Strength Isn't Always Defined by Muscle
Unlock Your Inner Strength
TRTG has observed that women tend to greatly under estimate their ability to defend themselves and we want to help change that. Beginning on February 7th, due to elevated interest, we will be offering another Ladies Centered Self-Defense Class. The class will meet for 1 hour per week for 4 weeks. This is our Foundations of Self-Defense program but tailored for ladies only. We will address the specific fears and concerns that women may have about feeling vulnerable when in public and about their safety in general.
We will work through the concepts, principles, strategies and physical techniques that will help every woman be less vulnerable and empower them to be harder to attack. Everyone, man or woman, has limitations that prevents self-defense education from being a one size fits all solution. We will help each class participant develop a personal strategy that works for them based on their strengths, limitations, size, athletic ability and level of fitness, and personality.
Each class will be limited to approximately 8 participants and will meet once a week for 4 weeks at 6pm. You will gain knowledge, new skills, a much greater level of confidence and I guarantee you will have fun! If you have talked to previous students, you know this is something you will want to take advantage of.
In this four week class, we will learn:
- The Defensive Mindset
- How to Identify Developing and Potential Threats
- Managing Personal Boundaries
- Principles of De-escalation
- How to Avoid Being Ambushed & Surprised
- How to "Not Be There"
- How to Survive Transitional Areas
- Primary Strikes Used to Escape
- Effective Vital Striking Points
- Defensive Responses
- Control Techniques to Create Opportunities for Escape
- Driving in Memphis for Your Personal Safety
- How to Handle Larger Attackers
- Defenses to Counter Chokes
- Defenses to Counter Abductions
- Selecting Defensive Force Multipliers (Firearms, Pepper Spray, Batons, etc)
- Plus More
New Classes Begin Every Month
All Levels of Fitness Welcome
Next Class Begins April 2nd
Click on the link below to register and specify which class and which month you want to attend
Ladies Class
1st Tuesday thru the 4th Tuesday
6:15 pm to 7:15 pm
Mixed Class (men and women)
1st Thursday thru the 4th Thursday
6:15 pm to 7:15 pm
Saturday Morning Class
4th Saturday of the month
9:00 am - 12:00 pm
Other times by appointment
Personal Readiness
Knowing what to do and being able to do it at the very time it is needed are two different aspects of self-defense. In our class we discuss the realities of self-defense and drill down into it's the most basic requirements. We discuss what we call the Southern Problem.
Have you noticed that no one ever talks about northern hospitality? That doesn't mean people in the north are not nice but we have a reputation in the south of being polite and mannerly. Sometimes, that politeness can interfere with our defense. We drill down into the mental and emotional requirements needed to be personally ready to defend.
Predictive Avoidance
Have there been times in your life where you have taken a particular path and then at some point thought to yourself, "I shouldn't be here?" Have you made decisions to help someone only to realize while helping them you have placed yourself in a vulnerable position? While it takes repetitious training to become proficient with physical engagement, smart self-defense is made of the skill set of learning to "not being there" in the first place. Sun Tzu said, "The greatest victory is that which requires no battle." Each day our victory is to go home each night. If we can avoid a situation with unusual risk then we should do that not be there.
Environmental Awareness
How well you can read your environment is part of the skill set of recognizing potential trouble. It starts with three questions: What's going on, what stands out and what am I going to do about it? Establishing a baseline of expected behavior, and then noting the behaviors that don't fit. That is how we begin to read our environments. Once we step out into the public arena we are exposing ourselves and we have to be much more guarded with our personal space. Transitional areas are where we are most vulnerable. It starts with a high level assessment and works it way down to barely discernable clues that we learn to read.
Behavioral Indicators
Making judgments based on the way someone looks has been a plague and distraction on our society. That kind of assessment is reliant on our experiences, biases, and assumptions and is fraught with error. Its simply not a reliable way to predict future behavior. However, developing the ability to recognize and read human behaviors is a much more reliable path to predicting imminent behaviors. It starts with body movements that signal imminent action to understanding the 4 categories of general behaviors to the involuntary physical biometric responses that reveal a person's internal reactions to external experiences.
Situational De-escalation
If we are faced with a threatening situation by an individual(s) then we still have choices and options that we can exercise to work to our advantage. Emotions will run high. Panic may set in. You may freeze. If the line of physicality has not been crossed then we still have a chance to reduce the impact of the confrontation through a de-escalation process and avoid physically engaging with the attacker. That's a preferrable outcome. . The de-escalation tactics we use are geared top lower the temperature of the situation and also buy time. Its important to remember to lower the temperature we have to maintain our composure as well.
Physical Engagement
Physical engagement is the last skill that we want to employ because its the skillset where we have the least amount of control. We don't teach our students to fight. Who wants to do that? We teach a philosophy of engagement to escape not engagement to win. Our goal is to engage physically in order to stop them from continuing their attack. We want every strike to have a purpose. We divide our physical response into three categories: Offensive Strikes, Defensive Responses and Control Techniques. We use the Defensive Responses and Control Techniques to be able to execute our Offensive Strikes to stop the attack.