Ep #64: Self Defense for Runners with Carrie Mugridge and Jimmy Golden

Welcome to The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you’re a woman who is midlife and plus sized and you want to start running but don’t know how, or if it’s even possible, you’re in the right place. Using proven strategies and real-life experience, certified running and life coach Jill Angie shares how you can learn to run in the body you have right now.

Hey rebels, you are listening to episode number 64 of The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. I’m your host, Jill Angie, and today I’ve got two guests who are on a very important mission together to educate women on self-defense, especially runners. Carrie Mugridge is a busy wife, mom of three kids, elementary school teacher, group fitness instructor, and avid runner.

On July 12th 2018, while out for a run, she was attacked by a man who tried to abduct her and take advantage of her. She was able to fight him off and escape because she knew a few self-defense tricks that her brother had gone over with her in prior discussions, but after the attack, she contacted her son’s martial arts school and asked if they’d be interested in teaming with her to bring self-defense classes to the women of Lawrence, Kansas.

Now, Jimmy Golden, the owner of Prime ATA and fifth degree black belt instantly agreed to host and teach as many classes for free as it took to make the women of Lawrence feel safer and stronger. Now, together this team has hosted 14 classes with over 800 women and men, with dozens more on the calendar. And they’re going to teach you all of their stuff today. It’s going to be amazing.

Now, I want you to know, this is one of the most important episodes of the podcast to date, so please make sure you listen closely, take notes, maybe even listen again, and tell your friends because it just might save your life or theirs.

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Jill: Hey rebels, so I’m here this week with Carrie Mugridge and Jimmy Golden, and we are going to talk about something that so many of you have asked me about, which is self-defense for runners. And we’re got a lot of good stuff for you today so I know you’re going to enjoy this one. So Carrie and Jimmy, thank you so much for joining me today.

Carrie: Thank you.

Jimmy: Thanks for having us.

Jill: So I think we’re just going to dive right in, and Carrie, I’d love for you to share your story about how you came to this work.

Carrie: Sure. So I am just an average lady. I have three kids at home ages two, five, and seven. I’m a teacher at an elementary school in town. I also work at a gym in town teaching group fitness classes, and I’m an avid runner. I love running. I’ve been a runner my whole adult life. I started running with marathons, then I moved to half marathons, and onto 5K, you know, the busier life gets the shorter your race gets. And so running is just where I find solitude and peace and quiet and just my alone time, the time for me to just focus on myself and do something for me.

This summer I decided to go for a run. The night before, my husband and I were up late, we were remodeling our basement and putting a new floor into the basement, and so I was up late, which means I kind of slept in the next morning. Usually I’m up running before the sun is out, but this morning it was a Thursday, July 12th, I decided to sleep in a little bit, but I got up about 6:15-ish and headed out the door about 6:30. We live in Kansas and it’s really, really hot here and this day was already in the mid-80s, really high humidity, so I was just wearing biker shorts and a sports bra when I left the house, and I ran my normal two miles, and then I came to a point in my route where I could either continue through the neighborhood or I could go through what is called Prairie Park Nature Center, which is just a little wooded area with a pond, and I hadn’t done that in several months and I thought, “Well, today’s the day. The sun is up for a change, I’m out when it’s light, I haven’t done this in a while, I’d love some new scenery, I think I’m going to take that route today.”

So I decided to take that route and I was going down through the nature center and I came down a big hill and to my left was a picnic shelter, and in front of that picnic shelter was a small one-person tent that was blue. It was sitting right in front of the shelter. And I immediately had a feeling of, this doesn’t feel right, this feels wrong. It gave me that very uneasy feeling where the hair is standing up on your neck and you’re just thinking, “This is bad. Whatever’s happening, this is bad.” I didn’t have much time to think about it before a man came up behind me and he lifted me up off the ground and he started taking me away.

So he is quite a bit bigger than I am. I’m five-foot-tall, about 115 pounds. He was easily six feet tall, 200 pounds. He had me off the ground about eight to 10 inches and he was moving very, very quickly. So I was flailing at this point. I was doing nothing that was effective. I was just arms were going, feet were going, I was just – I was in shock. I could not believe that this was happening to me. I mean, this is stuff that you see on the news. This is not something that happens in Lawrence, Kansas, to just a mom who’s going for a run. And then I also had in headphones really loud music because I use that as my tempo to help me run and I just remember thinking like, the music was so loud, I couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t hear anything, so my sense of hearing was completely gone and I didn’t know what was happening around me or if he was saying anything or I was even saying anything. It was just this music that was pounding in my head.

