Teaching women to defend themselves
The workshop was simultaneously presented to more than 30 venues across South Africa and Namibia.
In proud partnership with the SA Women Fight Back group, the Elite Defence Academy (EDA) International offered a self defence workshop exclusively for women recently.
This is an initiative that trains women over 16 and above about self-defence. Prevention is better than cure, and with minimum necessary force, the objective is to give women an extra few minutes and options to get out of harm’s way, and get away.
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“Krav Maga is an Israeli self-defence form. It is as practical self-defence as you can get. It is aggressive, and its main goal is to preserve life; to keep your friends and family safe and to get home safely,” said the instructor, Robin Paynter.
More than 50 women around Benoni, who were eager to learn about defending themselves, attended the workshop.
The aim of the workshop is to empower woman, not to promote violence.
“We are interested in raising awareness for women that there are options, and a variety of ways to protect themselves. It is such an important issue affecting many lives. Misogyny is unfortunately on the increase,”said Desiree Seaton, a learner and participant in the programme.
Elite Defence Academy and SA Women Fight Back have put in a lot of time and effort to ensure a safe environment for women to learn, and to have a day when they can let out the warrior women inside.
Most of the techniques are easy and can be assimilated in just under five minutes because they use the muscle memory already in place in the average person, and build off that foundation to create an instinctive response.
Techniques fort he workshop will include:
• Body postures and stern warnings.
• You do not need to be strong, the instructors will show participants how to use their entire body force, or the assailants body weight and movement against them.
• Identify vital target areas in the attacker, such as the eyes and throat.
• Confuse the attacker and catch them off-guard – bypass and overload the attackers nervous system creating a mental laps making them unable to respond effectively, if at all
With the workshop, the women learnt practical self-defence within the first few minutes. The beginner syllabus is the 24 defences against the 24 common attacks in South Africa.
