Teaching High School Students Self Defense - Toronto Canada

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Safe International teaches men, women, corporations and organizations. Its reputation was originally built by teaching in high schools. Safe has now taught more than 100,000 students and continues to grow each year.

Toronto, ON, January, 27, 2010 (PressReleasePoint) -- Safe International teaches men and women in corporations, privately and to women's organizations. Its reputation was originally built by teaching in high schools. Safe has now taught more than 100,000 students and continues to grow each year. Teaching teenage students poses unique and exciting challenges. With the bombardment of media and entertainment, trying to entertain teenagers can be one of the most challenging aspects of teaching self-defense.

The Safe International http://www.safeinternational.biz curriculum is serious but it needs to be taught in a way that is both entertaining and educational or as Tony Robbins says, you need to “Edutain” to both capture their attention and keep it throughout the 4 to 5 hours of instruction. It is very common for students to greet the instructors with a feeling of boredom at the thought of sitting through a 60 minute talk on how to avoid potentially dangerous situations. Within minutes the students quickly realize that this is not your average self-defense course. Safe doesn't give one-way instruction or “Don’t Do This or Don’t Do That” talk on personal safety. But rather, it is an interactive roller coaster of potentially life saving information and at times comedy.

Ask any teacher or student who has experienced one of the Safe courses and they will virtually all tell you that the method in which it is taught is the key and biggest reason they call Safe back year after year to instruct their students whether it be males or females. First, capture their attention and teach it in a way that really leaves a lasting impression even in the case of a possible attack. Here is a perfect example of how effective this teaching method is:

A mother called and indicated that her daughter had participated in a Safe course about 4 years earlier. She was in the parking lot of a popular mall in Ottawa, ON with one of her friends who also participated in the course. The one woman was getting in the driver’s side of their van while the other young woman was getting in the passenger side.

Before getting in on the passenger side, a man came out from behind a pillar at which point he put a knife to her and said “Get in the Back”. The woman on the driver’s side decided to start yelling for help at which point the man took off in fear of being caught. They informed their family not knowing that about an hour later the same man went to another mall and attempted to force a woman and her child into the backseat of their car. Some bystanders saw what was happening and they pursued the perpetrator. They caught him and held him until the police arrived. When the original young women read about this in the paper they called the police at which point they were interviewed. Apparently the criminal had already spent time in jail for a similar crime. He was sentenced to 4 years in jail.

The police informed the women that if they had not yelled the circumstances might have been much different. Now one of the keys to this story is that the young woman told her mother that although it had been 4 years since taking the Safe course she remembered to yell because of how crazy the instructor was which in turn caused her to remember what to do even though in a high stress situation.

Focus is always on detecting and avoiding danger but there are times where a physical confrontation cannot be avoided. The next phase of the Safe program is on that aspect of self-defense. Students are taught that self-defense is not martial arts and the worst thing to do is to adopt a stance indicating any knowledge of self protection. While it is important to look confident so attacker does not choose you as a victim, once they do, you need to play into the scenario in a way that will empower you and give you some advantages like the element of surprise or the ability to defuse and talk your way out of a situation.

If an attack has not started and the person is talking they can usually be talked down or out of the situation. If that is not effective then the final phase is physical self-defense must be utilized. We teach adopting a non-violent posture and using choice speech you can catch them off guard and adopt the stun and run . By adopting sequence of events. Using this non violent posture and feigning some fear the attacker will usually become over confident which gives you some obvious advantages. An important factor is that an attacker only chooses someone who they feel will make a good victim.

Safe International's founder has recently started the Self Defense Canada Blog http://www.selfdefensecanada.info and maintains relevant information on crime statistics, defensive methods and self defense strategies that every citizen can employ.

Contact: Chris Roberts, Safe International, chris@safeinternational.biz, 15535 Cooper Rd, Lunenburg, ON Canada K0C 1R0 Toll Free: 1 800 465-5972, Cell: 1-613-363-3286, Fax: 1-613-346-1037.
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