And he was shaking me very, very violently, he was shaking me very hard. It was making my head hurt, it was making the world – I couldn’t see straight. It was just – it was nothing I’d ever experienced before in my life. And that’s when I took a moment to realize that I had to take control of the situation because I knew right away what his intentions were. I could feel that in my lower back what he was planning to do and I decided right then and there that he was not stealing that from me. That was not something that was his to take. I needed to get home to my family and I needed to get home to my kids and I was going to do that and I was going to fight.

My brother, who is in the army, had talked to me before about if you go to a restaurant, you should always face the door and if you’re in a movie theatre you should do this or, Carrie, if you’re out for a run and somebody attacks you, what are you going to do? I’d always kind of been like, whatever. It’s not going to happen. But I did listen to things that he said, and he always said don’t let them take you away, don’t let them get you to the ground, and go for the joints. He was definitely taking me away so I had that like – I had to put a stop to that right away, and I could tell where we were going. We were going towards that tent and we were moving quickly.

So I just took a deep breath and I just thought, and then that’s when I just started kicking. I flexed my foot and I just started hitting him as hard as I could with the heel of my shoe and I was aiming for shins and knees, shins and knees. And some of them were hitting, some of them were not, a lot of them were missing, which was super frustrating. He was hitting me, he was scratching, he was biting, he was making it very difficult. Finally, I got enough hits in that we both fell forward to the left side. When we fell forward, my left ankle kind of twisted a little bit but nothing that was severe. But it got my feet to the ground, which gave me a whole ‘nother level that I could fight.

Once my feet got to the ground, I could use my hips and I could use my elbows, and I started what are, I now know, called machine gun elbows. I didn’t know that at the time, but it was just hit after hit after hit just hitting him, ribs, gut, as hard as I could. In my head I was thinking, hit him hard enough so it breaks his rib, so it punctures his lung so he falls and I can get away. I just needed a second to get away from him. I was very sweaty, I was very hot, I was already two miles into my run and it was a tempo run so I was running really fast. So I was extra slimy and slippery, which made it to my advantage because he was really struggling once my feet were on the ground to hold on to me.

And so I kept elbowing and get a little loose, then he’d re-grip and then I’d get loose and then he’d re-grip and this happened over and over and then finally, somehow, I don’t even still know how this happened, I was able to like, break free of his grasp and I just ran. I ripped out my headphones and I ran as fast as I could out of there. People always ask if I turned around. I did not turn around. I just wanted to leave. I just wanted to get out. And then I went, got out, called the police, and kind of came to this. When I called the police, it went onto the Facebook police scanner pages in town and instantly people put two and two together.

Carrie lives over by Prairie Park, Carrie’s a runner, she runs in the morning, this happened in the morning. I mean, boom, it was easy to figure out that it was me that was attacked. And the rumors were going through town like crazy, people were contacting me and they didn’t have all of the fact and they certainly didn’t have it correctly. They were using words like rape and abduction and that made me furious because I fought off both of those, and those didn’t happen. So I decided to put on my Facebook page the true story, like, all of the facts, what happened, where it happened, his description, everything. And the support I got from the community was outstanding. It was amazing. They were kind and supportive and understanding, but then the thing that really got to me was then I started getting messages in my inbox on Facebook from women, women that I’d known my whole life, who told me their story of when they were attacked by a man or when they were raped or when this happened, and it was overwhelming to hear all of these stories and to know all these things and to know these women my whole life and have never heard these stories.

The day after the attack, on July 13th, I was at the police station for another interview, where they do the recorded interview and they talk and all of these things, and I came out of that interview, I was there for a few hours, and I was sitting in the parking lot of the police station and I called Prime, which is where my son just starting taekwondo lessons a month or two prior, and I just said – I left a message with them and I said, “I am interesting in signing up a self-defense class for the women at my gym.” I thought it would be one class, turns out that they were at a tournament and then I went on vacation, so it was a couple weeks before we actually got together. In that two weeks’ time though, daily, more and more messages from women of constant this happened to my sister in college, this is what happened to me, this is what happened.

