Interest in a self-defence class for women held in Cromwell on Sunday (May 28) was so intense that a second class has been planned for August 6, with possibly more to come targeted at specific groups of women.

Organiser Ali Glover said she was inspired to put together the class because she was worried about one of the young women she works with at her day job at Vinpro in Cromwell.

“She’s been working in a pub at night and said the guys sometimes come right up to her and she feels really uncomfortable.”

Ali suggested her colleague take a self-defence class but couldn’t find any in the area targeted toward women when she looked, so decided to set one up with help from local sponsors.

Highlands Motorsport Park provided the venue and morning tea and will do so again in August, Cromwell Lions Club sponsored the first class and the Cromwell Rotary Club will pick up the tab for the second, and Ali’s employer Vinpro paid for advertising.

The instructor was Greg Dorn of Real Self Defence, who is an acupuncturist and yoga teacher as well as being skilled in many martial arts.

Greg explained to those present that he had been assaulted at age 14 so started lifting weights and learning martial arts when he was 18.

He said he found that he would still “freak out” in tricky situations and realised that memorising techniques didn’t really work. 

“An assault is different from fighting,” he said, adding that women are more likely to be sexually assaulted or mugged than men.

Complex techniques like those taught in martial arts training are saved in the frontal cortex of the brain, he said, but when we panic we start thinking with our “monkey brain” - a lower level of thinking where responses are mostly automatic. Once in terror, we revert to the “lizard brain”, where no thinking is possible and we often revert to a loop of actions that make little sense.

Self-defence instructor Greg Dorn demonstrates to Margaret Haberfield how to erect a ‘fence’ against somebody invading her personal space

He stressed that violence was a last resort that could be avoided through situational awareness, avoidance, trusting one’s gut feelings, and de-escalating situations.

If violence was unavoidable, one’s mindset was more important than techniques, he said.

“We change from being prey to predator.”

In an interactive and physical seven-hour class, he guided the women present from theory to practise, explaining what to watch out for and how to minimise risk, before having participants practise hitting and being hit, and how to react quickly to attacks.

He ran through a range of scenarios, from a drunk, overly-friendly male at a social event through women-on-women attacks to assaults involving a knife, where all you could do was try to escape.

In a series of one-on-one drills, the women partnered and took turns at being the attacker or attacked, learning simple manoeuvres to fight back or break from a hold, while always stressing the idea was to get away as quickly as possible.

The women also had the chance to wallop Greg while wearing padded mitts, to make them more comfortable with seriously hitting another person.

Class participant Hannah practises hitting instructor Greg Dorn, in an exercise designed to make participants comfortable with striking another person

His constant advice was to not try anything too complicated, saying most self-defence books and videos on YouTube were “total tosh”.

“The important thing is to practise the basic stuff,” he said.

Speaking after the class, he said much of what the students take away is confidence and empowerment, and the knowledge that there are many ways they can defend themselves if needed.

“One of the girls from a previous class said she knows the possibilities now,” he said.

Participant and young mother Nicola Warren said she enjoyed the class and learned a lot from it.

“I liked the fact that he went into the psychology of it, that reacting in the first few seconds is key,” she said.

Organiser Ali also took part in the class and said she was really pleased with the way it went.

“It definitely was worth it.”

She is hoping to facilitate classes for other groups such as high school students and nurses.

Anyone interested in enrolling in the second class on August 6 can email Ali at [email protected]