 I had Lasik done eight years ago. To this day I joke it was my third best decision I have ever made next to getting married and becoming a mother. I will never take my eyes for granted nor forget the moment I sat up directly after having them lasered and I knew, even through the muck, I could see clearer. Prior to that if I was sleeping in a place I was unfamiliar and it went up in flames, if I didn’t have my glasses I was likely going to burn. Also during my tragic high school soccer stint I got beamed by the ball directly in my right eye and lost sight for three days, so it is pretty safe to say I am rather damn dramatic when it comes to my eyeballs and fighting/martial arts. I mean I like my teeth and all, and I am fairly happy with how my nose looks, but my eyes are a whole other bag of beans. So suffice to say that when I got drilled point blank in my eye socket by a guy’s knee tonight during jiu jitsu I can assure you I did not think of anything else outside of whether or not I had vision. Unfortunately, I speak fluent Trucker/Sailor so I am sure the expletives spat out while I rolled around emphatically on the floor were theatrical, but know that pain will take a rear station wagon back seat when it comes to sight for me. I sat hunched over not wanting to look up because fear had me terrified to check, I didn’t want to know how badly I had just messed up my eye. The family and I are currently training for the month at The Foundry MMA and Fitness in Beaufort, SC. I had brought Lili in with me to attend their Tuesday night Jiu jitsu class which is usually about 20 or so men and one other gal; at least that’s what I have seen from the last three weeks. Abe Stem is an instructor and the owner and obviously well versed in dealing with injuries/hysterics like mine (I like to think I wasn’t that bad….) Either way once he convinced me to look up and I realized I could see, I was fine; the relief was intense, the rest of how I looked apparently was another matter. Though I didn’t feel it and my nose was fine, I apparently hemorrhaged (this could be a more dramatic word than needed) out of my sinus cavity and my hands that cupped my face during my episode collected and splashed blood all over the floor smearing across my face. Abe checked thankfully to make sure my nose was straight, it clotted right on up, I apologized for bleeding all over his mats, and then turned to the guy I had been rolling with and said, “Dude, I am going to be super pissed if you made me not pretty.” No one laughed. To be fair I am sure I looked like a horror film victim because Lili came over and said, “oh my, mom….” here I am with a streaked bloody smile cracking a joke to this poor guy who was apologizing. So where am I going with this? Humor is a coping mechanism and dark humor helps dramatically. I cannot think of one heartbreaking, nervous, awkward situation I have been in where I did not use some form of a joke to lessen the load on my psyche. I honestly don’t know how other people deal with things that come up in life because it is an amazing valve release that lets the steam off a bit to make it though. Both of my grandfathers died within three days of each other. I was living in England with my new husband, had a brother over in Iraq for his first tour, another brother deployed on a ship somewhere, I had come home for one funeral and stayed for two. My mother, her sisters, and my grandma were trying to navigate arrangements when my aunt’s basement flooded; I am talking two feet of nasty, gray water. We were all trying to get our emotions gathered to get through the services the following day and now we had to wade through just grossness to haul belongings out of her extremely large and finished basement. So we joked. We made constant funny comments about swimming in sewer water. The poop humor was aplenty. Were we numb? Yes, absolutely. It sucked, but it took some tension off. My husband could not comprehend this when we first got married. He didn’t understand how we could tease at the hurt persons expense when someone was in the ER. He was appalled that we all sat eating big mac meals casually in the waiting room while we razzed my brother Jacob over his bad three-wheeler decisions (this is par for our family) and made sarcastic comments on how horrible the Veterans Hospital situation was going to be with his snapped collarbone. And someday when its not still fresh (15 years is apparently still fresh) we can speak of my spouses knitting needle through the foot incident and the humor he did NOT find with my mother and I when I called to ask what we should do. I practically had to shoe him like a horse to remove it, he didn’t find it funny. My how he has grown…. I have been training in and out of different places and facilities with constant strangers for a while now. The array of people who never laugh when drilling astounds me. It could be that my jokes