Interview with Linda (part 1)

When I started this blog some of you were outraged by Linda’s unconventional approach in teaching self defense to female university students. To me the course was an eye-opener, I really learned a lot and I consider Linda one of my role models. She is a smart, top fit lady in her mid-30s, and she really knows her stuff. I have been planning an interview with her for a long time, but due to covid restrictions it had to be postponed. Luckily, I have been in contact with her lately. I told her about my blog and that some aspects of the course stirred controversy, and it would be very helpful if she would address those issues and explain her standpoint. I was so glad she agreed to an interview, and she invited me to her office at the university where we could have a friendly chat. I also met there her PhD student Tina. We even went through some of the comments, and we had a very interesting discussion. 

So I really hope with this long-awaited interview she will satisfactorily rebut the concerns and answer the questions of the readers of this blog. However, at some point I realized it would be too long for one post, so I divided it into several parts. In this part we will discuss Linda’s career path, how she got into self defense and we will learn about her extremely interesting ground-breaking research.

Linda is an accomplished scholar in the area
of experimental female self defense.

Linda thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview. Let’s start with a question what do you do for living?

I am a tenured assistant professor at the department of physical education. I do research in a new subject - experimental female self defense and I teach two master courses and one PhD course. Hopefully I will finish the first comprehensive textbook on this subject soon. Besides organizing and leading the student self defense course I also co-train the university female football team. In my free time I do gardening and take care about my two cats.

So how did you become interested in self defense?

Honestly, this topic has never been of much interest to me till my early 20s. After the high school I decided to study medicine. My aspiration was to help people and it appeared to me the best way possible to do it is to become a doctor. In the second year of my studies my best friend got raped by her date. I saw how devastating it was for her. The same year I thwarted a similar attempt. In my case a sharp well-placed knee to his testicles did the job. Just one knee strike and a muscular aggressive thug was on the floor incapacitated. I have not had any prior training; it just came very instinctively. After this incident I realized that instead of medicine I should educate myself in self defense and to spread this knowledge among young women as another, often neglected way to save lives. So I left the medical school and enrolled the police academy.

Why exactly the police academy?

They just opened a new study program in pedagogy of personal safety. This program was intended to prepare a new generation of self defense instructors, particularly females. After graduation I entered the governmental project SIREN to combat the rape epidemics in some parts of the country. A major part of this project is still classified, so I cannot talk much about it. Later I did my PhD in physical education and got a tenure here at the department.

What does the experimental self defense mean?

It is a scientific discipline which seeks answers to basic questions: What is the best approach to female self defense. What are the most effective techniques and how should we teach them to women? For years, self defense systems have been based on a principle ‘one said/I believe/I read, this should work’ or have been constructed as a modified martial art. That’s why you would always stumble across so many conflicting advices, either during courses, in books or online. This just confuses and demotivates women when they want to educate themselves in the area. It is not uncommon that in one book you would read: ‘The best technique is to kick him in the groin’, in another ‘You should never kick him in the groin because…’ Which advice should they follow, where is the truth? How can we find out? My approach is to make the subject more scientific and evidence-based, by both performing experiments and by collecting and integrating already available data to develop a simple but highly functional system.

It sounds very interesting. How does such a research look like?

It consists of both a theoretical and practical part. In the theoretical part we do a metanalysis of available data such as police reports or news articles. In simple terms, we collect and analyze cases in which the self defense was successful but also those in which not. In addition, we try to make interviews with women who have been previously assaulted as well as with convinced offenders.  In the experimental part we simply test different techniques and tactics. For instance, we arrange realistic scenarios when a woman is attacked and has to defend from a male attacker. You have to understand, when I say realistic it is absolutely realistic. No padding, no protection and full force. It is a high risk, high gain research, and not surprisingly it was very difficult to get an approval from our ethics commission. Usually, I have two male and two female volunteer participants and my PhD student Tina. I avoid directly participating because I am already well-trained, and it would create a bias. 

An experiment went wrong?

You already told me that one of the experiments went wrong, what happened?

We wanted to simulate a common real-life scenario, a surprise attack from the back. The rational was to test the theory of the effect of freezing. The idea was that Mike, one of our volunteers, would ‘attack’ Tina unexpectedly anytime time and any place. He attacked her at night in a parking lot when she was leaving the campus. Unfortunately, he ended up in a hospital with a severe contusion in his left testicle from a back kick and a fractured rib from an elbow jab. Luckily, he recovered in a couple of days with no permanent damage.

So actually, the experiment was successful!

In a sense yes (Linda was smiling). But I was afraid they are going to shut down the whole research program. But fortunately, the atmosphere changed with the new female dean. I got a green light to continue and even got some more material resources. However, as you can imagine I lost two dedicated volunteers. I have to say the dean also supported me in setting up the self defense classes the way I wanted.

What are some of the outcomes of your research so far?

Ooh there are many over the years. I would like to mention a comprehensive paper before submission I wrote with Tina about the testicles as a target. We managed to debunk some of the long-perpetuated misconceptions and myths. Particularly, we busted the myth, that the GTP move should never be performed when an attacker has pants on. How else would we found out without actually performing experiments?

To be continued...