In the newspaper I’m reading about women who’d gone for a run and who were attacked. Six days after my attack, Molly was kidnapped, and I knew in my gut instantly what happened to her. I knew that she was gone, I knew that she was dead. And so it just became this overwhelming drive for me that I had to change this. I had to change, I had to make a difference, I had to do something to stop this because I was furious. I was furious that this was happening so often and I was so angry that I couldn’t go outside anymore to go for a run without the fear.

So two weeks later, we get together and I talk to Prime and I say, “Listen, this is my story, this is what happened. All of these women are contacting me, I want to make a change, will you help me?” And they said, “Yes, we’re in, let’s do this, 100%. As many classes as you want, as often as you want, we’ll do it until everybody’s trained, until this town is the safest place in Lawrence.” And that’s what we’ve been doing. We’ve had over 14 classes, we have dozens more on the calendar. We’ve served hundreds upon hundreds of women. We’ve got sponsors who are sponsoring us, giving us money to buy key chains, sponsoring us to get self-defense little tips and tricks to hand out to women. It’s just – it’s grown and it’s our vision and it’s happening, and it’s a movement and it’s wonderful and it’s amazing and it’s so empowering because this is the only thing that has truly helped to heal what has happened to me that has made my attacker grow smaller and made me feel like I can get some power back. That’s the story.

Jill: Wow. Just wow. I mean, I – this is one of my biggest fears as a runner and I had a really close call about two years ago when I was at a park running by myself and a man showed up and I just had this weird feeling, just exactly what you described and I literally started moving back towards my car, and as I started doing that, he started coming to my car from the other side and he picked a two by four up off the ground and I ran for my car and jumped in and drove away, but I question myself thinking, “Oh, am I just making more of this than I should have been?” But hearing your story and hearing you say like, you just knew something was not right and that your instincts were spot on, so I’m just so in awe of how you fought this guy off and how you just like, made that happen. And how you have not let that diminish your love for running and how you’ve turned it around into something else entirely.

Carrie: So hard. So the people who know me best will know – have seen that there are some weeks I cannot leave my house, that I’m running on the treadmill because the fear – especially because we’ve been in the media a lot and I just – they have not caught my attacker, and I just have this overwhelming fear sometimes that he’s just waiting for me. He’s waiting, he knows who I am, he knows where I live, he knows everything. And it’s hard to keep living my life sometimes and to not let him win and to not let him get the better of me, but then I’d been to 14 self-defense classes now. I have this amazing key chain, all of these things that Jimmy keeps saying, you know, “You’re a ninja. You’re a ninja,” and I’m like, I don’t know about that. I feel so much more confident now. I run with this self-defense key chain that’s pretty badass and like, people always said to me afterwards like, they tried to give me mace or they tried to give me pepper spray. One person gave me a taser gun and I was like, these are awesome, I wouldn’t have had time to use that. What I needed was like, brass knuckles and I needed to be wearing it, and that’s why I love this key chain because it’s something that I wear when I’m running now, and I’ll see people – and if anybody even looks at me sideways I hold up my key chain and I wave to them and I’m like, good morning, and I make sure that they see me and know I am so confident and I’m ready. But it’s still so hard.

Even two weeks ago, I spent the whole week running inside on the treadmill because I just could not bring myself to go outside. But then other times, I’m like, okay this sucks, but he’s not going to win today and I’m going to go out and I’m going to run and I’m going to do it. I mean, it’s a process and I just keep thinking like, one day it’s going to get better. And some days I don’t think twice about it and I just go about my life, and other days it’s like, I don’t even let my kids play in the front yard. Like, what if he’s there? What if he’s waiting? We turned our house into Fort Knox. We have cameras literally front, back, sides, everywhere. My husband’s like, “Do you feel better now?” Like, yeah, could we also get an alarm? Yes, it helps so much, just, can we get one more thing? So yeah.

Jill: Yeah, I completely understand that. Completely understand. But I mean, I love the concept of this key chain and how it gives you this level of confidence, and so for our listeners, like, we’re all on video together, the three of us, and I can see the key chain and it’s amazing, and we’re going to have links to it in the show notes and Jimmy’s going to talk about it in detail, but I love the fact that you actually use that as sort of a visual deterrence because…

Carrie: I do.

Jill: It’s pretty visual.

Carrie: Yeah. It’s a little scary. It’s intimidating.

Jill: It’s a little bit scary.

Carrie: But I figure when you’re five feet tall and everybody else in the world is a foot taller than you, I can have that. It’s going to be okay.

