Last weekend, Team Quest MMA Portland held a women's only self defense seminar that saw over 20 women attend. The 90 minute seminar covered multiple scenarios for realistic self defense techniques that showed women how to be aware of their surroundings as well as understand the gravity of being in a potentially life threatening situation. Although the scenarios and techniques were somewhat serious, the seminar was fun and full of energy. All the women who attended the seminar received valuable techniques for self defense but most importantly gained confidence and were empowered by the coaches.
Several coaches and junior coaches from Team Quest were on hand to assist and demonstrate techniques, which gave the seminar almost a 4 student to 1 instructor ratio. This allowed the women to drill and practice the newly learned techniques and self defense tactics. Most of the women who attended this seminar gave similar feedback: that after seeing the coaches explain the drills and practicing the situational defense that they all felt a little bit more confident to protect themselves. Drilling and practice is the key to any sport, martial art or applied skill and is no different in this case. In fact, because we believe that people need mat time and the ability to practice, we gave each attendee a free 7 day class pass to the gym. We want people of all ages and skill levels to be able to defend themselves.
The lead instructor for the seminar was Team Quest Sambo instructor, Coach Vlad Novikov who is a EMT and has over 20 years of martial arts experience. Supporting coach Bruce for the ground defense portion of the seminar was BJJ head coach Bruce Elliott who also has multiple years of experience in various martial arts.
We would like to give a special thanks to the coaches who volunteered their time for this event as well as all the team quest members who participated, and a big thanks to all of those who attended this great event.