When martial arts skills are not enough

May 11, 4:13 AMSt. Louis Gun Rights ExaminerKurt Hofmann

Previous Next

11 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

    Oleg Volk photo

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.