Self defence for women by Manuela Kalinowski

When hearing the words combat sport, many start visualizing bruises and broken noses. They are a lot of prejudices and especially as a woman, one often encounters comments like : ''What ! You are practising martial arts ?! But this is not meant for women !''

Strangely, this comment also comes from women themselves, which being the ''weak'' gender should have every reason in the world to learn how to defend themselves. After this argument, one often encounters counterarguments like : ''One makes it only worse by defending oneself !'' or ''What can I do against a man anyway ?!''

Even if these statements were true, which I don't think, I truly think that our health and at least our life would be worth at least trying something.

Let's consider for a while the statements here above. That we make it even worse is not correct. Someone who threatens a woman and really wants to harm her, assuming it entirely, would also do it if she doesn't defend herself. But these are much less frequent as one could imagine. The rest of them, and this is proved by police statistics, gives up when encountering a counter, even a light one.

Let's talk for a while about what a woman could do against a man. There is a large variety of martial arts and each and every one trusts a different one.

Ving tsun kung-fu is a self-defence system that can be advised for women, due to it's refined techniques and logic principles. It allows a defence requiring a minimum of force but nonetheless achieving a great effect.

In ving tsun, we are not supposed to go against the strength of the opponent, but rather to use it for ourselves. A simple example about that : When someone runs into a wall, how much it hurts depends on one's speed. Transposing this would mean that the stronger the opponent comes, the harter he meets with the fist to which he runs.

Each woman should know that she well has a chance against a man.

But without even considering the technique, there is an other really decisive factor to take into consideration : She must have the will to defend herself.

I would say it's even worse not even to try, than to suffer a defeat.