Children's Self-Protection Seminar in Denmark Part 1 (diary entry)

23.02.13

“When Parents Aren’t Around – Children’s Self-Protection Seminar”

I was recently honoured to be invited to teach a weekend seminar and a workshop for Hinnurup Karate in Denmark.

This foundation seminar introduces children to the concept of self-protection. As the name indicates, it addresses the key motivation for a child to learn self-protection, lack of parental supervision. A child needs to learn how to take control of a situation. We cover all the soft skills and underpin all information with CCMA’s five tenets of Respect, Awareness, Courage, Discipline and Open Mind.

Respect covers attitude. Without a sense of self-respect, an individual will not feel they are worth defending and, furthermore, won’t respect the training. Respecting others stops a person getting into trouble too. We addressed the difference between a self-defence fight and an alpha male/female “match” fight. This is covered using the Predator versus Prey template (Strategy One versus Strategy Two).

The basis for this starts with the game of tag/tig. Here students warm-up their bodies and responses learning about evasion and general movement; learning to use their size to their advantage. A larger person, the typical physical bully, is likely to be faster and stronger. However, the more dimunitive person can have the advantage of being more agile. This game is developed into several other types of activity that help mimic scenarios where children are being stalked by other people – human predators.

Awareness covers the various stages of being switched on. The Jeff Cooper Colour Code is a good guide for illustrating these stages. It needs adaption and certain aspects should be elaborated on, as my coach Mo Teague does with his people, places, times and situations, but the colours help students to see the reason why they need to be ready and how being ready does not mean being paranoid. Again, the Predator verus Prey exercise is great for developing awareness in a practical exercise.  We also looked at cognitive blindness by use of a video test, which is something else attention training should address.

Courage teaches children to face their fears. When a self-defence situation occurs, a child needs an understanding of what fear means and how to handle it. Married with respect, courage develops a strong will for a student to stay strong when needed. It brings us to the fence, but prior to that it is important that children deal with verbal aggression. Bullying tactics are often non-physical, but can lead to being physical when the bully’s victim or prey responds defensively and gives the bully his excuse to fight. My thanks go to my friend and anti-bullying expert, Robert Higgs, for his excellent advice on handling insults and character assassination. There are four non-physical options to receiving insults. You can fire back with your own negative responses, which often plays into the bully’s hands. If you have a knack for it you can use humour to win your audience over or even difuse the situation. You can just take the insults and probably feel bad about it internally as well as not do much to deter your abuser. Finally you can give back positive responses about yourself. This latter response means the the abuser has little to cling onto and it stops you from feeling aggression or depression.   

With the other options discussed and addressed, we looked into fight management. This is the pre-emptive strike. If a fence is being done correctly in this context the defender will never strike unlawfully. He only strikes when he feels he is being physically threatened and this is determined by having the hand he is using as a barrier breached. However, when does strike it must be instantaneous and without hestitation. Time is of the essence for a successful pre-emptive strike. We then went through basic fence drills. This led onto instinctive combinations, allowing the target to dictate the weapons and all drills ended with students running to exit points.

Discipline addresses the importance of learning. Here we pushed to students to retain their basic training under pressure and from different postures. We covered asymmetrical ground fighting and striking from kneeling and seated positions. We then looked at multiple attacker situations and also did some class appraisal of drills to look for improvements.

Open Mind began incorporating other aspects of training, such as anti-grappling tactics. We covered biting and eye gouges from different positions moving us into symmetrical ground fighting. We looked at bridging from under the mounted position and escapes using the guard

The seminar was finished with a “Code White Test”. This is a reaction test, where students close their eyes and respond to stimuli. Each stimulus presents a different situation, where they must make an instant response. Sometimes it is just a noise or an individual only using verbal attacks. Another time it could be a target breaching their fence and sometimes a grab. All fight responses were completed with tactical runs to the exit points.

The seminar was finished with a discussion on post-fight actions. This included getting to a safe place, maintaining awareness, first aid and reporting procedures.

My experience teaching this course in Denmark counts among one of the best in my career. I was very impressed with Jan Drackman’s instructors and students. They were all a credit to him. I love the Danish attitude towards teaching children. The instructors are keen and have a close relationship with their pupils. This makes delivering the material very rewarding. I had very good responses from all that attended and I would find out the next day how well this information had been retained.

Recommended CCMA Articles:

Reality Training for Children Part 1: Why?

Reality Training for Children Part 2: What?

Reality Training for Children Part 3: How?