Archive for March, 2010

I remember how often planes were hijacked to Cuba when I was young and thought that would be inconvenient to be diverted to Cuba like that. As I recall most of the time everyone was returned to the United States without harm (or at least that is my memory).

As you know today we are facing not only common criminals but a new breed of thugs called terrorists! Terrorists are not really new as one might argue the Trojan Horse in Homer’s Odyssey was a terrorist act but today men, women, children and pets (is nothing sacred?) strap on bombs to kill the maximum number of innocent people.

In this post I will attempt to show how some flight attendants are trying to counter some of this senseless violence by taking karate and self defense courses to protect passengers! I will also show some videos discussing this trend and the TSA crew member self defense course. I’ll round this out by highlighting how important it is for every day citizens to take part in their own safety so maybe some future attacks can be stopped and show a 9/11 video. Here is the recent story I saw in San Diego.

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I remember back to the days of Batman and Robin, watching the fight scenes and imagining myself fighting! I mean I learned a lot about good guys and bad guys and how to throw a punch (I thought).

After I was running a karate school I had a student that used to do stunt work over at the Big Oak Ranch park. I did not ever get into stunt work but I know it is very technical. The most I’ve done is karate demonstrations with a little choreographed fight scenes.

In this post I’ll explore a bit about how stunts are created and show a couple of stunts. I will also highlight some of the stunt work by Zoe Bell in the Kill Bell series. Here is one fight scene I found on youtube that has some out-takes at the end.

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When I first started taking karate lessons at Tracy’s Karate, I asked Dick Willett how he could teach me to be a good fighter. He said that knowing how to kick and punch was not enough but rather I would learn how to connect the strikes.

What does it take to win a fight? That is what I will examine in this post. Remember the first Ken Norton vs Muhammad Ali? Norton was widely reported to have undergone hypnosis to get the edge in that match. If someone beats you in a match – was he or she just a better fighter? How can you consistently become a fighter that wins opposed to collect a paycheck?

To set the stage lets look at this humorous video of Dolf Lundgren’s.

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I have been asked why I seem to write so much about women’s self-defense. The reason I always give is men seem to have a better fighting chance out of the gate then most women. True some men do get beat up when attacked but often times they still manage to get away while getting a few licks of their own in at the attacker.

Many girls and women have not had the experience of fighting larger boys and men or any fighting at all. Added to this are the fact that women are often victimized by perverts. I have always tried to teach women how to even up the score some if they had to fight their way out of a bad situation.

In this post I’ll talk about how girls and women CAN use effective self defense to their advantage. Understand I am not talking about beating a man in a fair fight (although that is possible for highly trained fighters) but rather doing what it takes to avoid and if unavoidable – use self-defense to get away! I’ll review a girl that kicked an assailant to get away as well as a women that managed to employ an eye gouge and escape.

But what about a women fighting a man and winning? Is it even possible for a lighter man to beat a heavier man? Here is an fight with an extreme weight difference to open this topic.

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I’m sure that you have heard about the rash of girls attacked in Southern California lately. Is there any one answer? Is it safe for girls to go out of the house anymore? Is is fair that girls can be victimized like this?

There are far too many of these questions that people think of to rationalize their view – so the world still makes sense if you will. While I generally think that girls and women that go out running alone with sparse people around, are at higher risk. I still tend to think that the vast majority of these girls and women will not get assaulted.

This is of no value to the girls that do get attacked. First off it is not fair that girls have to take more precautions then boys do. Boys have to be careful too but seem to take more chances then girls do and end up ok more often. This is a feeling I get and have not validated it statistically (based on my own experience.

In this post I will talk a bit and like to stories of the recent victims. I will talk about women’s equal rights and expectation of safety in a free society and how this should be mitigated by reality. I will stress that none of they girls did anything wrong. There are just some bad people in the world. I will talk about how I try to stay safe and the precautions I have to take and how girls and women might adjust their safety plan to decrease their exposure to risk. Here is one video of recent events to start the dialog.

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