Jill: Well, I mean, here’s what’s so interesting is yeah, because you’re tiny, you are an easier target for somebody who wants to come after you. They’re like, oh, I can just lift her up and take her away.

Carrie: Yeah, he, at some point, my attacker was holding me with one arm. Just completely one arm. Holding me up, and I was so furious because I was like, how can you have this much control over me? It was infuriating. I was so angry.

Jill: Yeah. But I think that’s probably the emotion that carried you through, because if you had been like – if you’d had a different emotion, if – I’m sure you were afraid, but it sounds to me like anger was sort of the prevailing emotion, and when people are angry, they do what is necessary.

Carrie: And I think – and I know this sounds weird, but I also think that I couldn’t hear what he was saying, which also probably helped because I think that would have scared me.

Jill: Yeah, that’s a great point. Like, he could have been saying all kinds of things and…

Carrie: I had no idea.

Jill: You’re like, listening to heavy metal in your ears.

Carrie: I run to gangster rap.

Jill: I love that. And so that probably amped you up a little bit too. So if you’re listening and you’re wondering what is the best self-defense music…

Carrie: For sure.

Jill: That’s so good. That’s so good. You’ll have to share your playlist with our listeners.

Carrie: Think Ludacris, Eminem.

Jill: I love it. Alright, that’s great, so that’s tip number one. Okay, so Jimmy, let’s talk about like, if you’re in that situation, because it sounds to me, Carrie, like you literally did everything right, which is amazing.

Carrie: Well, now that I’ve done all these classes, I would have changed probably 20 things and done 20 different – I would have done little things differently, but I did enough to work. For that day, which is what I tell people all the time in classes. We are going to teach you not how to kick his ass or not how to win a fight against a man. We’re going to teach you how to soften him up, how to get a second where you can just get away. So if you just know even a few things, like I knew those three things and that was it, and that was enough to give me a chance to get away.

Jill: Yeah, right, because you’re probably not going to remember everything, but if you can remember just enough. Because your brain is not going to be like, okay, this is the first thing we learned in class, right? Your brain is going to react.

Carrie: Yeah, Jimmy talks about that all the time. He’s like, this is the one thing I want you to remember. Yeah.

Jill: I love that. Alright Jimmy, so tell us, what do you do when you’re in that situation?

Jimmy: Well, you know, we go over a bunch of different things in the seminar, but not too much, just enough. We talk about the areas to hit and strike. I like to say soften them up, stun them, buy yourself a second to get away. And then we talk about the most common ways that you’ll get attacked. I mean, what’s your biggest fear when someone’s trying to – when you’re running, you’ve always thought, what if someone grabbed me from behind, or what if someone grabbed me by the throat or someone grabbed me by the hair or something like that, we’re not going to say what if they grab you by the ankle or – it’s not real common. So we’re actually going to go over, and one of the ways – one of the ones that we teach is when they come up behind you and they grab you, and that’s the way Carrie was attacked, how to get out of that. We also talk about how to – if they grab you by the wrist. This is good for not only women that are trying to – the guy is trying to take her but kids too. This is the most common ways kids get kidnapped is by getting just picked up and ran, or grabbed by the wrists.

Jill: Wow.

Jimmy: Yeah, so when she got attacked from behind, I tell her all the time, I know her story really well because we talk about it and analyze it and say, okay, this is what you did good and this is – this doesn’t work, this does work. But one thing that she did really well was she was just using her elbows to hit him. We call that machine gun elbows, not just one, not just two, but you just go crazy, and really what you’re doing is you’re trying to hit them but let’s face it, a girl that’s five foot is not going to hit a six-foot five guy and he’s just going to fall to the ground. Really what you’re doing is you’re going crazy, you’re all jittery, I like to say it’s like you’re all hyped up on Mountain Dew and you’re just moving around super, super fast. And what’s happening is your shoulders are hitting, it’s hard for him to hold onto you when you’re moving and you’re flailing and your shoulders and your hips and everything’s moving.

I like to also say it’s kind of like when a kid throws a tantrum in the store and the parent tries to pick them up to take them out and they start flopping everywhere and they fall out of their hands. It’s the same way that you can defend yourself against someone bigger than you is just by moving as fast as you can and be elbowing them. Try to get them to loosen up their grip to where you can just buy yourself that second to where you can get away and run. Carrie said it really well, and she always says this good. She says, “Your goal isn’t to beat them down, we’re not training you to be a cage fighter and take on guys twice your size. We’re training you to stun them, give yourself a second where you can get out of their grip and you can run.”

