Self-Defense for Small Women

Introduction

A follower of mine suggested I write something about self-defense training for women.

This first sentence feels totally odd! Me? Followers?

Anyway.

In this article, I would like to address what women, especially small women, should, in my considered opinion, take into consideration if they are interested in learning self-defense. I realize this might smack of mansplaining. I can't help being a man and wouldn't if I could. I do have knowledge and experience in such matters, though. Why not share that?

Case in point: There is one guy in the same kickboxing class as me who makes me feel like a little girl. He is about 2m tall, weighs about 120 kg (or more) and has good technique. I cannot take more than two of his kicks even holding a kick shield. If one of those kicks hit me without the benefit of protection, it would send my mortal remains into orbit. And he isn't even trying.

You don't need to be female to be smaller and weaker.

Objective of Self-Defense

If you have to defend yourself, you want to incapacitate the assailant as quickly as possible so you can run away and to safety. There are basically four ways to achieve this:

• Death. Corpses won't attack anybody. If that ever changes, remember to destroy the brain. Seriously, while it is not that difficult to kill somebody, dealing with the consequences will be. You will be the suspect in a homicide case. Killing will cause psychological trauma with normal people. And your friends and acquaintances might view you differently henceforth. You do want to avoid that if at all possible.
• Unconsciousness. This is the best way. You escape while the assailant takes a nap. When they wake up, they are healthy but ideally in handcuffs.
• Immobility. The assailant cannot move due to serious injury to their legs or spine. Especially in the latter case, you will have one hell of legal headache.
• Pain or shock. If the assailant can feel pain (not a given), for example broken ribs might make it impossible for them to move. Even a controlled strike against the throat, and the assailant will be too busy choking (or dying) to harm anybody. Restraint and control techniques usually use pain to enforce compliance. They are not worth the risk and effort if you only want to escape. Pain is the least reliable way.

The Problem

In average, women are smaller than men and a smaller percentage of their body mass is muscles. This means that in a one-on-one fight against a man, a woman will usually find it more difficult to incapacitate a man than vice versa . She will be at a disadvantage in the following ways:

• The woman is weaker than the man even if she is as big as him. If strength is pitted against strength, the man will win.
• The woman has especially less explosive strength than the man and therefore moves less dynamically.
• The woman cannot strike or grip as hard as the man.
• The woman cannot take the man's punches as well as he can take hers.
• The woman is lighter. It is easier for the man to lift / throw / grapple her that it is for her to lift / throw / grapple him (even if their strength is equal).
• The woman has shorter reach. The man can punch her in the face from farther away than she can punch him.

Maybe, there are a few physical advantages for women. They have a higher pain threshold. Otherwise, pregnancy and childbirth would be even worse for them. There is some value in that but will not prevent real damage incapacitating the woman. My firearms instructor told me that woman have, in average, better hand-eye-coordination. I am not sure that this is true. Furthermore, I don't see how it can do a woman any good in a confrontation with a man unless the woman is a sniper in the Ukrainian army.

If any of my readers is, I wish you good hunting!

All this is exacerbated if the woman is small even for her sex. If she is only about 150 cm tall and weighs less than 50 kg, most men will weigh twice as much as she does and will tower over her by a head or two. This is why this article focuses on self-defense for small woman. What works for them will work for the bigger ones even better.

Strategy

The bigger the problem (and it is a biggie), the more you need a plan. And it had better be a good one. The general outline of that plan, your strategy, should be as follows:

Move not to get hit and strike to do incapacitating damage.

You are too weak and fragile to take much punishment. Avoid the assailant's strikes. And only attack vulnerable parts of their body with the intent to injure or destroy. This may seem brutal - because it is. Yet, it is not more brutal than some thug beating up, raping or even killing somebody half his size. Your chances will not be great under the best of circumstances. Do what must be done.

Tactics

Tactics are the various methods you have of implementing your strategy. Strategy tells you why to do something. Tactics tell you what to do when.