just suck, maybe I am not that funny, or my Chronic B Face leads them to believe that I am actually serious. I am not saying goof off the whole time, but a one-off punch line and a smile definitely help. We are smashing faces and playing with weapons meant to kill, you have to lighten up or it will consume you. Jorge Torres-Marin, a researcher for The University of Granada’s Mind, Brain, and Behavior Research Centre stated this about a recent study, “We have observed that a greater tendency to employ self-defeating humor is indicative of high scores in psychological well-being such as happiness and, to a lesser extent, sociability.” The pendulum cannot be one extreme or you will drown in its weight, that’s why the humor is there, to bring a bit of light to such a heavy topic. I remember running a sim round drill with a girl who was overwhelmed by the reality that she was aiming a gun at a person while having to pull the trigger. She was upset and rightly so, it is a heavy thing deploying a tool meant for death. Her feelings were completely correct and I would be concerned more if she wasn’t. However a joke cracked popped through the tears a bit and eased things. It gave a break in the thought process to rein in the waterworks and focus on what was learned. I have had dark conversations about foster care that overwhelm. The jokes made were sometimes crass and very direct, but so needed. A weird side effect of one of our sweet babies when he was detoxing from drugs right after birth was that he smelled like feet for several weeks. No matter how many times you bathed and rubbed Johnsons Baby Lotion into his skin, he still smelled like a sweaty fifteen-year-olds sock. The other side effects were obviously less humorous, but focusing on the rather funny one made the situation monumentally better. I found my last ECQC to be a great group that understood comic relief. This allowed for the evolutions/drills to be much more fun and honestly, I felt, much more realistic. Every debrief after was hilarious, but had an effective understanding about mistakes and decisions made that in real life could have gotten a person killed. Psychology Today wrote about a study that was done on anxiety and stated that, “People who used humor a lot were more likely to find new ways to think about the stressful situation, which was related to decreases in stress.” Psychology Today June 21, 2017. “After surviving a close call, it’s natural for troops to crack a dark joke or two in order to mentally settle themselves after a serious situation. Laughter is the best medicine, it may not look healthy at first, but it works,” said Tim Kirkpatrick, a writer for infantry veterans website, We Are The Mighty. Congressman and Former Navy Seal, Dan Crenshaw, devoted an entire chapter of his book Fortitude on dark humor and how it helped him overcome, process, and get through injury, harrowing moments while deployed, and months spent recovering laying only on his stomach due to the health of his only remaining eye. As much as some may want to say it is taboo in grim instances, humor works. It soothes, it relieves the mind and just smiling a bit to someone can make that person’s entire day. There are so many problems out there that have no answers and things can be so messed up you realize you may not be able to fix them, but a well witted joke can go far in survival. I follow a few personal trainers on Instagram. One of them posted last week an after workout picture of him looking all glowy, ripped, tattoos bulging, sporting a bright amazing smile. I immediately thought, man that is totally not what I look like when I get out of class. I had made plans on Tuesday to take a funny selfie right after jiu jitsu. I wanted a realistic photo of when I get done with training; my face red, eyebrows rubbed halfway off, weird forehead veins bulging (totally not the veins a person is shooting for), hair matted with sweat in some places, floofed out of my ponytail in others, sweaty because trust me, I am not glowing, mascara running (tattoo looks cool though), and smiling only because I survived and can breathe again. I apparently get to one up my original plan by adding a shiner and a few snapped off eyelashes to the mix. I wish I would have got one when I looked up grisly with blood smeared all over my face, but that might have been more taboo than my joke. Please laugh at me, at the very least it will make me feel better. #myfacehurts #eyebrowsdonotsurvivejiujitsu #humor #darkhumor #survivalisfunny #collarbones #drillingisfunny #sewerjokes #notprettypostworkout #blackeye #icansee #sometimesiquestionmyjudgement #womensselfdefense #IGphotos #filterless #datenitetonight 