If they put their hands around your neck, you only have eight to 10 seconds before you go unconscious. Some a little sooner, some a little later, and you just want to get that breath back so you have another eight seconds to fight him off or something, so you just have to fight.

Jill: Okay.

Do you want me to go over a couple ways?

Jill: Yeah. All the ways. We want to know everything.

Jimmy: Awesome. Love it. So I always say that these are the most common ways that you get attacked. So they’re going to grab you with one hand, grab your wrist, grab you and try to pull you into a car, try to pull you out of somewhere, try to – they’re just using their force and their power to pull you. Another way is they’re going to grab you by the throat. They’re going to grab you either from the front of the back and try to choke you. Usually when they’re choking you, they’re trying to choke you unconscious so they can do whatever they want to you, so that you’re not putting up a fight anymore, so you can’t be loud anymore. So the second someone puts their hands on your neck, you are in danger. I mean, big time.

Not saying that if they grab you by the wrist you’re not, but you know, if they grab your wrist in six to eight, 10 seconds, you’re not going to go to sleep. Another common way is if they come up behind you and grab you, just grab you, wrap you up, try to power you, lift you up off the ground, kind of like this guy did with Carrie. Those are the four common ways. We are going to make a video to show more hands on, these are what we teach in our seminars. I can explain things though like, if someone’s choking you from the front, you can hit him, hit him in the arms, you can move your shoulders real fast, you can strike him in the face, you can do something to kind of loosen that up.

It’s kind of hard to explain the actual technique of these moves unless you can see it, but if they grab you by the wrists, the first thing you want to do is pull back and what we’re teaching is how to break – kind of like break the wrist and use your technique to twist out where the joints are and stuff like that to get away. But you know, where you want to strike them, if someone grabs you is you want to strike them in the nose. You want to strike them in the eyes, you want to strike them in the ears, you want to strike them in the throat. You don’t want to go for hitting them in the chin or in the face or in the forehead or in the shoulder or the chest. Those are the strong parts. I like to say, anywhere that they – if they can lift weights and make that part of their body stronger, don’t hit them there.

Hit them in areas that they can’t lift weights and get stronger. Like people can’t lift their eyeballs and make them stronger, so you can poke their eyes. As gruesome as this sounds, if someone’s trying to attack you, take advantage of you, I’d say go for their eyes. Go for their ears, go for their nose. If you use your palm and you strike straight to the nose, you can stun them, break their nose, water their eyes up, give yourself a second to get away.

So yeah, the soft areas on the face, nose, eyes, ears, and the jugular. You can put your fingers in their jugular, get them off of you. I always say when in doubt, palm heel to the nose. You know, just – you don’t have to have a lot of training, and I know a lot of your listeners probably are like, we’re not fifth degree black belts, we don’t know how to do this, and that’s fine. You don’t need to be a fifth-degree black belt. You just – you need to know how to put your hands up and drive straight forward with your palm. Not your fingers, not your fist, none of that. Just your palm. That’s the strongest part of your hand.

If I was to tell you for $200 would you go up to a wall and hit it with your fist you’d say no, that’s going to break my hand, right? But if I said for $200 would you go up and hit it with an open palm, you’d say yeah, I’d do that, that wouldn’t hurt as bad. The reason why is because it’s stronger. That’s the stronger part of your hand. So imagine you hitting someone in the nose with the palm. It gives you more force and more power. So when in doubt, palm heel him in the nose. If you can’t get a hold of their nose, grab their ears. Go for their eyes. Do something so they let go of you. The second they let go of you, don’t try to sit there and fight them. Run. If they grab a hold of you again, you hit him again, you buy yourself some time. Like Carrie said, we’re not training you to fight him in a cage. We’re training you to buy yourself some time to get away so you can be loud, so other people can hear.

Jill: That makes perfect sense. So now, what if they got you from behind though and you can’t get your hands – imagine your arms are pinned down. I’m just picturing in Carrie’s situation.

Jimmy: Yeah, so that’s where you can use your legs, you can use your shoulders, you can use your hips because they got you pinned down. Once you start moving your body and you’re using those elbows and you’re using your shoulders and your hips and your knees and you’re pivoting and your whole body is just moving like crazy, it’s going to be hard for them to hold on to you. If you reach up and you try to grab their arm, now your body’s not moving, it’s your strength versus their strength, and they’re probably going to win if they’re a lot bigger than you.