• Strike first! The single most promising tactic in physical violence is the preemptive strike. As soon as you know that you will be attacked, go on the attack. Beat the other guy to the punch. Offense is best defense. Waiting for the other guy to attack is a losing proposition. Your size already gives the assailant a big advantage. Don't give him another one by being passive. And yes, at least under German law, it is legal to preempt an imminent unlawful attack.
• Strike until it is safe to run. You don't need to "win" the fight. You only need to survive it. Don't stop fighting until you can get away, but as soon as you can, get the hell out of there.
• Covering: If you are attacked with a barrage of punches, nobody can block or parry them all. You just cover your neck and head not to be knocked out. This goes vor everybody, not just small women. The difference lies in the techniques that will work for them. Just hugging their head with their arms will in my opinion not work for them against powerful strikes that will just injure and batter away those arms. There are various covering techniques using outstretched and joined up arms. They don't just take punishment, they deflect it. That is to be preferred.
• Angling: Get out of the line of fire by placing yourself at an angle to your opponent. Now all your weapons (your limbs) are pointed at them, while theirs are not. The necessary footwork is not easy but will protect you better than any block.
• Middle distance: The woman must do her best to be close enough to strike but outside grappling range. She must avoid what I call the "death zone" in which the man with superior reach can punch her but she cannot punch him. And in a grappling situation, the man's superior strength and weight will become even more dangerous than at striking distance.
• Primary targets: The head and neck are the "off switch" of the human body. Eyes, throat, temples, back of the neck, occipital nerves, sides of the neck and the jaw do not react well to getting struck even with moderated force. The effects can be incapacitation through pain / shock, unconsciousness or even death.
• Protect your hands: Even pro boxers break their hands hitting a skull with bare fists. A small woman's dainty fingers are even less likely to withstand such punishment. An open hand can transfer just as much energy into somebody's body as a fist without that risk. It is a question of body mechanics, not hand configuration. And some of the primary targets can only be attacked with fingers, thumbs, forearms, edge of hands blows etc., anyway. The only kind of fist you can use safely is the hammer fist.
• Secondary targets: ankles and knees. A good kick to these joints can impair or even destroy mobility. You can run faster than a world-class sprinter after somebody has conveniently shattered his knee.
• No high kicks and knees: All kicks and knee strikes go beneath the belt line, preferably lower than than the assailant's fingers can reach down standing up.
• Tertiary targets: Some spots sensitive to pain might be worthwhile striking if no better target is available. The groin, the peritoneal nerve on the outside of the thigh or the short ribs come to mind. However, adrenaline, drugs and or a high pain threshold might easily render such techniques ineffectual.
• Grappling: It is not you job to make a citizen's arrest. Avoid grappling if you can (unless you are an Olympic judoka). If it is forced on you, get out of it if at all possible by whatever means. If you cannot, fight to win the grapple by whatever means. Restrict yourself to hard and simple, preferably striking techniques. No lifting throws!!

Techniques

Techniques are the physical moves you use in order to actually cause damage to the assailant or to avoid damage to yourself. The fewer techniques are part of your personal system, the more you can train each and the more quickly you can choose the right one in an emergency.

The techniques listed below are essential in my considered opinion. They cover most eventualities and are very effective and easy to learn.

• Joined-arm-cover: You put your dominant hand on the other so that your arms form a ring (sort of). If somebody tries to punch you in the head, you enter hard and fast, slamming your hands into their face. The arms are very likely to deflect the punch(es) without absorbing to much impact. You counter-attack right after.
• Sidestepping: While fancy footwork is for tournaments, not self-defense situations, you should know how to take that one step sideways which gets you out of the line of fire. It may seem simple, but this, too, requires practice.
• Open-handed strikes: Basically, you execute a straight punch but impact with your palm (against the head) or the space between thumb and forefinger (against the throat). This a bread-and-butter self-defense-technique for women - for very good reasons as explained above. Once contact has been made with face, the fingers can go for the eyes or the throat.
• Forearm strikes / edge-of-hand-blows / ridge-hand-blows: You attack the neck or the back of the head with the inside or outside of your forearm including the respective side of your stiffened open hand. The palm faces downward. These techniques can be quite dangerous. That is why they are illegal in boxing.
• Hammerfists: You pummel your antagonist with clenched fists impacting with the little-finger-side. You can strike with all your might as that part of the fist can take the punishment. You look a little like an angry chimpanzee, but only an idiot would mess with an angry chimpanzee. Hammerfists also train the movement patterns for attacks with bladed or impact weapons, which you will hold in your fist.
• Stomp kicks: They are also called "inverted kicks". You kick with the heel of your foot which is turned outward a bit. Imagine stomping through a board of wood leaning diagonally against a wall. This kick can be absolutely devastating directed against knees and ankles. It can literally destroy those joints. Even if you refrain from doing that much damage, it will still hurt very badly. And it has the bonus of being an easy technique.
• Knee strikes: A hard and fast knee to the groin or the peritoneal nerve, while not guaranteed to shut an assailant down, is an easy thing to do that tends to hurt - a lot.
• Front kicks: A low level front kick to the groin, knee or shin is not more difficult than kicking a football. Everybody can do it and it can really hurt, even injure.

