prepares to be flamed by angry feminists
No flaming here, Steve K, I agree 150%. Plus sport martial arts may be good at teaching grappling and even disarming, but deliberately omit permanently incapacitating the attacker. And no matter how much I train in empty hand, I'm still 5'4" with less strength, reach, and leverage than the most likely demographic to be trying to kill or maim me.
My 1911 however has no such limitations.
This weekend Sipsey Street had an article about the US Army unarmed combat system. It was titled by a quote from the man who created it,"The winner of the hand-to-hand fight in combat is the one whose buddy shows up first with a gun." Sounds like the same point you're making.
Excellent article, Kurt! (as usual)
I have a colleague who apparently believes in self-defense to ward off attackers, but does not believe in self-defense with a gun...
It's crazy, some of the mental gymnastics our mind is capable of to rationalize a dislike of firearms.
hecate, that's a great point about your 1911. As I'm sure you know (but for the benefit of other readers, who may not), more than 50 years before the 1911 was [Samuel] Colt's "Equalizer," so nicknamed because of what it did for the weak versus the strong.
"God made men," so the saying goes, "but Sam Colt made them equal." Women too, for that matter, as evidenced by my partially-disabled, elderly grandmother's repulsion of a 35-40 year old, athletic male attacker some 20+ years ago, as well as countless other examples over the years.
Rule of Thumb: Any hand-to-hand course that has you practice in a karate suit, gym shorts, or sweats on a bare gym floor or mat isn't a real-world self-defense school.
OTOH when I first started teaching, the theory was that a rattailed comb was the WMD for women. They CERTAINLY didn't need a gun.
i can tell you that three years of queens-NYC-proven chinese kung fu -- a particular school which i would testify is superior to most american kung fu schools but won't openly endorse -- is not enough training to disarm an opponent, large or small, with a knife or a gun with your bare hands, for any standard of success that does not involve your death. i have no confidence that twice or three times that would be
you will not even be able to grab the open hand of a moderately-experienced fighter, no matter how they learned to fight. you are not going to kick anything out of anything. and if the VCA is carrying one of something, then his friend across the street is carrying two.
forget that it *can* happen. yes it can, and it probably has -- humans have been around for quite some time (no matter how you count it). you know, i heard there was a man that got pregnant, too. and didn't it rain frogs somewhere, once? i also think i have heard a legend about a politician that was completely honest every moment of his life.
i regularly endorse animal macyoung's nononsenseselfdefense.com to my friends and acquaintences to understand the nature of crime and self-defense. it's much cheaper to be armed with the knowledge first. that way you won't spend money on something that won't get you where you want to be.
would be *much better.
ALL hand to hand combat requires that you be close enough to your opponent that any mistake can be lethal. Unless you train rigorously and regularly, no hand to hand combat can beat the little old lady at 10 feet with her gun pointing at the bad guy, ready to fire. Even then, I would bet on the little old lady.
Some thoughts here. I think its fine to teach women unarmed self defense and if my wife were to learn any of these I would want her to learn Crav Maga or Systema. Crav is designed around disarming an attacker and Systema is just plain nasty. I agree with the post however and I think this advertisment propegates a lot of the feminist myths that float around and this class will do little more than make a women FEEL like she has some power and ability. On the flip side far to many gun guys have the mistaken belief that all they need is their 1911 and they can take on anyone. They may be fat tubs of goo that can barely walk to their cars without breaking a sweat but they are gunslinging badasses!All of these things are tools in the box. However the one thing missing from all the "schools" of thought is the WILL TO KILL. These female empowerment classes teach unarmed defense because the idea of using a gun makes them squirm. All the hand to hand and paper target poking training in the world will not do you a damn bit of good unless you have the absolute will to Kill the SOB trying to hurt you. I live near the area where the young lady in the post was killed. I saw the stories on the news and I told my wife at the time "she (the young lady in the story) may have been a fighter but that was it. She needed to be a killer because thats what he was!" Big difference between a fighter and a killer.
Great article, but one thing needs to be mentioned. Unarmed martial arts are wonderful and very useful; however, disarming techniques usually rely on the attacker being inexperienced and over confident. A great many of these techniques are taught with the attacker pointing their gun at the "victim" within a foot or so of distance and gun fully extended away from the body at chest or head level (there are exceptions). Those techniques are much less useful (often useless) when the attacker is skilled in armed combat and uses close quarters and retention techniques. In such cases it pays to be armed as well.
I read your article and I see where you're coming from. I am an instructor of Krav Maga in Ohio. No-where in our teaching do we "promise" you can ward of any attack, from any person in the world. The best instructors of KM in the world will tell you straight forward run, use a weapon if you can, use hand to hand as A LAST RESORT. So if in their promotion of there seminar they gaurenteed success in anyway in a short period of time then they are just trying to sucker people in for money with a false sense of security. At my school we teach hand-to-hand combat. Krav Maga is Israeli for "contact combat" so if you are teaching Krav Maga, you are teaching "The best answers for a terrible situation in which you are stuck without a weapon and HAVE to do hand-to-hand." That does not mean we do not encourage people to get their CCW and pack heat. But lets face it, I don't care what weapon you own, what happens when you get stuck without it? Many places in the US you can't carry..
I'll tell you right now, you listed an article about a woman being attacked and though she used weapons was still overcome. This is absolutely possible, but in the same right, I can present you with several other articles of men and women, half the size of their attackers warding off weapons with hand to hand technique. Not because they wanted to, simply because they had no other option. If you run into someone 10 feet away with a gun, you're best bet is pray to God and run like a bat out of hell, there's no bullet defense. But if that person is within 6 feet, trust me with the right mentality and even a little training you can give yourself a good chance of surviving. Every situation is different, but no system in the world compares to the mental and aggressive training of Krav Maga. In hindsight, LEARN KRAV AND BUY A BIG ASS GUN.. and always follow the three stupid rule.. Don't go stupid places, w/ stupid people to do stupid things!!
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