Teaching my daughter to fight back
The mantra of the women’s self defence group Eitan Krav Maga is ‘attack the attacker’. So what happened when Sarah Rodrigues took her daughter to a class?
IWhen someone grabs you… you must, in an instant, go from victim to counter attacker
am in a park with my 14-year-old daughter, listening to Victoria Kitson, head instructor at Eitan Krav Maga, a south London-based member of the European Federation of Krav Maga. Flanked by two male instructors – here to be our “attackers” in a women’s self-defence training session – Victoria is a bristling powerhouse of energy. She may only be a few inches over 5ft, but it’s clear that you wouldn’t want to mess with her. My daughter Phoenix and I are hoping to come away with some of that fearlessness.
If, over the course of my life, I’ve been aware of the fact that being a female sometimes feels unsafe, then it’s been impossible to ignore in the aftermath of Sarah Everard’s disappearance and murder. I have fought, screamed and run from the two really close calls I’ve experienced; Lord forbid that anything should ever happen to my daughter, but I want her to feel that she can defend herself if needed.
Yet, as Victoria points out, we don’t need to descend into paranoia. “Selfdefence starts with being alert, being mindful,” she says. “It’s like the safety briefing on an aeroplane; just being aware of what the risks are and where the exits are.”
The twin traps that people fall into when threatened, she says, are denial and deliberation. “There’s a tendency, on the one hand, to want to think ‘it’s not happening, if I ignore it, it will go away’, and, on the other, to think ‘what should I do? Should I run? Should I get my phone out? What should I do?’, but there’s no time for that. You need to make the decision – now, today – about what you will do in that situation.”
Engagement, after awareness and possible escape, is the last resort, she assures us – but, equally, it’s important that those who perceive the threat of harm are aware that in England and Wales they are entitled, by law, to strike first, as long as they believe in good faith that the assailant is able and that harm is imminent. Having this knowledge firmly implanted in your head helps to minimise the potential delay caused by denial and deliberation – it helps you, says Victoria, to go from “0 to 100” in an instant. “An attacker expects you to be frightened,” she says. “You need to be able to turn that dynamic around in a heartbeat – to flip the interaction on its head. In Krav Maga this is known as ‘attacking the attacker’.”
Our session starts with a warm-up which, while not gaspingly strenuous, gets the pulse pumping and causes me to question whether Krav Maga is suitable for those whose fitness is not on a par with that of the Israeli defence forces. It is, after all, this army for whom the techniques – drawn from a number of other combative arts, including aikido and boxing – were developed.
Yet, as we learn over the course of our session, one’s psyche (that state of confidence, readiness and awareness) and those bodily weapons (elbows, knees and shins, for example), are incredibly powerful, regardless of size, fitness or age. In addition – and unlike many other martial arts such as karate – the basic skills of Krav Maga can be acquired relatively quickly.
Another thing we learn – despite both regarding ourselves as fairly feisty, strong women – is that we, and probably many others like us, really have been conditioned to cause no offence, and to feel terrible when we do. Despite the fact that we are wearing elasticated contraptions with cricket-style boxes to protect our nethers, as well as shin pads (as are our “attackers”), and the fact that there’s a mat on the grass to break falls, my daughter and I spew apologies at every opportunity. “Sorry, that was rubbish, sorry.” “Sorry, what should I do? OK sorry, let me try again.” “Sorry! Oh my god, sorry, that was too hard wasn’t it? SORRY!”
We learn that we need to let all of that go. Although Krav Maga teaches that counterattack is the last resort, it also teaches that it needs to be instant – and, that when it takes place, it must occur almost simultaneously with defence. As we block a “haymaker” – a punch or slap that comes in from the side – we jerk the heel of our opposite hand up under the chin of our attacker to snap their neck back. Meanwhile, we stabilise our stance by separating our feet; the other leg bends at the knee and travels swiftly to the attacker’s groin. It’s clunky to write; astonishingly swift to execute.
As uncomfortable as it is to acknowledge, let alone role play, our training includes “classic” rape scenarios, in which we are lying face up, with an attacker kneeling between our legs. There is a mother over yonder, circling around the trees as she strings up bunting and a piñata for her child’s birthday party. I should be focusing on my “attacker” and the threat of harm, but I keep looking over at her, her frequent watch-glances, her obvious discomfort: will we be gone before the party starts?
As a mother who’s experienced those pre-party nerves, I want to apologise to her. Yet as a woman, part of me also wants to tell her to take note of the fact that we can use the strength of our legs and hips, press our thumb joints and thighs hard against our assailant’s carotid arteries, and that they will lose consciousness within seconds. That even while our prostrate and seemingly overwhelmed bodies want to – and can’t – cringe away from an attacker, we can grab their ankles and buck our hips up, and thus throw and disable them. That when someone grabs you in a front-on stranglehold, your attempts to claw their wrists and forearms away from your neck will only tighten their grip – and that the most direct escape from front bear hugs designed to lift and kidnap you, is to gouge into their eyes and force their head back instead. That you must, in an instant, go from victim to counter-attacker. That you must, in a second, regard your body not as something that has contributed to this situation, but as something that gives you everything you need to remove yourself from it safely.
It is this, in particular, that we both find incredibly empowering over the course of the session. As females, we have both – and it breaks my heart to say both – known how it feels to feel ashamed of our bodies, whether because they have attracted unwanted “admiration” or horrible derision. Surely my daughter is too young for such experiences and yet I know that she has already encountered them, and that I had already encountered them by her age. To be reminded that these bodies serve a purpose far more than aesthetic – that they are strong, that they are able, that they are combatready – is a powerful and emboldening flip from anxieties around size, skirt length and heel height.
And it is our persons, as Victoria reminds us, that are precious. “If somebody wants your possessions? Hand them over,” she says. “Calm, no argument. Have them. They are nothing; they are replaceable. If they want you – to harm you, to move you from where you are – they cannot have you. You are everything; you are not replaceable.”
My daughter, despite her close-quarters embarrassment at the beginning of the session, is buzzing by the time we leave the park. Her arm is around my waist; mine around her shoulders.
“You are everything,” I tell her, as I have told her so many times since her birth. “You are not replaceable.”
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