Women’s Self Defense Article 2
In the last article, we covered the different mindset it takes to be able to defend yourself. For this article, I am going to continue on that concept and go into situational awareness. Avoiding a fight by being able to identify a threat before it begins. There are a few things you should pay attention too in you every day life to keep you safe.
We live in a digital age and people are always on their cellphones. Unfortunately, this distraction can cause you to completely ignore warning signs that you may be in danger. You are a much easier target when you are distracted by text messages than when your phone is in your pocket and you are alert to what is going on around you. Limiting your cell phone use to times when you in a place where you know you are safe and comfortable is a good way to eliminate the possibility of many attacks.
One of the worst things you can do is to trap yourself in a secluded area with your attacker without any help. It can be important to know where you closest exits are and try to stay near to them for that reason. If you go through a door into a room to get away, and that room has no outdoor exit, you now have to hope you can fight your way out, as fleeing is no longer an option. Always have at least one way out, more if you can. Also check the path on the way to your exit, are there cords or anything you might trip over? Make sure your path to your exit isn’t going to be the reason you get hurt. You also want to keep a clear line of vision if you can, there could be more than one attacker and you do not want to run into another threat.
Identifying Potential Weapons
Weapons are somewhat an iffy subject. They can give you a great advantage in a threatening situation. However, they can also be taken and used against you. There is the added fear of the law, as many self defense items can be sold that are not legal to carry. You can get into legal trouble easily for carrying a self defense accessory if you are not familiar with the laws in your local area. If you do learn the laws and follow them, plus learn about the weapon and train with it properly, it could be worth carrying around. Another option is to learn to use anything as a weapon. Mops and Brooms can be used in place of a staff, a broken bottle in the place of a knife, and so on. By learning to see a potential weapon in every day items, you can find a self defense accessory laying around just about anywhere. This way you do not have the risk of the legal ramifications for carrying a weapon, but they will not be as conveniently located or easy to use either. I will go over weapons used for personal defense more extensively later, but you want to begin looking around to see what you could use as a weapon if you had too. If you would like to buy yourself Self Defense gear by clicking on the link.
Another thing you will want to pay attention to are the various obstacles. If you can keep a physical barrier between you and your attacker, you might be able to completely eliminate any risk of injury. Walking around cars, tables, chairs, or whatever you can find to keep a certain distance can be very beneficial to you. By hiding behind an object, like a dumpster per say and screaming for help, you can keep circling to keep the attacker away from you. The last obstacle of course is you, you want to physically be able to stop your attacker if you need too. The best way to do this is not to learn a whole lot of self defense techniques, but just a couple at first and practice them endlessly. You want to test what can wrong, what will make it work better, how different sizes effect that technique, etc. Here you can see a simple self defense technique in it’s beginning stages, the technique works but it will need to be gone over a whole lot more before it will work on a resisting attacker
More Coming Soon!
I wanted to get a female perspective on women’s self defense as well. So I reached out to a few different female martial artist and asked them if they would be interested in doing a guest post on the subject. Laura Edmunds had agreed and should be doing a questionnaire on the subject for me soon. You can check her out under the handle KickChick on Instagram or try out here kick challenge.
We are hoping to have her answers on the subject soon.
Thank you for reading!
