The Women’s Self-Defense six-week seminar is a new program
offered at the Koret Health and Recreational Center. Maggie Mai, 24, is the instructor
for the course and she explained the class meets once a week to practice the
combined techniques and defense strategies that she has come across in her past
10 years of martial arts training.
“I was into break dancing in high school, and my dad did not
like me dancing around the streets,” said Mai. As an alternative, her father suggested
she do martial arts instead of dance. “I loved it. I just love how I could just
generate so much power with my little body,” she said, “I could like, really
throw a kick and throw a punch.” Throughout her decade of training, she has
gained a prominent background in the Korean martial art known as hapkido, in
which she has earned her black belt.
“I’ve been doing martial arts for the majority of my life.
I’ve learned it, it’s natural, I’ve been training, but I sometimes see that
some women, they don’t know how to defend themselves,” said Mai.
“I did have some students [tell] me that they had been
attacked before,” said Mai, explaining how the victimization of her students is
an incentive for her to teach. According to Mai, if any student of hers has
been attacked, they can talk confidentially with her via email about their
experience and she will demonstrate in class the techniques that could be used
to escape from that specific situation.
However, Mai explains it is hard to predict the outcomes of
certain attacks as there are numerous variables that could arise: “what if that
guy has a knife? What if they have a weapon? What if there’s two or three
people?” Therefore, Mai gives options in defense techniques, opposed to saying
one specific one will work or not.
“I just take what I’ve learned from different disciplinary
martial arts and just put them all together,” said Mai. However, there are
reasons why the class is specifically women’s
self-defense instead of a mixed martial arts seminar: “we don’t have the
equipment to teach that yet,” Mai admitted. Yet while Mai said she has the
capability to teach such a class, she emphasized how she wants to teach women:
“I want women to come in. I want people to come in.”
“Sometimes women are like, really scared to be in a room
full of guys,” said Mai. “In my studios that I’ve been to, usually I’m the only
girl, or there’s two girls.” Her class, she feels, is more appealing and
encouraging for women to join since there is not the intimidation from men that
Mai said some women might feel. “[Self-defense is] not like, a really kind of
macho, ego environment. It’s more like a calm, chill, come together, nobody
hurts each other [environment],” said Mai. “Some martial arts schools I’ve seen
or heard that guys do kind of want to flex their muscles, but not all schools
are like that, not all guys are like that, but there are some that are very
egotistic,” Mai explained.
“I’m not like, a super strong person,” laughed Mai, “I know
how to use leverage to defend myself, not strength, that’s my whole
philosophy.” Mai explained leverage to be certain angling techniques or
“[pushing] yourself away instead of pushing the person away.” An example of
leverage, Mai said could be seen in Brazilian jiu-jitzu, where people training
could be attacked while on their backs and still be able to defend themselves
using a their hips.
Mai said that there are students, USF
faculty, individuals unaffiliated with USF (besides her class), and even senior
citizens that attend her seminar. She said she would continue teaching the
class “as long as people show up.”
“It’s really empowering to see that that I could give [my
students] the confidence in knowing they could protect themselves or know they
have the tools to protect themselves,” said Mai.
