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CLFMak ~ \”You picked the wrong day to make fun of my genuine Italian leather European man’s carry-all.\”
😆 The \”Man Bag.\”
(Ugh…first \”Seinfeld\” references, now \”Friends.\” It’s become clear to me that I have no witty sayings of my own.)
Sunny, you summed up what my classmates and I love about Impact.
1) I knew going in that most women would have trouble hitting the attacker our first day. However, I thought after taking KM for a few months that I would *at least* be able to nail him with a good palm heel strike. Yet when I turned to face him, I froze. I couldn’t knee him fluidly either. I wanted to, but my body wasn’t following as quickly and with the force I was looking for. The other women had the same problem.
Impact did a smart thing. They video taped all of our fights and made them available on DVD. We can watch the evolution of both our techniques and our minds as the days passed. And sure enough, the girls on the first day in no way resemble the girls on the last day.
2) The confidence to wait for a good opportunity is key. In our specific rape scenarios, we were straddled and pinned in some way. The first time the class encountered that, a few of the women panicked and struggled. You could see the fear on their faces ~ it was like they forgot where they were, and all they knew was they had a guy on top of them, threatening them. The rest of us on the sidelines literally stopped breathing for a moment, reacting with a degree a fear ourselves.
We could see struggling got us nowhere. Our instructors taught us to relax and breathe in that situation. He may be on our chest or pelvis, he may have our arms pinned, but we needed to focus on A) what he was saying and B) where he was moving. Eventually we conditioned ourselves to do that. We learned to respond to our attacker and tell him what he wanted to hear. When the time was right, we exploded and didn’t look back. We went from compliant and helpless to an \”all out brawl\” in seconds.
Among the things I’d love to see evolve in this type of training is the frequency. We need to do this with some kind of regularity and with more scenarios. Many of the women were willing to take the class again to improve their skills, but we don’t want to take up spots that would otherwise be used by brand new students. Impact offers advanced classes with weapons, but the schedule varies.
So nothing is perfect, Impact included. Can’t KM develop something like this to help us? Something specific for women? I’m sure it’s not easy playing the part of the attacker, swearing at us, threatening us, being graphic. And it can’t be fun being kicked around regardless of how much padding is used. But we NEED this!
Or what I like to call \”The Testicle Pull.\” 😯
Most things evolve (my cousin’s husband the rare exception 😛 ). I’m hoping the Impact program will do that as well, always striving to improve where they may possibly fall short.
Good news: I didn’t freeze. Not once in 4 fights. And my husband has said at least twice to me tonight how surprised he was by my ferocity. 😀
Just a quick update: Yesterday we reviewed everything covered so far. In addition…I’m not sure how to word this correctly, so bear with me…defensive moves against oral rape were introduced. Fights were long and drawn out, often to the point of exhaustion. The idea, not unfamiliar to you guys, was to show we always have one more kick than our attacker can absorb.
There was a lot of verbal stuff, ranging from friendly draws to outright taunts (in one of my fights, I was laying on my back to simulate sleep, and my attacker \”woke\” me by climbing on me whispering in a sing-songy way close to my ear, \”Yooouu left your window open…\”). It was a surprise to discover how much that can mess with you psychologically.
Today is a regular class plus a \”graduation\” at the end where supporters and potential students can come watch 3 rounds of fights. My husband is coming to watch ~ here’s hoping I don’t freeze! 🙄
Honestly Ryan, I knew prior to posting this that a few would reply with criticism. That’s cool. It’s healthy. My main objective was to post a review, not to defend the program.
I’m also happy to answer questions about the program.
I *don’t* want to argue back and forth about how well my instructors moved in their suits. I was there. I worked with them for 12 hours. They moved quite well. Mind you, I’m not saying they weren’t restricted (only they could tell you how restricted they were). But they appeared to move quite comfortably.
It would be interesting if KM instructors took the Impact model and reworked it to where *they* felt it was worthwhile training. But certain aspects of the program would need to stay in place like:
1) the specific rape scenarios
2) working with verbal confrontations (that’s very hard for many of us)
3) the cheerleader, all girl type atmosphere ~ it’s important in the beginning. I suspect if training was ongoing, women would learn to lessen any (IF any) dependence they might have on it.
Those are just my initial thoughts anyway and, if I may state the obvious, coming from a new student’s perspective.
They teach actual moves. We face various scenarios including being thrown to the ground, being pinned, choked and pinned, and being forced on the stomach and/or hands and knees (that’s pretty rough ~ some women broke down). They are verbally abusive during the attacks, which makes it all the more intense. We were told to expect it to be even rougher this Saturday, so now I’m terribly curious.
The eye strike is with our fingers (the hand position is kinda hard to explain), and we’re allowed to really aim for where the eyes would be without fear of hurting the instructor. I don’t think that’s a huge problem. Frankly, I doubt I’d have a problem finding a rapist’s eyes, with or without Impact. If anything, that would be my first instinct.
As for the attackers not looking or moving realistically, I assure you…they move just fine. And it was surprisingly hard to hit them in the beginning, even with the helmet. During my first fight, I hit him twice when he grabbed me from behind. When I spun around to face him (I was hoping to kick or knee him), I froze the minute I saw his \”face.\” It took quite a few trys to feel comfortable striking.
I would very much like to see if someone could come up with an Impact/KM hybrid for women. I say \”for women\” because we do face different issues (physically and psychologically) and have different strengths.
Why not take the best of both programs and make them available? I know more women would go for that before they’d try KM alone (and that’s not a judgment of KM ~ it’s more of a generalization of women based on my experience).
Nope. 🙂 If you look at my original post, you’ll see there are no questions, only a review of what I experienced. The post has a ton of hits, so I’m hoping some women checked out my link.
But like I said, everyone can feel free to share their opinions. It’s cool.
I bet it would be, but I’ll bump up your thread so you can hear from the more experienced posters. 🙂
Actually, I wasn’t looking for feedback. I posted it in case the women in your lives and the women who surf this board were interested. I know when I was considering signing up, I searched all over the net for reviews and such.
I originally typed out this long reply to you Ryan, but then I realized that I hadn’t intended on defending the program ~ only reviewing it. I do however appreciate and respect the opinions here on the board, so by all means, share them.
My hope is that some people see my review and go check it out, find out if it’s right for them. Maybe some women who would never walk into a Krav class will try Impact and *then* have the nerve to try KM. Or maybe for some it would be the other way around.
Either way, I saw some things this weekend that really impressed me. 🙂
Hm, I agree that having something more routinely scheduled would be great. As it is, I’m going to have to just sign up when the program is offered to keep my skills up.
I’m not sure the women in my class this past weekend will end up worse than before. I can say with great certainty that none of us feel overconfident, so we won’t be starting any bar fights. 😆 But we know how it feels to really hit a guy now with full force, which is priceless. And we learned quite a bit about the nonphysical aspect of predatory violence, which was quite the eye opener.
If anything, we’re more aware of our surroundings and our actions. We learned how to set boundaries. That alone could save one of us from a potential attack.
I understand your preference for ongoing training though. I’d prefer that too. It would be kick ass (literally! 😛 ) if our school set up an Impact-type class for us ladies.
There are more advanced classes that involve weapons, but I haven’t read up on those yet. Unfortunately, the Impact in my area does not offer a steady diet of these programs. It seems to be once every other month or longer. So if I wanted to take the Core program again for more practice, I’d have to wait until April or July. The schedule for advanced classes is not listed, but I imagine those depend on student demand.
It’s a bummer, because I’d love to do this at least once a month. Ah well…can’t have everything.