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 Today I took my kiddos to the Audubon Trail on Fripp Island. Usually when we do this I force a little homeschooling in there by making them read the placards that are displayed and then tell me about it. When it was Coles turn he quickly got frustrated over some harder words and started to shut down. It certainly didn’t help the situation when his ten year old brother tried to help him and within seconds 12 years of hard work on both Cole’s side, as well as mine, and others who have poured into him gets diminished down to a paragraph about Egrets. One of the tag lines or mottos with Fit To Fight is Everyone’s Fighting Something. They have it on T-shirts, written on the walls, and it’s used on Instagram and Facebook. It’s three words that very much hit home for this mama. What are we fighting? What is the person next to you fighting? In self defense we are learning to fight against the bad guy, even the odds of violence against your person, but it doesn’t start there and everyone’s journey looks extremely different. Cole started Brazilian Jiu Jitsu ten years ago, he was eight. As a family he was the first person that was involved in marital arts outside of a couple year stint for Ryan in Tae Kwon Do when he was like five. Because of Coles background and learning disabilities we wanted him to be able to defend himself… and break arms. Cole is adopted and came to us at the age of six through foster care. He could not speak more than three simple words, was tongue tied, had cigarette burns up his arms, also we were told he spent most of his time in a closet before he was put into kindergarten. His teeth were rotted out with only a couple left because the dentist pulled them, he couldn’t count to three, he was tested through the Schmeiding Center and we were told a vague medical history that stated how he never crawled. This is usually because the food needed is up high on coffee tables or such and babies that are hungry learn quickly they need to rise up to eat whatever’s there, not go across the floor. That’s a hard one to let sink in when you think of other little babies you have kept safe and nourished. But he still smiled at me. He was weary, had spent a month in the children’s shelter with his eighteen month old sister who came with him, had bags under his eyes, and yet he still smiled. We had a feral child. The likelihood of a child learning to speak after the age of four is slim, like super slim. We fought those odds. We had to have his tongue clipped immediately so he could even form the words in the first place. We took his diagnosis and decided we were not settling, it was going to be a fight, but we were going to give him every opportunity to turn the odds that were stacked against him starting out. We bought him a bike. This was the first time we saw him fight for something he wanted. He spent hours upon hours when we couldn’t work with him outside in our driveway teaching himself to ride. At one point I watched him go off the back end and down the ravine; I ran out the door just in time to see him pull himself up and out of the blackberry bush and throw his fist in the air cheering himself. It was an awesome first victory. We homeschooled him, put him in speech, pulled him out of speech, and then made the call that we were going to be more invested than strangers. We never wanted to put Cole in a box with what the world felt he could and couldn’t do so we sort of just struck out on our own with him. I remember wondering constantly to myself if we were ever going to be able to hold a conversation with him, would he be able to live a fairly normal life. We had so many friends along the way to help, a speech therapist who went to our church gave me sounds and worksheets to run though and we spent hours doing, “puh, ti, cuh.” And then one day we slowly realized he was talking to us. It was and still is hard, but we still fought what the world was going to say about him. Sometimes he fought us and it was heartbreaking. I cannot begin to tell you how many times I would be in a doctors office or someplace public and I would watch him and I would get so angry and sob at the injustice of what had been done to him prior to our home. But when we have victories, man we have victories. In our home we have a quote by Walt Disney written out as a reminder, although I don’t know if ol Walt meant it so much in the fighting aspect, but it means the world to our family. It has been part of a driving force when we need a pick up from the traumatic pasts we are fighting. “Around here however we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors, and doing new things because we are curious… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” Walt Disney. When he was nine he asked to be in his BJJ tournament. Ryan and I both hesitated because we knew how far behind developmentally he was to other kids; mentally he still was around four or five. We very reluctantly agreed and all of us went to watch. Out of eight kids he placed fourth. He was directly in the middle and you have never have met a mama who was so