Building strength: Inside SMC’s Women’s Self Defense class
Early mornings at Santa Monica College (SMC) are often cool and windy. At this hour, there are hardly any students on campus.
Most students who are on campus this early have an early morning class. One of these classes is KIN PE 41W, a self defense class meant especially for women. Every Monday and Wednesday at 8 a.m., female students meet on the second floor of the Core Performance Center (CPC) to attend.
The spacious classroom has a large window that overlooks the Corsair Field, which is located next to the CPC building. Two walls are covered with floor-to-ceiling mirrors. It also has a storage room that holds various equipment.
Blaine Eastcott, the instructor for the class, has been teaching for 18 years. He believes it’s important for women to learn self defense, and that schools should teach it as early as elementary school.
The class attracts students of all ages and from different backgrounds.
During the class, students paired up with one another to practice. One person held up a black pad while the other practiced an elbow strike or a sequence of attacks, screaming, “Stop! Get away from me! Help, I’m getting attacked!”
Olivia Warrior, an SMC student majoring in Criminal Justice, is the teaching assistant. Warrior took the class before and decided to become an assistant to help other women learn self-defense.
“It makes us more confident,” said Warrior. “It teaches us very important skills. One of the most important ones is to scream, to use our voice.”
While the students were focusing on yelling, Eastcott emphasized that shouting was important because it draws attention to the situation at hand and can also disrupt the attacker.
A series of incidents happened when the students were still practicing with one another doing elbow strikes. A student accidentally got hit and took a short break to recover, and others had their pad knocked out of their hands by their partner.
Nevertheless, Eastcott said it was essential to know how it feels to get hit because, over time, the feeling gets desensitized. So if hit, the shock wouldn’t be as intense as to someone who has never experienced the feeling before.
Eastcott also emphasized that one of the most important things to learn from the class was not to look like a target and be aware of the surroundings.
“One of the things we learned is never to walk holding your phone and looking down,” said Warrior. “Because then you look vulnerable. He (Eastcott) told us that the FBI did a study that they showed all these guys in prison, the same scene of people walking, and they’re like, ‘Who would you attack?’ and they all picked the people looking down.”
When asked for advice for students who are hesitant about taking the class, Eastcott encouraged them to go for it.
“Just do it anyways,” said Eastcott. “You need to learn how to do things even when you’re uncomfortable.”