Weapons

Horror! Shock! Fright!

Weapons.

I am actually going to say something about hard, sharp, pointy implements used in combat. And worse, I will not try dissuade people of carrying something for self-protection.

And no! I am not referring to fire arms. I am very, very happy about the strict gun laws in my country. If everybody could pack in public, every nutcase, criminal and terrorist could do so. Imagine the situation if the assailants in the recent attacks had had access to AK 47's or AR 15's? Not a pretty thought.

What I am referring to is carrying something legal (and reasonable). Let me give you an example:

A lady friend of mine likes to go hiking. Alone. She has a black belt in karate. However, this alone will be of limited use in a pinch because she is - drum roll - a small woman.

Yes, martial arts have limits. Imagine that.

If she ever runs into a hostile in a remote area, punching him in the face and running will not necessarily save her because there will be nothing and nobody to run to. She will have to face and actually defeat her assailant. True nightmare fodder.

For this reason, she carries an outdoor knife when hiking. On her belt. Visibly. Martial arts are good. Martial arts and a blade are better.

And yes. What she does is legal. Trust me. I am a lawyer.

Weapons are equalizers. They can compensate for differences in size and strength. Even if both parties are armed, these differences are still less important than in an unarmed altercation. Therefore, I am a great advocate of especially women carrying something useful just in case.

What precisely can be carried will depend on various questions:

• What is legal in the pertinent locality?
• What is considered socially acceptable in the environment in question?
• What is practical to carry?
• How much training is needed to use the object in question?
• How much damage is one prepared to do to another human being, even an assailant?

The answers will determine whether you carry chemical mace, a knife, a walking cane or something else. Knives require little to no training to be very dangerous but are often illegal to carry even in Germany. The same goes for chemical mace.

The safest thing from a legal point of view is knowing how to make combative use of everyday objects that you are allowed to carry no matter when and where like walking canes, flash lights etc.. That does require some training, though.

Disclaimer: Be aware and observe the law of the land where you live! This article does obviously not constitute legal advice!

In closing, I would like to debunk something often said by officials trying to dissuade people from arming themselves: "Don't use a weapon lest it be taken away from you."

What a truckload of BS!!! Knife disarms, for example, are almost impossible to pull off against a determined (not necessarily skilled) attack. The same goes for striking implements or chemical mace. Don't believe this nonsense.

Some Perspective

I would like to add a few remarks that do not fall under the heading of self-defense but are nonetheless very important.

First of all: Germany is a very safe country!!

Let me repeat: Germany is a very safe country!!

Recent murders committed by migrants are horrific. More importantly, they have attracted a lot of attention. They have created or contributed to a feeling of unease, if not fear, among many people. As a matter of course, fascists are exacerbating and exploiting these sentiments for obvious reasons. And many mainstream politicians (looking at you, Mr. Merz) are dumb enough to follow suit.

However, the likelihood of getting murdered in Germany is still extremely low. The murder rate in the USA is higher by a factor of five or so. A few cases, no matter how atrocious, do not change this. If people FEEL safe or not does not have any bearing on whether they ARE safe or not.

Reality does not care about people's feelings. Imagine that.

Therefore, I do not consider it an absolute necessity for the majority of people to train in self-defense. Most people go through all of their adult lives without suffering any assault. I train because I enjoy it and to stay fit. I like feeling able to defend myself if I must but I am not overly concerned about somebody attacking me. Furthermore, self-defense is just one aspect of self-protection, which is a much wider topic.

Returning the the group of women, especially small women, they are most likely to be assaulted - not by a stranger - but by their partners. The most important thing a woman can do to protect herself from physical or sexual assault is being very cautious about whom she enters into or stays in a relationship with.

It is my understanding that women usually are.

Good.

There are many more aspects to self-protection. How do you secure your home? How aware are you of your surroundings and the potentials threats in public? How fast can you run if need be? Can you talk your way out of trouble? Volumes have been written about this topic and this article is already pretty long.

Conclusions

So what are (small) women to do if they want to train in self-defense?

As regards the question of how to go about it, I would like to refer you to my article "How Not to Be a Superhero". It will give you a rough guideline.

Beyond that, you must keep one thing in mind: Anybody who is at a physical disadvantage against an assailant only has a prayer of surviving (not necessarily winning) if they compensate by good technique and aggression, i.e. sheer, unrelenting brutality. Both must be trained.