Every time I teach a women’s self-defense class, inevitably one of the women will leave the class and want to show their boyfriend, husband, brother, father, male friend, etc. what they’ve learned. It is something I discourage women from doing for 3 reasons, which I’ll cover here.

1) You don’t have the element of surprise.The techniques that are taught in a women’s self-defense class, like the one I teach, are designed to make use of the element of surprise. If you tell a guy, “Grab me and I’ll show you how I can defend myself,” they’ll do exactly as you ask, but they’ll be ready to try and counter you because that’s what you asked for. A real attacker is usually looking for an easy victim. If you’re attacked, your goal in self-defense is to make it so you aren’t an easy victim. Mounting any sort of defense in combination with yelling things to make it clear you’re in need of help, is known to disrupt most attacks. Your would-be male attacker friend is just trying to stop you from defending yourself. There are no real negative consequences to his actions here, particularly, because of the next reason I’ll cover.

2) You don’t want to hurt him.In the self-defense class that I teach, I bring in male “attackers” who will grab the women and react appropriately to their strikes when they strike on target, without the women having to hit them with full power. When you try the moves on some male acquaintance though, they won’t react the same way… unless you hit him for real. But of course, you don’t want to actually hurt him, so ultimately, you’ll hold back on your strikes and he’ll keep holding on, then maybe take you down, and conclude at the end, “Well, I guess your self-defense doesn’t work.” And even worse, you might question its effectiveness too, which doesn’t help you at all as it might make you hesitate to fight back if you’re attacked.

3) You never know if you’ll have to use it on that same person.The majority of assaults on women are by a man that you already know. While it’s unlikely that your father, brother or close friend will attack you for real at some later time, there is a little less certainty beyond that. Someone you’ve recently started dating might seem okay, but until you’ve really gotten to know him, you don’t really know. That holds true for male friends that you’re only loosely acquainted with. For this reason, it’s better to keep your knowledge to yourself, so if you ever have to use it, they won’t know what to expect.

For all the above reasons, it’s really better off that you don’t try out the self-defense moves you learn from a course or martial art on men outside the training itself. Unless of course, they do something that warrants it.

Tags: self-defense | women