happy her child was average at something. I also haven’t cried more happy tears in my life; he fought for something and it was a good victory. A few years ago during a particularly hard time I was sitting across from Cole at Outback with my other son Gratton looking at their physical differences. We had always contributed his situations to drugs in utero and environmental, but I had recently been reading about children with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. We had been so focused on working with him that we tried to never dwell much on the whys and this one hit me hard. I looked up the symptoms physically of FAS and looked at my son across the table. He ticked all the boxes and I felt like a stupid mother that had missed it all; if someone is doing drugs while pregnant its not a far stretch to think they would drink as well. Once again I was tearing up in a public place at the injustice that this kid flat out couldn’t catch a break. And still we fought as a family. We went through hyperbaric chamber therapy for two months driving an hour there and back daily. Cole fought to learn to read, he wasn’t too far behind in math, and soon he was reading some ridiculous chapter book about warrior cats and I didn’t care because he was reading. We fought against our own doubt. Would he ever be able to live away from us? As time grew on it was leaning towards a no, how do we discuss that with him? How do you talk to your child who has normal desires and dreams for growing up that he may be limited in some of those when you have done everything you can to tell him he could? We have never lied to our kids even under the thought of protecting them, we are dead honest, and it has served us well because they know we will never BS them. So here we were having to have hard conversations with our teenage son who loves sports cars and can drive our pickup to drop the trash off at the end of the road, about how we aren’t certain he will be ready to drive a car. Our job as parents is to prepare him for the real world so he can jump out of the nest and here we were having to rethink. So Cole fought some more. We rolled with those punches and he never plateaued. So we kept moving forward, it didn’t matter that it wasn’t at everyone else’s pace, with nine kids from traumatic backgrounds you tend to learn quick you cannot look around you for comparisons because it will break your hope. So you look forward. We looked forward past the shuffle walk he still has occasionally when we don’t remind him, a remnant of that lack of crawling at a crucial developmental stage. We looked forward past his tics that he developed, this loud swallowing thing in the form of Tourette’s that he would come to me sobbing because he flat out couldn’t prevent himself from doing it and he was frustrated beyond belief. We looked forward when they finally eased off and we had to fight with other issues commonly associated with FAS. We fought for him, he fought for himself, and we fought forward. My husband fought against himself when someone in boxing class didn’t know his story and waylaid on Cole during sparring hitting him harder than was necessary. Ryan warred inwardly as he was that persons next partner and he only punched him “a little” harder. I mama-beared during a drill where I “accidentally” hit said guy in in the groin a few days later. Cole fought the tears and the fear of going back into that class the following week. He still went. He won. He has fought me. Sometimes normal teenage angst fights that I am strangely okay with and some not so normal fights of me holding him until he was calmer. We have fought in recent months in jiu jitsu. He has rolled with me and constantly impressed me on what he can do for someone that moves at just a little bit slower pace than most. He fought me the other night when he asked to go to a boxing class while Ryan and I attended another. This class was all adults, he would not be with us, and these were some rather serious boxers. I relented, he went, he thrived. He is fighting for his goals, to graduate, to get a job, to drive a car. Things that most would take for granted and yet still he fights. Sometimes we fight him to push him. Today after this particularly small win we were headed back down the trail and our little Rosie was lagging behind. Cole went to go get her and I couldn’t catch my breath as I took these pictures. His shirt he was wearing instantly choked me up and reminded me of just how damn far we have come, this kid holding his three year old sister’s hand is a walking miracle. We kept him out of a box and put him in the ring and then sat in his corner so that when “fights” come up where he is tearing up over an Egret placard on a seemingly normal day of hiking I can help him fight by calming him down, hushing the kids around us for more concentration, and he can finish that paragraph correctly even though neither one of us gives a damn about the local bird population of Fripp Island. Everyone’s Fighting Something, be kind, and keep moving forward. #everyonesfightingsomething #keepmovingforward #bikesandblackberrybushes #intheircorner #outofthebox #FAS #fostercare #adoption #egrets #coledoesntlikejumpropeeither #waltdisney #fighting #jiujitsu
