Not without a fight
Self-defense popular after September 11
Washington Times: February 5, 2002
By Christian Toto
Reprinted with permission
The typical traveling executive sees a cell phone, a laptop computer and an in-flight magazine as nothing more than amenities in the air. Jimmy Higgins sees them as potential weapons against an assailant.
Mr. Higgins, a fifth-degree black belt in the martial art known as Tukong Moosul and senior instructor at the Tukong Martial Arts Academy south of Alexandria, teaches business executives that lesson through a course designed for them.
The chances are remote that any of the executives enrolled in the school's Executive Force class will come face-to-face with a terrorist. Knowing what to do in such a contingency, though, makes all the difference, Mr. Higgins says. "They have anxiety about opening their mail. They want to do something to reduce their anxiety," says Mr. Higgins, a physically intimidating instructor with a reassuring gaze. "Everybody's more conscious about learning self-defense."
For $57.50, students learn to wrap their complimentary pillows and blankets around their arms as a shield, counterattack with a magazine folded twice lengthwise and to strike with whatever items are within reach. "A lot of people don't realize a laptop computer is a weapon," he says.
During the two-hour course, potential victims are told their shoes can both protect them and be used to strike an assailant. Shoes worn on the hands can serve as shields, while a punch thrown with a shoe in hand packs a mighty wallop. Mr. Higgins says his disciples are taught to become "instantly aggressive" should the need arise.
"You can tap into your animal instincts pretty easily," he says. Part of that can involve the "kiap," the guttural cry that often accompanies the delivery of a blow in the martial arts. It's as much a warning, he says, as a psychological trigger for action.
Proper foot position and balance also must be learned. Mr. Higgins teaches a simple step-forward, step-back pivot that counters the attacker's progress, and then swings the attacker around into a vulnerable prone position. Some lessons will seem basic, he says. Others will feel unfamiliar to those new to self-defensive postures.
"A lot of stuff that would be instinctual is not correct," he says. "You have to have the training to understand what to do and why to do it." One example, countering someone holding a knife near your throat, involves turning toward the knife as you grab and grapple the opponent.
Abi, a Tukong student who prefers to give only her first name "until I get my black belt," began taking classes at the school immediately after September 11. She says the attacks spurred her to take self-defense courses after years of putting it off. "I kept thinking if I was on that plane and I knew martial arts I would have killed them," says Abi, who lives in Mount Vernon. She has found the work more difficult than she imagined, but having just earned her orange belt, after gaining her junior and senior white belts, she says she has no intentions of quitting.
"I can walk at night now easily. I don't have that fear I used to have," she says.