Video Link: 1947 “Judo Jymnastics”

One from the vaults:

Just another good reminder of two things:

-there really isn’t much new under the sun when it comes to fighting techniques and “mixed martial arts”

-although there is some camp involved in the demonstrations,  proper leverage against a joint’s weak angles can go a long way- and it’s good to have some contingencies in store if a go-to technique fails.

Coincidentally, the guy looks a lot like one of the assistants from Jack Dempsey’s 1942 combatives manual, “Fight Tough,” and I love her liberal use of the heels…

More Fun with Duct Tape: Proxy Weapons of Opportunity

In the previous post, I mentioned using padded “cell phones” and a padded bottle as simulated weapons of opportunity. These aids are very useful for rehearsing recognition and use of weapon-usable objects in the environment. Making these is pretty simple and very cheap:

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Help at the Push of a Button

This semester I agreed to teach a series of weekly self protection seminars for a women’s resource group on Ferrum College campus. Without going into too much detail here (more will follow in later posts), part of my planning for these included researching the contexts and scenarios in which violence against women tends to happen, as borne out by DOJ victimization and outcome stats and reviewing case reports. The incidence data, and conversations with friends of mine who have been victimized made it woefully clear that the “carry your keys in your hand” strategies, and “on the street/in a dark alley” conceptualizations of violence against women are pretty inadequate by themselves, because they only apply to a limited range of the situations in which a woman may find herself at risk . Since this seminar series is for college-aged women, I structured the program to explore the scenarios and types of assault that are created by social, interpersonal and predatory contexts.