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For a woman's protection, these guys teach that the best defense is a furious offense

OGDEN -- A new women's self-defense workshop is turning meek, wilting flowers into ferocious fighting females.

The class teaches women how to defend themselves against an attacker with fierce and relentless attacks of their own.

Taught by Brazilian jiu-jitsu, muay Thai kickboxing and close-quarters tactical battle instructors, participants say the class builds self-confidence.

"For a woman, like my daughter -- she's 15 -- she's gotta' learn jiu-jitsu before she goes on a date," West Side Jiu-Jitsu Academy owner and class instructor Mark Johnson said. "The best place to be for a jiu-jitsu practitioner is on the ground."

Jiu-jitsu, Johnson explained, is "the art of the eight limbs," and teaches how to use knees, elbows, hands and feet as weapons, especially when the attacker has surprised the victim and already knocked them to the ground.

Two three-hour classes were held Saturday. Students paid $25 each. The students ranged from middle school to middle-age women.

A continual theme of Steve "Captain Midnight" Groves' close-quarters battle instruction was maintaining an attitude of relentless fury and abandonment of manners in the face of an attacker. Groves demonstrated a homemade chemical spray -- an ordinary spray bottle filled with ammonia -- that has better range than similar commercial products and is perfect for keeping around the house or in the car.

He urged the women to spray, spray and keep spraying.

"Don't just hit them once. Keep it going. When they open their mouths to catch a breath, squirt them down the throat," he said. "Keep going at him." Then demonstrating a stun gun, he repeated the same message.

"If you have not disabled him, you might have made things worse for yourself," Groves said. "Run the battery out on him."

Groves also shared sometimes shockingly violent anecdotes and comments that coaxed nervous smiles from participants. Showing a knife he keeps in his car, he said, "I never have to sharpen the blade because I never cut anything that doesn't bleed."

Groves said he's not shocking the students for shock's sake, but "trying to prepare them for what might happen."

Nikki Wheelwright, of South Ogden, said basically the same thing before the class began. "Nowadays, you never know what's going to happen."

Groves' chapter on knives had a simple message: Competent knife-wielding, with holds like "reverse ice pick," are sure to shock a perpetrator who's probably expecting a docile target who will melt when he yells at her.

Reviews from participants who completed the class were very positive.

"I was really impressed," said Taylor Christenson, of Ogden. "It's really good for self-confidence."

She said the joint-manipulation techniques, which require no weapons or advance notice of an attack, were particularily empowering.

"Joint manipulation takes no muscle strength. Me, at 100 pounds, could take down a 250-pound guy with hardly any effort, just joint manipulation," she said. "I really liked that."

Groves said he has taught men self-defense as well, but men are more self-assured in their physicality -- often erroneously -- and are therefore less likely to absorb the lessons.

"Men have more of this shroud of immortality ... They look at me and think 'I could take him,'<2009>" he said. "Women are more open-minded because they don't have preconceived notions about how to defend themselves."

But can just three hours turn a wilting flower into a ferocious fighter? Some of the physical techniques will take more than three hours of practice to master, Johnson said, but many of the lessons are immediately useful and deployable.

"(Groves) shows you how to use a credit card to hurt somebody," the 320-pound Johnson said. "He did that to me, and it h

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