WSD classes?

[treelizard]

I was wondering if anybody reading this has actually had good experiences with any of those short, usu. weekend-long, WSD classes.

I took the core program and two of the advanced programs (Defense Against an Armed Rapist and Defense Against Multiple Assailants) at Impact Chicago (descrips here: http://www.impactchicago.org/advanced.html ) It made me feel really empowered, and some of the techniques are good, but unfortunately it made me feel invincible and the false confidence got me in a lot of bad situations I would likely have avoided otherwise. I read about these classes in Gavin DeBecker's book and had heard they were the best. But when I broke down the techniques with some friends of mine, not all of them were as good as the class made us believe.

What they do at Impact is to try to get you in an adrenalized state so that you will have more muscle memory, in order to evoke the same memory next time you are in an adrenalized state. I have been looking at other WSD programs for some friends of mine who don't train (and some who do but are still in the process of developing skill) and this one looks pretty good because it accounts for loss of fine motor skills and is based on muscle memory (all techniques are based on putting your arms in a triangle and pivotting)

http://familydefense.warriorschool.com/fightback.asp

I was wondering how much someone can really learn in a weekend seminar. And if people have had good luck with these courses, which would you recommend?

[Sagacious Lu]

I was wondering how much someone can really learn in a weekend seminar.

I have no experience with these programs but I have a love-hate relationship with seminars in general. Although you get exposed to a lot of material there is never enough time to internalize the new techniques well enough to remember them all never mind rely on them when you're in danger. When I take a seminar I try to focus on one or two of the ideas presented so that I can add them to the things I practice regularly. Otherwise I won't retain the knowledge well enough for it to do me much good.

[treelizard]

I hear you. Seminars are a lot of fun but it's hard to retain the knowledge. Impact on the other hand taught very basic moves--I remember all of them-- and you can buy a videotape of your test. Also keep in mind that a lot of women are not going to practice regularly or arm themselves significantly, but just want to take a weekend or two-weekend course to help learn some basic moves since they don't know anything at all.

[Tom Yum]

I hear you. Seminars are a lot of fun but it's hard to retain the knowledge. Impact on the other hand taught very basic moves--I remember all of them-- and you can buy a videotape of your test. Also keep in mind that a lot of women are not going to practice regularly or arm themselves significantly, but just want to take a weekend or two-weekend course to help learn some basic moves since they don't know anything at all.

Good idea.

Shouldn't you practice these moves regularly so that you have good timing and accuracy?

Maybe there are women's self-defense groups that do this... You probably don't need men in the group, as long as there are targets or pads you can hit and develop your power.

[treelizard]

I wasn't talking about myself--I train regularly and put a lot of time into it. I am just saying a lot of women don't, whether or not they should. I don't know of any regular women's self-defense classes in this country. There may be some in certain areas, but the majority of what I've seen are weekend seminars, or two-weekend seminars, or classes that meet one weekday night for five or six weeks. This is probably because your average soccer mom isn't going to want to devote significant amounts of time to her training. Whether or not she "should" practice regularly is largely irrelevant.

Have you taught women's self-defense courses? Do you know women who have been through these courses and what their experiences were on the street? Have you analyzed techniques taught to see which would work against a resisting opponent? Have you looked at curriculum for different courses and have ones you think are better? What do you think about weekend WSD courses versus nothing? I am much more interested in hearing about your experience with WSD than what women "should" do. Thanks.

Good idea.

Shouldn't you practice these moves regularly so that you have good timing and accuracy?

Maybe there are women's self-defense groups that do this... You probably don't need men in the group, as long as there are targets or pads you can hit and develop your power.

[Tom Yum]

Sorry if I've offended, but my tone wasn't meant to come off that way and seem restricting.

Women can do as they please.

In my senior year in highschool, I taught a basic woman's self defense class lead by a higher ranked belt from the MA school I was attending. We taught the following techniques:

Finger jab - aimed at the eyes.
Palm heel strikes - aimed at the nose, mouth, throat etc.
Low front and side kicks - aimed at the groin, knees, ankle.

Escape from a basic rear bear hug.
Escape from a double arm grab.

Mostly strikes to help release a grip.

Most recently, I taught some basic muay thai to women at a shelter for battered women sponsored by the Salvation Army. I mostly held pads and gave quick demos.

