Some Self-Defense Moves

I attended a free self-defense class.

Here are some tips:

1. Always protect your head with your arms.
2. Stand with one leg in front of the other, knees slightly bent, for strength and balance.
3. Practice standing on one leg in this stance to prepare to kick.
4. Kick the side of the knees.
5. Kick the shins if you have steel-toe boots.
6. Step on the feet. This hurts and immobilizes the other person.
7. Your finders are delicate. That is why boxers wear boxing gloves.
8. A fist with the thumb on the side versus inside your fingers is safer.
9. If someone punches you in the stomach, tighten your abdominal muscles.
10.if someone grabs your wrist, move it, down and up again to vary its width. Use your body weight where the person's free arm is and put your body weight against the arm that is grabbing you. You can hit their unprotected side. Take them off balance by squatting.
11. If someone is coming from behind you and puts you in a headlock, lower your shoulder and knee on the side where they are and drop. They will go almost over you to the side. you can hit them on the floor or run.
12. You can poke eyes, pull ear, punch the nose above on, or below it, hit under the nose and above the mouth, or hit at the temples.
13. Punch the unprotected side, especially the right where the liver is or the lower back where the kidneys are.
14.Yelling can shock the opponent.
15. When you run from someone, do so from the direction from which their back is turned.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional fighter or self-defense instructor. Do your own research and practice. Take classes from professionals.

My third book, Pocket Guide to Fitness, is available on www.louizapatsis.com, http://www.authorhouse.com, www.bn.com and http://www.amazon.com. If you look up my name on those Web sites, you will find my other books The Boy in a Wheelchair and Life, Work and Play: Poems and Short Stories.