What if you can’t escape? Jersey workshop to teach real-life knife defence

Islanders are being invited to learn “simple, real” self-defence skills at a public workshop this week.

Taking place at 2.15pm on Saturday 25 April at Blood Fitness gym, the personal safety seminar and workshop is being run by chief instructor at Jersey Krav Maga and Self Defence Richard Collett.

It has never been so important, he believes, for Islanders to understand how to protect themselves should the unthinkable occur – and he is now calling for more education for Islanders worried about incidences for close quarter violence.

Issues around violence were brought to public attention following the arrest of a Jersey teenager over a knife incident at Haute Vallée school in February.

And figures released under the Freedom of Information Law revealed 36 incidences of exclusions across Jersey secondary schools resulting from the use, or threat of use, of an offensive weapon or prohibited item last year.

“We thought we’d start with something that’s topical, that people are concerned about”, he explained.

“There’s a lot of knife problems – there’s knife crime, there’s knife violence, there’s knife threats – less so in Jersey, of course, but it’s happening, it’s happening more than we’d expect.”

The workshop will focus on “basic, natural responses – very simple, but practical and proven – defences that an average person can do if there’s a problem, rather than having absolutely no idea what to do”.

The public workshop he has planned for 25 April, which will run between 2:15pm and 5pm, will be “keeping it simple and real”, with the workshop centred around real-life scenarios.

“Maybe it’s a sudden kind of approach out of the blue, and what to do if you can’t do all the things that everyone says as a cliché, such as, ‘If you see a knife, the best defence is to run away’ – but what if you can’t run away?

“What if you’re cornered? What if you get stuck in a freeze, a mental freeze, so you literally can’t move your body.”

Fortunately, Mr Collett’s workshop will rely on easily-digestible systems that are “relatively simple” and “faster-learning”.