We worked jab, cross, elbow hooks, axe elbows, clinch/knees, push kicks and thai kicks. We then worked on setting up different attacks.

Its nothing fancy, but I tried to help. Alot of these women have come from the street/battered homes and need to know something. I'm not an expert, but hopefully it helps.

[treelizard]

No worries Tom, this is a hard medium. I would of course prefer all women everywhere train for twelve hours a day. (The ones on our side, that is.)

My experience was that while the Impact classes I took offered some useful moves for an encounter (eye jabs, palm heels, elbows, knees, etc.) they also gave me a false sense of confidence and I ended up not being as aware in certain situations as I should have been because I had taken a weekend class and thought I was the bomb. I have also been in situations where the skills we learned would not have worked physically. And I have been in situations where the skills we learned would have gotten me seriously injured--for example a lot of it is based on going to the ground so you can kick. I don't really want to choose to be on the ground in a street confrontation. I also tried out some of the moves we learned on resisting opponents, and they didn't work.

That is really cool that you taught Muay Thai at the battered women's shelter. I think grappling 101 is probably more useful (*for the situations I've been in*) than the WSD classes I have taken. Can't to any eye strikes or palm heels if your hands are pinned behind your back, and the "bucking" techniques I learned from a friend who is a self-defense instructor dont' work against bigger guys I've tried them out on (with resistance.) Neither do any of her wrist releases.

[Tom Yum]

No worries Tom, this is a hard medium. I would of course prefer all women everywhere train for twelve hours a day. (The ones on our side, that is.).

balance is good.

That is really cool that you taught Muay Thai at the battered women's shelter. I think grappling 101 is probably more useful (*for the situations I've been in*) than the WSD classes I have taken. Can't to any eye strikes or palm heels if your hands are pinned behind your back, and the "bucking" techniques I learned from a friend who is a self-defense instructor dont' work against bigger guys I've tried them out on (with resistance.) Neither do any of her wrist releases.

Alot of the wrist releases do work, you have to do them quick as they are based completely on leverage. Being on the ground against a larger and stronger opponent is tough.

Strength and size matter, but so does conditioning, technique, experience and motivation.

Good luck in your training as I'm not a qualified sd instructor, but I like to help when I can.

[treelizard]

The wrist releases really didn't work, and I wasn't doing them wrong. They work in theory and worked on certain people as long as they didn't hold on too hard, but as soon as I asked them to really hold on, they didn't work. It depends on grip strength I think just as much as leverage...

I guess in some ways I'm more interested in hearing what has worked for people IRL than the opinions of a SD instructor, some of them thinks their techniques will work for everyone when they often don't...

If anyone has had positive or negative experiences with practical application of material learned in SD courses, I'ld love to hear about it! My e-mail is yael@dirttime.org if you don't want to post...

[RED BEETLE]

I have learned through teaching a wsd class weekly and doing the 2 day seminar that the women who keep up their training weekly are better prepared and more ready for the street type of attack.

Our wsd class is for the most part old school jiu-jitsu. Check out the gracie web site and instructal tapes.

RB

[Tom Yum]

I have learned through teaching a wsd class weekly and doing the 2 day seminar that the women who keep up their training weekly are better prepared and more ready for the street type of attack.

Agreed. That was the point I was getting at.

[fleetgunz]

In a live situation you tend to only use what you trained your body to do...imedeat action drills have to practicedoverandoveruntil they can be done without any thought. you cant get that in a weekend. as far as training i think you would get the best results from training with one or more men. at first mast three or four techniques and drill drill drill....for the home i sudgest a hand gun...atleast 38 cal/9mm women in my expearience excell at handgun shooting...take a stress shooting coarse too...perfect your skill with any sd devise you plan to carry

[treelizard]

In a live situation you tend to only use what you trained your body to do...imedeat action drills have to practicedoverandoveruntil they can be done without any thought. you cant get that in a weekend. as far as training i think you would get the best results from training with one or more men.

People say that, and yet I remember every single move I ever learned in Impact which I took over four years ago, and have even remembered it with adrenaline coursing through me.

I am totally sold on Fightback, btw... all the techniques you can do two ways, the easy way and the easier way, so they work even if you do them "wrong." And it is all variations on one move, so it's hard to forget it. We trained with one woman and three guys. I kept saying, "can you go really really hard?" and the techniques still worked amazingly well.