Self defence for women

KAPAP is perfect for young ladies and older women, and fellas of course, but this isn’t about them. This is about females learning self defence so they can feel confident to look after themselves as much as possible.

Why is KAPAP great for self defence?

KAPAP is an easy to learn system that is used by the military and police worldwide for a reason. It’s quick to pick up and uses logical principles, you “get it” and then, with practise, you become able to adapt it to suit the situation (and opponent).


Martial arts medley

KAPAP uses elements of many martial arts to achieve the aim of self protection, and even makes more sense than just training one martial art as some are ground based, some are not. Some are with weapons, others not. KAPAP is self defence with lots of faces.

KAPAP uses principles and techniques rather than set moves, such as those in karate and Krav Maga. The prinicples work on physical properties which are easy to learn but you do have to train regularly, and you do have to turn up every week. Not for any reason other than to drill, to keep on doing the exercises until they become second nature, that’s the key.

Unpleasant situations don’t always come with breathing space, with time to think and plan out your move, it’s fast, it can come out of nowhere, so the more training you do the faster your body will react, without waiting for your brain to sign off the required action first.


No quick fix, but…

You can learn martial arts and self defence for a couple of weeks, and don’t get me wrong, you will gain something from it.

For some, and this might sound silly, but it finally dawned that women can just say ‘no’, don’t have to put up with begin spoken to or treated in a way which was wrong. It changes you, if you face your attacker with confidence and a really loud screaming “No!” in their face, that really might be all you need.

LADIES BE ASSERTIVE!

But the real magic from training KAPAP comes from practising until the self defence becomes instinctive and automatic.

The problem with ladies only self defence is if you avoid training with men. You will become a dab hand at just defending yourself against other women

Why go to a female only self defence class? You might get a female opponent out of the class – even more likely though, you will need to defend yourself from a male attacker.

Even men and women of the same physical size, same height and weight. The woman will be 11% weaker, it is better to train with men, get used to the physical contact with males bigger than you, stronger and heavier. Train with the biggest bloke in the room and you will being doing yourself a favour.

That said, if you want to train self defence but somehow you haven’t made it to a class, then go to a ladies night. The prospect of training with other women can sometimes be less intimidating than attending a mixed class.

So don’t even think about it, find out where and when, get some comfy clothes and just turn up. It took me a long time to get around to it and I now know that you can’t think about it as you end up making it all more worrying in your head beforehand, actually it’s not just about self defence, overthinking has stopped me from experiencing a lot of very enjoyable things, so don’t think about it, just do yourself a favour and get down to a self defence class, you might even have a laugh.