Karate Girls - Rising block on a goring goat!

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[i]Karate Girls
Story by Valerie Lum

In a classroom of 13 students, both boys and girls learn to punch and kick with accuracy and effectiveness. Any preconceived notions of the opposite sex dissolve as boys and girls spar with each other at Paradise Karate/Kickboxing.

But it wasn’t always like this.

Sensei Ronnie Smith, owner of Paradise Karate, said he has seen an increase of female karate students in the past few years.

“When I began training in the early 1980s, female karate students were certainly in the minority,” Smith said. “And there were virtually no female instructors.”

Smith said when women did try to learn karate, they were often babied or intimidated by the classes and instructors.

Sensei Robin Zywiciel, 24, noticed there was a good number of female students when she started learning karate in 1997.

“The majority of the class were women,” Zywiciel said. “And my instructor was a man who was very kind and compassionate.”

Now an instructor for youth at Paradise Karate, Zywiciel said she treats the boys and girls equally and she doesn’t feel the girls need any special coaching.

Smith said he thinks part of the reason about half of the students at his school are female is because he has a female instructor.

“I think parents are starting to realize just how important it is for their daughters to develop the self-esteem, self-confidence and the courage to know how to say no,'” Smith said, “and how to defend themselves physically if they have to as a last resort.”

Zywiciel, who has an engaging teaching style, seems very much at ease with teaching youths.

Mariah Manzone, 12, is one of Zywiciel’s students and has been learning karate for three years. She said she feels more confident with the skills she has learned.

“When I walk down the street, I’m not afraid of getting attacked,” Manzone said.

Her sister, Aurora Manzone, 13, also likes the reassurance that she could hold her own if she were attacked.

“I can defend myself,” Aurora said.

Zywiciel said learning karate has taught many of her students to be more considerate people.

“One student used to misbehave a lot when she first started. She was very aggressive and rude with the other students,” Zywiciel said.

But instead of kicking out the unruly student, Zywiciel continued teaching her and saw a complete turnaround of the student’s personality.

“She learned it was better to be kind and considerate,” Zywiciel said.

Although young females are increasingly involved in martial arts, Smith said, women are still not a large presence in the adult classes.

“Women in our adult classes are still in the minority, partly because in juggling family responsibilities and careers they feel that they do not have the time to commit to serious training.” Smith said.

Smith said his facility will be offering a four-week women’s self-defense workshop starting Feb. 9 so women can learn the basics of self-defense without committing to the vigorous training program.

Zwyiciel said she also emphasizes self-preservation in her youth classes. She said two students were on their way home from school when a stranger pulled up and tried to pick them up.

“They screamed and ran away,” Zywiciel said. “They did the right thing.”

Breeonka Lizarraga, 12, just started taking karate again in December after a brief break and enjoys the sparing and wrestling.

And she had already used what she learned in karate outside of the classroom.

“I got gored by a goat,” Lizarraga said as she showed her right arm, which was healing after 25 stitches were removed. “I did a rising block, and if I hadn’t, it would have gotten my face.”

For more information on karate classes or the self-defense classes, call Ronnie Smith at 872-9590. [/i]
Original article and picture at
http://www.paradisepost.com/features/ci_3460725

So from here maybe they’ll move onto something better? :smiley:

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she needed karate to shove her arm in front of her face when a goat was lunging for it?

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Fantastic. Just what we want to hear. Young girls convinced they can take on large manly attackers.

I believe the screaming to have been a somewhat unecessary addition, but oh well.

Christ I loathe these ‘girl power!!!1’ articles.

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Yeah…ineffective female martial artists are, like, settting feminism back 30 years. Why can’t there be more women who are really serious about their training, like Kidspatula?

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RISING BLOCK DEFEATS GOAT

woohoo …

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Not everyone has the time, dedication, talent or even interest the she does.

But giving a 13 year old kid who has never been punched in the face a false sense of confidence is crimminal.

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This is a good thing. any young person, and especially those that used to be excluded (like most girls) being encouraged to take up a hard physical activity is a good thing.

It’s true though about the lack of older women. at my gym we have plenty of older working guys (30’s-40’s and up) mixed in with the 15-25 college/H.S guys. But the oldest woman there is maybe 25. unlike most of the older guys tho, she’s there to bang.

So from here maybe they’ll move onto something better? :smiley:

hopefully. You have to start somewhere.

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These rampaging goats must be stopped.

THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

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Drawing attention to yourself and your plight is always desireable.

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I realize that traditionally in the US women didn’t even get to play real sports, even like 30 years ago. I think it’s important that this changes, and the popularity of some women’s real sports, like women’s basketball or soccer, are really important to the health of our society. (As opposed to something like women’s lacrosse where the rules of the game are really sissified compared to the male counterpart, which is both unfair and bizarre.)

That being said, though, I still have serious misgivings about women in less combative and more group-activity orientated martial arts. I’ve gone to my share of less-sparring-orientated martial arts clubs during my college years, and there’d be a fair amount of female practitioners, especially getting into technique-heavy kungfu style martial arts.

I mean, I liked them as people, much like I did their male counterparts in the same clubs, and we had fun together…but, like, because of the nature of the training, they simply weren’t that tough.

Contrast this to some of the women I knew who played judo. They were tough. They usually had a size disadvantage against the male players, but their technique became very, very good. Not just theoretical knowledge of technique, or some crap like that. They could pull all kinds of techniques in practice and make them work. They weren’t as big or as strong as you if you were male, no, but they had a legitimate shot at beating you with a choke or something. They didn’t always win, of course, but they had the ability to.

I couldn’t say the same thing about the women in the more group-fun technique-pattern martial arts venues with confidence. I’d like to be able to say it, but because of the style of training I just can’t say that with confidence, where I could say that with confidence about the judo women.

I just think that these more group-fun orientated martial arts are kind of comparable to women’s lacrosse. They make the players less than they could be if they were doing something more aggressive, more trial-by-fire.

The ironic thing is that I felt that the technique-heavy little-sparring venues had more benefit to me, someone who also did real sparring in other venues, because I could see the theory in a more practical light. But for people who never really got into sparring, I think it was in effect a lot less practical for them than it was for me.

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Just another reason to eat goats.