When I was 20 I jumped out of an airplane. It was a bucket list item made by my teenage self I have long since discarded due to safety variables realized as I got older and wiser; Jazz Lettuce Larry running the show at Bungee Jump Mountain just doesn’t quite tick all my safety boxes for a free fall. Also if I break a leg or something my house would end up with an even thicker layer of fine filth permanently. Even though teenage goals got pushed to the wayside, I did fit the skydiving part in.
What was interesting about skydiving, outside of my lack of respect for mortality at that tender age, was the understanding in myself that my fear hit only at the doorway of the plane. It took quite a bit to edge towards the opening, but once I fell out all my terror vanished. I had done the hard part of getting there, the decision of death had been made. I was either going to become a bloody splat in a field somewhere or I was going textbook land (obviously there are other variables), but no matter what I was going to enjoy the ride. I have found that the concept of falling out the doorway is pretty much how I deal with anything I am fearful of or find difficult. It seems the mantra of, “Welp, this is what we are doing now…” has served me well. The first big step into a free fall is life changing and being able to now attend ECQC for a second time allowed me to witness things from another perspective because I knew what to expect. I had already taken the plunge before. What I had not anticipated and was pleasantly surprised by was the magnitude of watching other women face their inner demons by putting on those helmets. ECQC or Extreme Close Quarters Concepts is a three day pistol course taught by Craig Douglas with Shivworks. I could write you his bio here and why he is pretty damn qualified to teach this, but a quick google search will do better justice. Basically you are learning to fight with and deploy a pistol up really close and personal. This course can also be entitled, “Don’t Ask Anyone Their Occupation Because They Can’t Tell You Due To It Being Classified,” as well. At the end of day two I did an interview with Practically Tactical’s Jeff Blooven that will likely never see the light of day because I am truly a nightmare on camera. During this he asked me if I thought ECQC was a course for all women. I am not sure how I answered, but I am pretty sure I hesitated. Would I recommend this course to everyone? Absolutely hands down. Can I sell it to women? Uh no. I feel most will look at bloody sim round mark pictures and evolution videos and be like, yeah, not for me. But here goes nothing, If you carry a pistol, you need this course. I truly cannot stress that more. Perfection in range time means nothing if you cannot draw your gun at the appropriate time under stress and use it lawfully to defend yourself. The amount of what ifs during an attack are endless. Can you draw safely from a seated position? Can you draw if you fell on your back? Hell if you carry in your purse, can you even get to your gun in the first place? I feel this looks very much like a GI Jane boot camp that is only for rough chicks and that could not be further from the truth. Is it hard? Utterly. Will it change your life? I don’t know anyone who has taken it male or female that has walked away from it saying, “meh.” Instead what I have heard is a constant, “I would have paid well over the amount I put down for this material and experience.” But for women? Yes. Can everyone do it? Well no not necessarily right off the bat. You do need an equivalent of a concealed carry course prior, be able to safely draw your gun, and have a basic knowledge of efficient mag changes. Outside of that you do not need fighting or martial arts knowledge, trust me, you will get some reps in. Hell you don’t even need to be in shape. I have seen all shapes, sizes, ages attend; I have watched some rather hard core muddy evolutions by men in their 60’s and sympathized with neck wrenching. Why should you take this course? Because the material covered in the first four hours of any Shivworks course is probably one of the most lifesaving things you can learn and it has nothing to do with guns. Craig spends that time going over MUC or Managing Unknown Contacts. This is literally what every first and second women’s self defense class should look like. It covers deescalation/avoidance tactics and teaches how to point out predatory movement from a potential threat. This is something I feel is so important and often overlooked by both sexes. We just jump to the fighting