“I like martial arts a lot, so I’ve trained 4 or 5 times a week for years. I’ve done a lot of tournament fighting. What I like about TFT that was so different is the shift in mindset. In martial arts it’s all about points. When we do Shotokan, it’s points. When you put a punch, you stop. You punch and pull back. I’m a typical headhunter, always hitting to the face as I’ve been taught. It never occurred to me to hit somebody in the groin or neck, which could do so much more damage as I learned here. All my years of training taught me never to hit first and then once I do hit, to stop, to just defend myself and not to do damage. Now, coming here, I realize I could kill someone if that’s what I needed to do to defend myself. That’s empowering!
“The other thing that is really good about this course is I’m small and here I had to fight really big guys and when I applied the techniques I could easily take these guys down. It gives me a lot of confidence. I don’t feel helpless. If I’m in a group of guys now and somebody tried to grab me I know I’m not going to get hurt because now my thinking is first, ‘How am I going to hurt him?’ It’s a very good feeling, very empowering. I like that. I like that a lot.”