Here you will find some information about the self defense classes the material on this site is written for.

From 1994 to 2003 I have been teaching self defense for women and girls in Köln, Germany, first only for women, then for girls too.

The Courses

The girls self defense courses were for girls of 10 and above. They were usually hold at schools after the regular classes, sometimes also in youth clubs.

The courses were normally scheduled over a period of 8-12 weeks with one hour teaching a week; sometimes we did them as workshops in a period of two or three days.

Motivation

There are various reasons for girls to attend a self defense course:

• They want to defend themselves against physical attacks. Sometimes they have already experienced physical violence themselves; sometimes they have heard of it or seen others being attacked und want to protect themselves.
• They want to have a good answer at hand if they are teased or offended. They want to protect themselves against sexually offending behaviour.
• Especially the younger girls often attend the classes because their parents wish it, because a friend of them also does the course or because they find "self defense" sounding interestingly.

The Course Aims and their Realization

The training intended to encourage the students

• to behave self-confidently
• to decide if they find the behaviour of somebody else
  towards themselves ok or disturbing
• to put a stop to situations they find irritating or threatening

For this we had discussions, in which the students talked about their experiences and got informations. In role-playings the students developed their own solutions for situations they found irritating. They were doing exercises for the body language and trained the voice.

Also they trained to judge situations and to behave in dangerous situatons in an safe way. In the teaching unit "Katie´s Story" for example a safe behaviour would be to ask early enough for help.

Another part of the lessons was the practising of self defense techniques. The students trained some few, simple techniques that can be used already after a short practice time. The training of the techniques was related to practical situations: before a technique was practised, we talked about the situations it could be used in and about the targets it should be directed to. If the single techniques had been thoroughly trained, we started practising them in combined exercises and role-plays.

For more information see 'Techniques'

The course of the training depended partly on the expectations of the students: if for example a student or some of them told that they were regularly bothered by other teenagers on their way to school, this situation would be the subject of discussions and role-plays. But there were also some "standards" we did in every course: for example the subjects "acting as early as possible", "asking for help", the exercises for body-language and voice as well as the practising of self defense techniques.

Varied Training and "Action"

I have found that the students learn best if the training is varied and - especially in classes with younger girls - comes along with a lot of physical action. At the beginning of a lesson we usually did a short game, for example a ball game or catching. Most of the lessons had one part in which a discussion or a quiet activity was done and another part in which there was some kind of "action": this may be a training of self defense techniques, role-plays or noisy exercises for the voice. Also the training was mixed up with short fun games. I found that this way the students get a good distance to the subject again, especially after discussing or playing a frightening situation.

Köln, May 2006