Archive for August, 2008

Most kids have grown up reading the Goldilocks and the Three Bears and the Three Pigs but do you remember Little Red Riding Hood? I was trying to remember how it ended and was surprised to learn there are different versions of the tale. The one I remember has a wood cutter saving the grandma and Little Red Riding Hood by chopping the wolf’s head off. In any event, whatever versions of the story you remember, don’t you wonder how this story might have changed if Little Red Riding Hood knew karate? We here at My Self-Defense Blog have scoured the ends of the earth to find an answer to just that question in this youtube video.

I would say that girl is assertive! I kind of like the violence of the attacks on the wolf because he has it coming! Bravo I say.

One a more serious note I would like to talk about some brave girls that decided not to be victims. Today’s girls many times are sent mixed messages such as listen to adults, teachers, and police but I would argue that in today’s enviornment one cannot simply tell their children to trust anyone. I applaud parents and groups that talk about boundaries and behaviours as the deciding factor for children to decide how to react. 

In this post I will give examples of girls fighting back as well as commentary to echo what I believe was good and bad in each case. I found a good video of Noel Gyro giving girls some self-defense tips and I will inject a more modern-day Little Red Riding Hood video of how a martial arts girl might respond to an attack! As you read this post, please think of ways your family can increase their skills and awareness to improve their chances of a good outcome in the event of an attack!

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I heard about this fight for the bronze in Olympic Tae Kwon Do and found lots of articles about this. Apparently this guy hurt his foot and called a timeout.  Angel was ahead 3 to 2 prior to the time out. Check out the video link below but I saw the guy took over the allotted one minute break. The referee disqualified the Cuban (Angel) and awarded the bronze to Arman Chilmanov (from Kazahkstan).

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I have been watching some Olympics off and on during the last week an even caught some fighting! I was watching some wrestling the other morning before work and I saw this guy (Adam Wheeler) from Lancaster, CA win the Bronze metal! That was cool as I understand because it is the only wrestling win for the U.S. so far. I reviewed a match a while back where a girl beat a boy to win the title. I can only guess that the Olympics is every wrestlers dream. This picture of a 3rd century B.C. Pankratiasten fight was taken by Matthias Kabel.

 I will review the fighting sports that are in the Olympics and how they might be applied to self defense situations. I will also touch on why my favorite sport, karate is not in the Olympics. Let me say in this day and age of mixed martial arts, each of these Olympic fighting sports are important components of many great fighters! Even though there are so many rules (which you need in an effort to make things truly fair), the true competitors still excel!

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I found a some stories about kid abduction attempts and how they got away. The common thread (as I suspected) was the girls and boys did not calmly go along with the abductors! They ran, fought back and escaped with their wits! I have long been an advocate for teaching children the basics on how to avoid bad situations and what to do if they have to fight back.  

I will start out with a video from Erin Weed of GirlsFightBack.org. Erin became an advocate for women after her friend was killed. I think this will set the right tone for this serious topic. I will then talk about the news story’s I found and comment on each. I will follow up with some good tips for children in similar situations so you can hopefully give your children some tips! Here is an Fox News interview with Erin Weed.

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Many of you have heard me talk about self defense and some strategies you can use. But what would you do if armed robbers broke in while you were taking a shower? Well one Bronx boy reasoned he could not fight them and dove out the window to go for help here!

Often times when bad stuff happens, you don’t really have a chance to think things out so doing whatever it takes to have the best result is important! In this case there were armed men doing a home invasion robbery (where the crooks take over a family to get whatever they want). If you have multiple family members around, you generally cannot fight armed men easily without someone (maybe your family) getting hurt. In a situation like this – going for help is the smarter thing to do!

I am going to discuss what to do when robbers attempt to invade your home and give a couple of real life stories that happened to my wife! Here is a Las Vegas police force video on some precautionary measures you can take to minimize your risk.

Click here to Watch the Las Vegas Police Home Invasion Video (sorry they are not allowing embedding videos for some reason).

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I guess no matter how I frame this new karate league entitled the, “World Combat League” (WCL) my bias is going to be apparent. So off with the perverbal gloves and here goes. I found some of this type of fighting on VS TV the other day and I had a hard time figuring out what was going on. At first I thought I had found some type of wrestling or such because the two participants were just meeting in the middle of the stage and going at it. The strikes and kicks seemed real enough but there was not anything thrown below the belt. There did not seem to be much tactics other than just slugging!

I looked this up on google and found these were team competitions that were scored on how many kicks and punches landed in a round (rules). You could not clinch, hold, or do any take downs. I did not see any rules against leg kicks, groin shots but I assume those are not legal (groin shots are not normally legal in MMA). Here is a quick clip Chuck Norris’s World Combat League.

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