Demonstrations on violent attacks on women are sterilized and do not represent the realities of what actually happens. Instructors are flat out lying to the person you love most and giving them a false sense of confidence that may lead to an unfavorable outcome. Why is this happening?? Why are there women’s courses that make training more comfortable for them?? Can we stop this please?!

Ryan and Amber do a really good job of pointing out the deep flaws inherent in so many of the unarmed “self-defense training” classes I keep seeing aimed towards women.

The “attackers” in these classes invariably act slowly and deliberately and given first-time students a very unrealistic image of what a violent attack from a predator really looks like. Poorly trained after being presented with an unrealistic model of what a violent encounter will look like, it is highly probable that the person who goes through this kind of unrealistic training is going to be able to react successfully to a real attack where the aggressor is going full speed, using his or her full power, and is using multiple strikes from multiple angles to overwhelm and dominate the targeted victim.

Yes, I do understand just as well as Ryan and Amber do that there needs to be some slower-speed drills and examples shown for new self-defense to be able to understand the physical nature of an attack. The problem is that the vast majority of short-term seminars is that they offer only this kind of scenario in classes. The pace never picks up, and students never get a realistic look at the way a real violent attack happens, much less how to counter it effectively. This leaves students potentially feeling they are equipped to deal with a legitimate attack, when they are nowhere close to being ready to deal with a hyper-violent criminal predator looking to overwhelm the targeted victim with speed, power, and multiple punches and kicks.

If we really care about the ladies in our lives, we’re doing them a great disservice by sending them to this seminars and workshops where that are only setting them up to fail.