Aikido for Women

Aikido is a perfect match for women wanting to learn how to defend themselves.

When people think of learning to defend themselves, often they assume that means making themselves physically stronger and learning to fight back. This is usually a bigger gap to bridge for a woman when the attacker is a man. Aikido allows you to discover a kind of relaxed power generated by stable posture and body movement rather than stronger muscles alone. This way of training allows a woman to more easily learn skills that can be effectively used against a bigger and stronger attacker.

Another quirk of Aikido training makes it a great fit for women. A lot of Aikido techniques were devised as responses to somebody attacking a samurai in armour. Since trying to punch or kick somebody in armour won’t be very effective, many of the attacks we practice are various kind of grips and grabs, or attempts to take one down to the ground. This makes it a great fit for women training for self defence.

Although there is a wide spectrum of the violence that women face, not all attacks are physical hitting. A lot of the time it comes as attempts to invade their personal space or restrain their movements or to generate a feeling of helplessness. Aikido allows you to defend effectively against such attempts without raising the level of violence by striking back.

At Shudokan, we train not only in physical skills and techniques to defend against attacks, but also in the mental training,  the mindset and instincts that let you avoid or diffuse dangerous situations. This includes using your voice, your emotions and awareness of surroundings to strengthen your ability to defend yourselves.

Join us for a trial class to discover more or one of our month long women’s self defence workshops.