Teenage Travelsafe Part 1 (diary entry)

17.08.15 I taught the first of a two-part intensive course on self-protection for teenagers. This was an informal version of my “When Parents Aren’t Around”. In this instance I was booked to teach teenage to teach a group of teenage friends, by their parents, basic self-protection prior to two members of the group leaving to travel abroad on their own. Information on the soft skills being taught can be found in the closed door seminar I delivered towards the end of last year, which was aimed at a group of teenage girls. Changes I made in the content to tailor it to this particular included information on international travel, such as planning in advance, gathering information on local crime figures and understanding certain cultural differences. We also discussed relevant common tourist scams and the bystander effect. After covering the basics on attitude, body language, offender profiling, victim selection, situational awareness, understanding fear and special awareness we moved onto the hard-skills. We trained the fence concept, leading up to pre-emptive striking (we used both live target familiarization and full-contact striking on focus mitts) and accessing exit points. The lesson finished with a simple transitional posture exercise, teaching the attendees to get back to their feet efficiently from various different positions.