So I have women that are, I mean, Carrie’s size. You know, that I grab from behind and myself and my instructors, 6’2, 6’3, 6’4, you know, 225 to 240 pounds, and we grab them really tight and they’re still able to get away if they do the right movements. So really, it’s just the moving your body out, trying to elbow them, and the reason I say elbow them is because that means you’re moving your shoulders and your hips really fast, and they’re not able to hold on to you.

Yeah, so you can use your heel to kind of kick their shins. Now, is it going to hurt them really bad? Probably not. But it’s going to get them off balance so this is kind of what Carrie did. Carrie was listening to what her brother told her and she was just trying to kick the shins, trying to kick the ankles, trying to kick the knee. You can kick in the knee. Are you going to kill him? No, but you’re going to get them off balance, they’re going to kind of fall to the right, that’s all you want. You just want them to not be able to stand there and hold you, so that’s kind of the behind the thing.

You also, as gross as it sounds, is you can bite. If you can get your fingers behind and reach for their eyes and put your thumbs in their eyes, you can do that too. What else you can do is the back of your head. If they’re holding you, you can throw the back of your head into their nose, stun them for a second, they might loosen up and let off and then you can run. So yeah, there’s things you can do.

The one thing you don’t want to do is you do not want to let them get you to the ground. If they get you to the ground, you can’t really move around and run and fight and be opened up. Now you’re kind of trapped on the ground, you got like, a guy twice your size on top of you, it’s hard to fight. If they do get you to the ground, you need to use your legs and you need to kind of push off of them and kick them and use those legs to get away that way.

Jill: That’s good to know. I’ve heard so many conflicting things – actually, maybe I haven’t heard conflicting things but just like, if you just let yourself go limp and stop fighting that they might lose interest or whatever. It sounds to me like that’s actually – exactly what they want.

Jimmy: That’s exactly what they want. They want you to – I like to say the more confidence you have, the less confidence they have. Let’s say I ran up on you and I wanted to attack you and you were screaming and you were scratching, you were fighting and giving me the dirty look and everything, I’m going to be like, this girl has too much fight in her, I don’t want to deal with this. She’s too loud, she’s drawing attention, I’m going to go find a girl that will just go limp or just bow down to me because I’m a bigger, badder guy. You know what I mean? So yeah, I like to say keep fighting. Make it hard for them. Get them exhausted.

Jimmy: I think Carrie did that really well. She fought for like, two to three minutes, which seems like a lifetime sometimes…

Carrie: It was.

Jimmy: And then she was able to – once she broke free, she was able to run. And I like to tell women too, make sure that if you’re walking from your dorm room or late at night and you’re by yourself or something which you don’t want to be by yourself, but if you are, make sure you can run. Make sure you don’t have high heels on, make sure you have shoes on. Make sure you’re able to get away.

Jill: That’s a great, great point. So actually, that brings me to a couple questions I have, and part of it is just personal.

Jimmy: Yeah, absolutely.

Jill: I just want to know for myself, but I think a lot of other people have the same question. So before we talk about this tool that you’re teaching women to use, what is – like, so Carrie said that normally she runs before it gets light out and then this day you were running and it was actually light out. Is it safer – I’ve heard it’s safer for a woman if you’re going to run alone, to run at like, four o clock in the morning because most attackers are not up and about. Do you have any statistics on that or is that just a terrible idea?

Jimmy: Well, I like to – as crazy as this is going to make me sound, I like to put myself in the bad guy’s shoes and act like a criminal or whatever you want to call it, and I would say if I wanted to attack a girl, when would I do it? And I would say I’m going to attack her when no one’s out, when no one’s around, when it’s dark, when people can’t hear her because everybody’s sleeping. So I might be a little different than the running community. Carrie might be like, oh man, these girls aren’t going to be happy with what you’re telling them, they like to run at four in the morning, but I like to say don’t run with headphones in your ears. I like to say don’t run when it’s dark outside because I’m the martial arts guy, you know, and the runners are going to say no, this is the best time and this is how we do it.

