I spent Saturday morning being slammed repeatedly to the ground.
This was O.K., because I also slammed some people to the ground.
The YMCA in downtown Columbus held a self-defense class taught by Master Instructor Dennis McCown, who began learning shotokan karate almost 50 years ago.
About 10 of us, mostly women, gathered in a small room at the Y. Somehow I had gone 24 years without having ever taken a self-defense class and was trying to decide the likelihood that I would get the stuffing beaten out of me. When I saw McCown take down one of his assistants — a pair of teenage boys who have been taking karate from him for 10 years and were both a lot bigger than me — I decided the odds were pretty good.
“Don’t worry,” my partner said to me, “I’ll be nicer than him,”
To my surprise, McCown opened the class with safety tips that had nothing to do with drop kicks or punches. They were more in line with what my mom always told me: Be aware of your surroundings. Don’t venture out by yourself. Lock your car as soon as you get in it. Don’t get on elevators with guys who give you a bad feeling. Don’t park in the darkest corner of the parking lot.
And, of course, the reason we were all there: Learn and practice self-defense techniques.
“You’re never going to remember these if you don’t practice,” McCown said.
For the next four hours, he and two of his karate students showed us the techniques he wanted us to practice.
The first thing we learned was the vulnerable parts of the body to strike — eyes, neck and groin. They’re hard to defend and they hurt when you hit them, McCown said. And you want the bad guy to hurt. The more you hurt him, McCown said, the more he respects you.
My partner and I first practiced pretending to jab each other in the eyes or hit each other in the throat. It didn’t seem terribly difficult, and I was feeling pretty good about my ability to defend myself.
Then the actual work started.
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From choke holds, to punches, from knives, to guns, there are a lot of ways people can try to kill you.
And as McCown pointed out, after only four hours of practice, you’re not going to be able to defend yourself adequately against all of them. That’s why you have to practice. Start out doing the moves slowly, the instructors said, and focus on getting them right before you start working on speed. The main thing, McCown said, is to have options if you do end up in a life-or-death situation.
My favorite move we learned might be how to get out of the choke holds. A not-so-fun-fact about violence against women is that strangulation is a common form of domestic abuse, and a lot of women killed by intimate partners are strangled. Thankfully, Mississippi has a law making strangulation a felony whether the victim was even injured. It’s that dangerous and that common.
But Mississippi also has tough laws against homicide, burglary and shooting into occupied dwellings, and we all know how well those work. So it’s good to know what to do when someone wraps their hands around your throat and tries to cut off your air supply.
Don’t try to pry their hands apart, McCown said. Instead, he showed us how to push the attackers’ arms toward each other and then hit them in the throat. The hit to the throat has to be a sharp, hard jab with your fingers together.
Hopefully they’ll be so thrown off, they’ll release you, giving you time to step into them, put your foot behind theirs and sweep them to the ground.
Once they’re on the ground, you run, of course, though you can kick them in the side if you’re feeling bold.
My partner and I threw each other to the ground a few times, though it took us several tries to get all three moves in succession.
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Another useful one is how to handle a gunman.
“What do you do when someone points a gun to your head and says, ‘Give me your wallet’?” McCown asked us.
“Give him your wallet,” we all chorused.
“Exactly!”
Still, if the wallet isn’t enough for the ruffian, there are options. McCown showed us how to hold our hands up next to our heads, as if in surrender. This makes the bad guy slightly more relaxed because he knows you’re not armed.
Then you jerk out of the way, while simultaneously grabbing the gun with one hand while knocking his wrist away with the other. And really be sure you get out of the way, McCown said, because if that gun goes off and your head is in the way, it really doesn’t matter if the bad guy drops the gun or not.
When you actually get hold of the gun, hold it close to your body and back away. Once you’re a fair distance away, then you can hold the gun away from you, keeping it pointed at your would-be attacker.
At this point I assume, unless you’re in a “Die Hard” movie, the guy will run for it. McCown mentioned that once or twice. Many criminals are just looking for easy prey. If you make their attacks difficult, they might leave you alone.
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“Did you have fun?” McCown asked me at the end of the class.
“Yeah,” I said. “It was fun. Except for getting thrown to the floor.”
And it was fun, I reflected, but also useful. Even if I don’t really ever see myself in a situation of having to disarm a gunman, I can still surprise my brother by taking his water pistol next summer. And if the worst does happen, then it’s like McCown said — I now have options.
HOW TO GO
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