aspect without mastering and understanding the weight/mortality of physical conflict when training. There is very little taught it seems in the art of talking and either being able to show yourself as not worth the trouble or just bringing down an intense situation. There is no pride in this part, just the higher percentage that you get home safely to your babies and loved ones. I have seen certified bad a$$es struggle with this section of the class because it is an art in itself to be cultivated. Craig has been asked several times to do a women’s only class. At first I was on board with this idea, but understood that is not his niche; he has so much to offer by keeping it coed. However, after thinking over this for the last year I realized that it would not have the effect it does if it was women only. It is meant to be unsettling. It is uncomfortable running drills with strange men and to be honest the more you do it the better the nerves wear off gearing you up for handling conflict in the real world and that is just a beginning. He rarely pairs women with other women because that is not the reality. Realistically in this situation I am going to be dealing with a man larger than me and what I need to know most is how to maneuver with that physicality. Craig says, “The worst thing I can do is give someone a dishonest win.” You are going to struggle and you are going to fail. You will have those butterfly wings ripped clean off when you grasp the notion that force on force is much different than what you originally perceived. And here is the deal, its better to get punched for the first time in training around people that care about you than to get hit in the streets by someone trying to haul you into the mystery machine. The harsh truth is that women need to know this; so yes, yes I would absolutely recommend this to all women because it is a rare chance for them to face and fight their demons in a safe atmosphere. This is a pretty male saturated course. At my first, out of 24 people, there was one other woman named Tammy. My new friend Kyle whom I met at this one said this was the first he had been to out of three where women were in attendance. One is a gal that I met at EWO; experience wise my friend Rachel has one of those jobs you can’t talk about, but it involves a rather impressive understanding of in-fight mechanical gun issues and malfunctions. So yeah, she shot me a lot. Thanks Scott. Marlana and Aimee had previous firearm experience, but no marital arts. They definitely had more gun knowledge than I did for their first time at ECQC. They also came with their spouses that had extensive firearm know-how, and by know-how I mean if your gun broke, one of them could likely fix it MacGyver style on the fly since his job is making guns for like the whole world (apparently I was the only one in this class that didn’t know what Langdon Tactical is…. I know now); the other, a former SEAL, well he would just let you borrow his third back up after treading through a swamp undetected. I was told for years in martial arts that you need to work people up to understanding violence. I disagree. I feel women have an innate understanding of violence just not the reality check for it sometimes. We unconsciously grasp it at a young age as the smaller framed of the sexes. That is why I am back pedaling a bit on my statement in that interview of saying whether this is for all women. It is. And once you take the plunge out of the plane with that first bit of demon killing, you are more prepared. “We all have inner demons to fight, fear, and hatred, and anger. If you do not conquer them then a life of one hundred years is a tragedy. If you do, then a life of a single day can be a triumph,” Yip Man. Watching evolutions for the first time IS violent. It’s not a movie or tv, it is happening right before your eyes with the knowledge that you will be in the fray soon. It’s knowing as soon as you put on that helmet that the only thing really protected is your head and anything else is fair game. You also don’t want to look stupid or weak, that’s pride and that’s everyone. When you get that first understanding that you are being overpowered by force on force and you are losing it is earth shattering and demoralizing. You can’t breathe and the fear and adrenaline coursing are overwhelming. But what’s amazing, is that’s the first time, after that you have jumped and now you know. Now you are set up to calm down and learn. It needs to be understood that most people will not willingly put themselves in this situation, but you have made the decision to understand more, to learn more, and make yourself safer in the process. Adult men have cried during these evolutions, ladies you are no different, you just have to work harder so give yourselves a break and set that aside to flourish. Tears are not gender biased. The things that are pulled from the dark recesses