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So admittedly, my wife and I are MASSIVE fans of the UFC and Mixed Martial Arts. Fight Night at our house is an EVENT! Its like having a Super Bowl every 3 to 4 weeks, year round. But this is not a post to talk about the recent epic fight between Robby Lawler and Carlos Condit. (Although if there are other MMA fans here, we should totally start a separate thread to geek out about it!!)
People that do not follow it may not know who the Gracie Family is. The Gracie’s are marital arts royalty that essentially invented Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
There are Gracie Training Centers all over the country and yes, they train elite martial artists and competitive fighters in high-end hand-to-hand combat.
BUT… the current generation of Gracie’s, most notably Rener (pronounced Henner) and his brother Ryron (pronounced Hir’ron), are committed to spreading the technique of jiu-jitsu in three distinct areas (all worthy of admiration from this site).
1. Bullyproof — Certified Gracie Instructors travel around the country to hold camps and seminars (often free of charge) for young kids to teach them the confidence and techniques on how to stand up for themselves and what to do if they are bullied or see someone being bullied.
Here is a great video about a young man that was shattered by a bullying incident and spent a week at the Gracie Academy with Rener and Ryron. Very touching story
2. Gracie Survival Tactics — This is a class for law enforcement officers to teach them the confidence and techniques to handle a hand-to-hand encounter with violent and/or unwilling individuals properly. Rener makes a strong case that officers that do not know how to handle simple techniques of protecting themselves or immobilizing a person (we’re not talking about some kind of 1-on-1 Cop vs Robber throwdown fight in the street) will instead fall back too quickly and unnecessarily to things like tasers and guns and over-escalate situations that should be non-threatening into potentially lethal encounters.
You can watch this video to hear him comment and critique what goes wrong in a situation where cops were called to a McDonalds because of a clearly intoxicated/altered state person wandering around, being loud and causing a scene and the lack of ability for any of the officers to handle this was appallingly apparent:
These are both worth separate diaries on their own, but this diary is about the third topic that Rener focuses on with his wife Eve:
Women Empowered
3. Women Empowered — Where women are taught survival techniques (not competitive combat skills) on how to handle real-world situations. And, as they point out many times, proper empowerment MUST be more then learning how to fend off a rapist that jumps out of the bushes. Its about setting and enforcing boundaries. Its about situational awareness and gauging intent. And its about having the confidence to know you can scale up your response to meet any threat in any situation.
Most “self-defense” classes teach women the same techniques: Smash your palm into the attackers face, kick them in the testicles, or claw at their face and use your thumbs to gouge out their eyes. Oh, and NEVER EVER let them get you down on the ground. (which a--almost always happens when a large man jumps on/grabs a smaller women and b--is actually sometimes exactly what you want to do if they are trying to drag you off to an isolated location or vehicle)
These are all great techniques for that situation where you are on a jogging path and some psychopath jumps out in a ski-mask. By all means: eye gouge away. But, as Eve notes, 78% of all sexual attacks are perpetrated by someone the woman knows. If a woman, fresh out of “self-defense” class with a rape whistle in her pocket is at a work Christmas party and a drunk co-worker is getting handsy and and pawing at her, or grabbing her wrist and laughing and pulling her into a side office to “show her something” is she really going to be comfortable gouging out his eyes? Breaking his nose with a violent face strike right there next to the egg nog punch bowl? Probably not… so what does she do? Usually: nothing. And just like that, all her training is rendered useless and she is completely disarmed.
Here is a video where Rener and Eve review and discuss the real-world event when a women was grabbed off the street in Philadelphia:
(Here is another one with Rener and Eve that focuses specifically on the hair-grab thing using the case where a woman was dragged off by the hair and raped.)
Anyway, the Gracie Academies EVERYWHERE are holding free seminars on January 23rd for women of any age, physique, strength, size, skill level, etc can come in and learn and practice with only other women. Real world situations, real-person responses. What to do if you are grabbed from behind, if they grab your hair, if they pin you against the wall, if they are trying to drag/pull you to a car, etc.
I first thought of this when I saw BBB’s diary the other day about his daughter carrying a taser on campus. If you are a woman, you should think about attending this. You really should. So should your daughter, sister, niece, wife, mother, neighbor and co-worker.
My respect for the Gracie Academy knows almost no limit. I am a huge fan. As a combat sports fan, I love watching their trained athletes compete in the Octagon (Go Brian Ortega!!) but as a simple human being living in an inherently violent, oft-times cruel, world, I am routinely BLOWN AWAY by the work they do with kids, women and law enforcement to try and make it better.
Watch some of those videos. They are more than impressive.
And seriously… the training centers are all over the place and the class is free, just 2-hours long and on a Saturday.
It’s worth your time. It’s worth your daughter’s time.
As women we have the right to control our bodies and our boundaries. Women Empowered has given me the tools to do just that. --Eve Gracie