Golden Rules...

One thing lacking on many college campuses is a lack of simple, effective, efficient and above all REALISTIC self defense programs for women. Often times someone from a local karate school will come in and show girls neat little tricks like "how to escape from a right handed cross wrist grab, " or my favorite, the "downward stabbing knife attack" defense. The girls practice with each other for an hour and a half or so, and leave with a sense of empowerment and the knowledge that they can now defend themselves from any attacker who happens to cross their path in a dark alley. Sounds good right?
Wrong.
In actuality, the majority of these "self defense" courses are pure b.s. They give you a false sense of security and in doing so, your natural intuition is ignored. For a self defense program to work for you it has to be simple, it has to rely on gross motor skills, it has to target an assailant's vulnerable areas and above all it has to address more than physical technique...but more on that later.

College is a blast. I attended the University of St. Francis in Joliet, IL. I had an absolute ball, made great friends and also did many a stupid thing...but, I'm a guy. As chauvanastic and double satndard-ish as that sounds, it's the truth. Now I know there are many girl-power advocates on any and every campus who will spout some line like, "I have the right to walk down the street naked in the middle of the night and not get attacked!" All I have to say to that is drop the attitude. You rights (or mine, or anyone else's for that matter)don't mean squat as far as self defense is concerned. Period. predators don't give your "rights" as a woman ANY consideration. the sooner you just accept that as undisputed truth without questioning, "well why should that be?" the better off you are. It doesn't matter why it should or shouldn't be, it just IS.

Ideals are for the classroom, not real life. Real life doesn not afford you the luxury of dealing with situations in an idealistic context, that's why it's called "real" life. Just as working your way through an advanced logic proof or discussing the cultural relevance of postmodernism art doesn't pay my mortgage or put food on your table, addressing things in terms of what should be in a utopian society has no, I repeat NO place in dealing with the issue of predatory violence and rape prevention against women. As Tony Blauer, reality self-defense pioneer says, he first principle of self defense is to ACCEPT THE SITUATION AS IT IS. And the situation, in simplest terms is this: women on college campuses are much more vulnerable to attack than men.

I'm not going to post pages of statistics-there are plenty of websites out there to do that. Here is one of them:
http://www.crisisconnectioninc.org/sexualassault/college_campuses_and_rape.htm

Whether or not those figures are as accurate as possible is of no concern-the fact is that it is a very real, and very present problem.

The second golden rule of self protection is AWARENESS.
When one only trains in the context of "unknown assailant in a dark alley" they rule out date rape, acquaintance rape and any other potential bad situation. Let me ask you: Is it better to successfully defend against an attacker in a dark alley or NOT GO IN THE DARK ALLEY IN THE FIRST PLACE? You get my point.
It doesn't have to be a dark alley-it can be a car, a bedroom at a house party, any unknown place you find yourself in where that little voice gives you reason to be even the tiniest bit wary. LISTEN to that voice. Who cares what people will think! Let me give you an example:

Once I was in a bar listening to my friend's band play. They had just finished and the second band went on when a dozen or so bikers walked in. To this day I can't explain why but I got this weird feeling and after a few minutes left and went home. The next day my buddy called me and told me that not 10 minutes later, a huge brawl erupted right in my section, complete with chairs and bottles flying. I heard the voice, listened to it and avoided the situation entirely.

One self defense course that I feel addresses all of the factors above is the White Collar Warrior Self Protection Skills Home Study Course, which sell for a whopping 7 bucks each and are available for instant download at http://www.whitecollarwarrior.com/Products.html
Do yourself a favor, pick it up. I GUARANTEE you will find at least one principle worth ten times the Extra-Value-Meal-cost of these information packed ebooks.

Again, college is an absolute ball-I loved it-but it also has the potential to be very dangerous for the unaware and overly idealistic. Listen to your intuition, stay safe and have a ball!

Til next time,

Bobby