of your mind while kicking, punching, and blasting energy on your back in the mud are paramount. I have heard so many healing stories from men and women alike who speak of flashbacks; this exact moment in the fight during ECQC is where they claim they met the beginning point of recovery. They fought themselves to put on the helmet, they panicked, they scrambled, they cried, they rolled through horrific memories they thought best left alone and untouched, then they faced them head on while screaming in frustration, and then they overcame. Maybe not that exact day, but the next they showed up. They stood there, put on the helmet again, they shoved the fear back down their throat and fought their Goliath by making the decision to throat punch their past and move. This class does that. This class gives that back. The debrief was a heavily emotional one. Everyone got a chance to speak about what the weekend gifted them with and there were tears, men and women alike. It was seriously a blessing to witness. Because I was able to relax, relax, relax more at this one I was able to observe more, soak more of it up. A fellow male student told me later that when he saw that there were four ladies present he was concerned selfishly about the physical aspect in the evolutions of having to, “dial them back,” a bit. He went on to mention that, “Very shortly after the class began any hesitations were put to rest knowing that all the men and women showed up to work and none sought special considerations.” He mentioned he was honored to be a training partner to the women who attended. This was an incredible group of individuals and definitely an adventure worth writing about to encourage other women to take the dive. “I hear so much how this course is needed, but doing it firsthand was unbelievably eye opening. Craigs aspect of safety is so incredible and his ability to read students is phenomenal.” Marlena. So tips for women taking this course: 1. Bring a notebook and take notes. I believe I hear the phrase, “drinking from a water hose,” a lot. You will want to go back and read and when you take it a second time (because you will) take more notes. 2. Have someone video your evolutions. What you think happens in the middle is not necessarily what happens in reality. Perception is crazy and you will want to watch it. 3. Understand you are going to fail. That’s the point, understanding your errors. It seems most people go in wanting to win, you won’t, and that’s awesome. Go in to try and to think and to problem solve knowing you are going to screw up, that’s the best place to learn from. 4. Put some Velcro on your belt tail to stick it back to your belt. Otherwise if it’s a longer one it will impede your draw. I saw other belts that had this and seriously I wish I had done this. 5. This is not the time to test your equipment, make sure it all works so you can glean more. I went in with a taurus 380 the first time and was told that wasn’t likely going to be beneficial. It wasn’t. It malfunctioned a lot and I ended up pulling myself off the line. I don’t normally wear a belt and have ran the gamut on conceal carry holsters for my lifestyle. I wore a belt for this class because this wasn’t tester city, I wanted my brain to not have to worry about fixing stuff for my everyday life, I could do that later on my own. Get the most out of class by eliminating equipment and clothing issues. 6. Layers. You will need them because it goes from early in the morning till late at night and you will constantly be in various states of undress, especially when you want added protection from sim rounds. If its not in summer months bring a beanie, at the very least this will protect when you do the mountain goat drill. Ugh. 7. Encourage everyone. To take the tag from Fit to Fight, “Everyone is fighting something.” 8. Be open minded to understanding violence. Craig said, “Sadly most people don’t think there is a risk and the reality of humans is that people will do fu@#$d up sh*t all day long” he is not lying so the quicker this is grasped the easier it will be to put on that helmet. 9. Bring snacks and don’t eat a full lunch. You can have a good muddy exhaustive dinner with a great glass of wine when the day is over. I live off of beef jerky and skinny pop during these, that seems to work out well. Drink lots of water. 10. Go pee on every break. Just do it. 11. Be a good partner. Everyone is learning don’t try to win all the damn time. 12. Take the class again. I seriously got just as much out of it a second time if not more #shivworks #ECQC #womensselfdefense #backtheeffoff #simround #dothiscourse #9mm #thanksevanforthe30rounds #theseladiesarebeasts #demonkillers #takingbackyourmind #stillnotjumpingrope #ihateshadowboxing #pistolfighting #betterlearnjiujitsu #thumbpectoral #beefjerkyskinnypopandaprayer #yesihaveheardabouttheenigma #marlanasbrokenheart #hookerwithaheartofgold |
