"Building a better tomorrow, By starting today"

SELF-DEFENSE IS FOR EVERYONE!

COMMUNITY OUTREACH PROGRAM
INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM DIRECTOR


JAMES A. GARDNER
KTO, DCSA, SMA

As a martial arts organization, a part of our programming and purpose is to provide safety and self-defense training to the communities we serve, and to their allies, family, and friends. Indeed, TMAA was founded in response to the callous kidnap and murder of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard. We therfore regulalry provide community self-defense seminars around the country as part of our Community Outreach Program (COP) and we offer focused self-defense seminars to groups, corporate entities, schools, and other non-profit organizations through our Community Action Team (CAT) program.

Check our our Seminar Schedule link to the left to find a seminar in your area, or contact us at info@TriangleMAA.org.

Self-Defense Vs Defending Yourself

Many people, and many websites and other martial artists often confuse or envelope these two different concepts into one theory. At TMAA we see the two as being closely related, but most definately different in concept and technique.

SELF-DEFENSE is the act of taking precautions to avoid physical, psychological, and emotional injury or hurt.  We ALL practice self-defense techniques all of the time. Wearing safety helmets when riding a bycicle, looking both ways before crossing the street, sniffing the milk to make sure its not spoiled before swigging it down.  Self-defense is much more common sense than it is some secret techniques that take years to leard under the guarded tutilage of a martial arts master.

DEFENDING YOURSELF is the emotional, verbal, and physical act of responding to a situation in which you believe or expect to incur physical injury or hurt. 

While we can all readily learn, understand, and employ self-defense technques in our every day lives that will significantly help to protect us from harm, learning to defend yourself is a considerably more complex, time consuming, and involved undertaking. We will offer you some simple defensive technique advise on our website, but we emphasize the use of self-defense techniques and strategies to avoid the need to use defensive techniques. As the old adage so appropriately reminds us "If you're not in the way, you can't get hit."

Our Philosophy On Womens/Mens/Kids/Senior Self-Defense

Many self-defense training groups and martial arts organizations create seminars targeted and geared toward specific groups of individuals such as Womens Self-Defense, Kids Self-Defense and so on. There are very appopriate and justifiable reasons for doing so, including the fact that some groups will face particular challenges that others may not, and gearing trianing and content to those challenges makes the seminar more effective. In general however, we see self-defense concepts are largely applicable to EVERYONE equally.

That  which is proven to be a good self-defense tip or technique for one group will undoubtedly equally apply to all other groups also, with only a few areas being unique to a specific demographic. For this reason, we do not segragate our pulbic self-defense training seminars into Mens, Womens, Kids, Seniors, Single 25 Year Olds With Pets, etc. 

The same is largely true of defensive technqiues. If it works for one group, it will most likely work for all of the other groups....and more importantly, if it doesn't work for one particular demographic it probably shouldn't be taught in a self-defense seminar setting.  Most people who attend self-defense seminars do not religiously practice and perfect the defensive technqiues they are taught to become proficient in them, thus all technqiues taught must be intuitive, easy to remember, easy to apply, and above all, effective. Any technique that will not work for a child may not work for a smaller and lighter adult, but any technique that DOES work for a child will undoubtely work just as well for a six foot, two hundred pound adult.

All of our pulbic training, techniques, and strategies therefore are based on this premise. It must work for everyone, and make sense for everyone, to make it into our seminar. That being said, we will focus on womens self-defense or child saftey techniques etc. for specific groups that ask us to present in a private seminar.  Contact us to discuss the demographics and concerns of your own group, and we'll tailor our seminar accordingly. 

How To Use These Self-Defense Safety Tips

We are not trying to provide three hours of seminar material on our website, and we strongly encourage everyone to attend a formal self-defense seminar in your area if you can.

The best form of self-defense is getting involved. Report suspicious activity in your neighborhood or when you're out and about. Be a part of your neighborhood watch, or be the genesis of one in in your area. Be a good nieghbor to the elderly on your street or in your building. All of these things develop a caring and compassionate community that will respond effectively in a crisis....all things that opporrtunistic criminals want to avoid.

The tips and techniques we present are far from exhaustive, may have more suitable alternatives for your particular circumstances, and may not apply in your "neck of the woods."  Use them as a guide to start you thinking along saftey and security lines without getting overly paranoid.

If you'd like to recommend additons, alterations, adjustments, or deletions from the tips, please feel free to contact us. We LOVE to hear from visitors to our website resources and materials.

DONATE TO TMAA NOW USING JUSTGIVE.ORG


 http://www.justgive.org/nonprofits/donate.jsp?ein=11-3681180 

or

If you prefer, you may still mail your check to our regional or national headquarters, or mail it to our International Headquarters at:

Po Box 111, 1800 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94102, USA

Verify our non-profit status, or the status of any other non-profit you support using


 
Simply click on the link below

http://www.guidestar.org/pqShowGsReport.do?
gotoNext=/reports/partners/guidestar/
showDpLink.jsp&ein=11-3681180&partner=guidestar