Practical Self-Defense Program
“PACE Yourself & Don’t be DARED!”
We cover more than just best practices principles of situational awareness, prevention, and avoidance. Our personal safety framework provides a comprehensive approach to your safety teaching you principles, responses and actions in a tiered approach. You will be in an environment that makes you feel welcome and safe yet allows you to experience the reality of defending yourself. Our personal safety framework is covered in all of our self-defense and martial arts programs.
Curriculum
Each self-defense program delivers the same fundamental curriculum in a format tailored to the client’s needs. Our curriculum is summarized below.
Principles
The most important aspect of self-defense is understanding the principles of prevention, situational awareness, de-escalation and response. Knowing how to avoid and escape a potential threat is paramount to your safety.
Statistics
We tailor our self-defense program to the demographics we are teaching (seniors, women, college students, travelers). We research simple assault, aggravated assault and comparative statistics for the specific class. We present and review common threats for the demographic group including the statistical probability of an undesirable encounter. It is important to understand who is at risk and their level of risk so we can address the most common risk areas.
Legal Concepts
We do not purport to be lawyers or legal counsellors. We do, however, we have an understanding of important legal concepts, like duty to retreat, stand your ground, Castle Doctrine, burden of production, etc. You will be educated on these legal concepts and other legal aspects that may impact the decisions you make in a potential self-defense scenario. While we will present and discuss legal concepts, we are not and do not offer legal advice, rather we encourage students who want to understand the laws for their specific region to consult an attorney.
Morality
There are moral considerations when defending yourself. We will present and talk about the potential moral dilemmas and ramifications of engaging in potentially life-threatening encounters.
Open Discussions
As part of our educational process, we encourage students to ask questions about hypothetical situations and how they may be handled. We also encourage students to share their own experiences (if they are comfortable) including how they reacted to an actual encounter. We will discuss the specific situation and reactions, including what may have been done differently.
Self-Defense Programs
We offer three programs, each covering our personal safety framework and delivering varying degrees of instruction depending on the program.
Self-Defense Shield Program
This is our most comprehensive program. In our Self-Defense Shield program, we train to be able to protect ourselves in various potentially life-threatening situations. This program offers an advanced training opportunity for those who want to truly master their self-defense skills. This program is a commitment and is delivered as a 7-stage program with the completion of each stage awarding a self-defense shield. Each shield is a comprehensive curriculum teaching more advanced techniques with more intense physical and mental training as students advance through each stage. Shields are awarded after completing a written and physical skills assessment (much like martial arts belts but in a much more informal environment).
Basic Self-Defense Program (Custom)
Realizing that embarking on a long-term self-defense journey is not for everyone, we offer custom programs that focus on education and learning how to perform basic techniques for demographic-specific groups. Our Basic (introductory) program covers best practices self-defense principles, statistics, legal concepts and the morality of self-defense. We also cover basic stances, strikes, releases, joint locks, takedowns and escapes from common threats. Content, structure and session frequency of the Basic program is developed collaboratively between The Traveling Dojo and our customer, or customers can opt to choose our standard 6-week program.
Self-Defense For Women & Seniors
The most vulnerable demographics are women and seniors, so we have programs that focus on keeping them safe. Our women-only and seniors programs (two separate programs) cover the same concepts, principles and training as our basic self-defense program, but in a demographic-specific environment. Students will work with other students and the instructor to practice hands-on techniques.