Why I Teach Self Defense The Way I Do

I started off doing martial arts my whole life. Ages five to sixteen. That was the whole shape of my childhood, and I did not think of it as self defense at the time — it was just what I did, several times a week, for over a decade.

Then I switched. I moved into boxing, kickboxing and gym training, and started going to the gym properly. Weight training, training myself, learning my own body instead of only following instruction. From there I ended up working at a boxing studio as a kickboxing instructor, and that is where I knew.

What I knew

Helping people work on their physical health is probably one of the most important things a person can do with their time. That is not a slogan for me. I watched it in the studio, session after session, with people who arrived thinking they were there for fitness and left standing differently.

A lot of people are uneducated on how important exercise is. They do not know why certain things happen to their bodies — why the knee complains, why the back tightened, why they are exhausted at the top of a staircase. Some of it is lack of exercise. Some of it is injuries from exercising the wrong way. A lot of it is simply performing the wrong exercises for the wrong body. Nobody ever explained it to them.

That is what I am passionate about. Your body is your temple. Your body is what you use every single day. And I want to help people who were never taught anything about it.

How that became self defense

Coming from martial arts, the defense side was never separate for me. But it became the centre of the work once I understood who I actually wanted to train: women who are ready to fight back. Women who want to regain power, who want to know they could throw a punch if they had to, who want that physical security in their own body.

That is a different goal than losing ten pounds, and it needs a different kind of training. It needs conditioning, because adrenaline burns through untrained cardio in seconds. It needs technique, because panic makes people flail. And it needs the mental side, because confidence that exists only in a gym is not confidence.

What I am good at, honestly

Conditioning is my strongest area. Stretching and mobility, genuinely — I am very good at it and it is undervalued by nearly everyone. High intensity work, cardio, endurance, athletic conditioning, anything martial arts related, anything connecting the mind and body together. That is my ground.

I am experienced in weightlifting and have a working knowledge of powerlifting, but I do not present myself as a powerlifting specialist. If a max total is your goal, there are people who live in that world and you should train with them. I would rather be honest about my lane than sell you something I am second-best at.

The part that is mine

I am not a highly religious person, but I am very spiritual — I believe having faith is having faith in yourself and everything that you do, and believing that the universe is in control and we are not in control of everything. I thrive outside, connecting with nature. That sounds a long way from a boxing pad, and it is not.

It is where the pace of my coaching comes from. Nothing built outdoors is rushed. Weather does not motivate itself, it just keeps going, and that is the pattern I want in a client: steady, repeated, unhurried work that turns into something solid before she notices it happened.

So the sessions are hard, and they are also therapeutic. High intensity, good cardio, real work on form, and genuine attention to why we are doing any of it. And fun — I want this to be the thing you look forward to. If it is something you dread, you will quit, and a woman who quits is not a woman who can defend herself.

That is the whole method. Read more about how I train the mental side, or see how sessions are structured.