So I would say no running in the dark if you can, no running in areas where if someone does grab you, you scream, help me or I don’t know you, get back, if nobody can hear you, don’t be running in that area. If you really want to run in that area because it’s the greatest area to run in, you need to be in a group. You need to be in a group of three or four people, get up in the morning, say hey, we’re going to meet. I actually saw the other day – I don’t know why I was up so early, I don’t usually wake up really, really early, but it was dark out still and I saw a group of six women running down Bob Billings, which is a street here in our town and I was like, you go, girls. I was like, get it, because it’s harder for somebody to attack six women than it is one, you know?

Jill: Right. Okay, so that’s really good to know. That is so different than what I’ve heard before but it makes sense because I know I’ve gone running at like, five o clock in the morning when it’s pitch black out and I’m thinking to myself, “Yeah, all the criminals are probably asleep right now but what if one of them is not?”

Jimmy: Smart one. There’s one smart guy that’s like, I’m not – that’s the best time to attack.

Jill: Yeah.

Jimmy: Also look at – watch your surroundings too. You know, if you see the same guy over and over again, you know, you see him at the grocery store, then you see him in your neighborhood, you see him at the park, I mean, it’s not a coincidence. I mean, if you live in a really, really little town maybe, but you know, just keep an eye on that. If you see the same person, they’re probably watching your everyday life and they’re probably not going to just – I mean, Carrie’s guy, he might have been watching her and said okay, you know, she runs every morning. Who knows? But a lot of times, they’re watching you and they’re kind of doing their homework so just be smart about if you see the same guy or you feel like I’ve seen him, he’s watching me, take note of that. Let somebody know about it.

Jill: That’s good to know. That hadn’t really occurred to me either. Like, you’d think, oh, how interesting, I must just be – I must have the same routine as this person, but in reality, it could be somebody that’s…

Jimmy: Especially if you’re at the park with your kids and you see the guy and then you’re out, you see him outside of your job, and then you see him in your neighborhood. I doubt he has the same exact friends, lives on the same street as you, shops at the same store as you. So keep an eye on that.

Jill: So can we talk about this key chain that you’ve got? Because I know when I say key chain, when you guys say key chain I’m like, what kind of a key chain? But it’s pretty amazing.

Jimmy: Yeah, it’s awesome. There’s lots of self-defense key chains. Some people will say I like these better than these, I like those better than those, and mace is good. Mace is good if you know how to use it. If you can pull it out, undo it, get the safety off and spray somebody, all within couple seconds. Now, if you don’t know how to use mace, they can use it against you.

Jill: I’m pretty sure that would be my situation.

Jimmy: Well, and it’s – actually, it’s like, somebody wants to attack you, they can use your own weapon. You ever heard that don’t bring a gun or a knife to a fight unless you know how to use it? Because now you’re giving them something to use against you. Don’t bring something unless you’re willing to use it, unless you’re able to use it. The cool thing about this key chain is it doesn’t take a lot of training. You just put it on your fingers, you close your hand, and it’s like brass knuckles with the ears and it’s kind of like a strong point. You can strike them in the eyes and stun them, take their vision away so they can stop attacking you.

You can strike them in the throat, it stuns them, they can’t breathe as good. And then what I love about this one is when they go to grab it to take it from you, they can’t without stabbing themselves. It’s like grabbing a knife almost. There’s kubotans, there’s so many weapons, but a lot of those you have to hold in your hand and if you pulled one of those out on me, I could grab your arm and I could grab it and pull it from you. This right here, you can’t pull from them.

Jill: So let’s describe it. Can we describe it for people who are listening? So it’s basically – I mean, when I’m looking at it, it looks kinds of…

Carrie: It looks like a bulldog.

Jimmy: It’s a bulldog.

Jill: It’s a bulldog, okay. And you put your index finger and your middle finger through the holes…

Carrie: Which are the eyeballs.

Jill: Which are the eyeballs, right. Off the top of that are these two little ears, but they come to a sharp point. So basically, when your hand is closed…

Jimmy: It’s very comfortable. You can run with your hands open, you can run…

Jill: You don’t even need to put your keys on it, you can just carry it with you.

Jimmy: Exactly. Or you can put one. Let’s say you can just put your car key on there, your house key on there, so you still have a key ring right there and…

Jill: That’s so cool.

Jimmy: Yeah, it’s awesome. And you know how many women say they feel so much safer and have more confidence when they run with this. She actually told me that when she runs, she runs like this and people even look and go, oh wow. It might keep someone from attacking you.

Jill: I want one.

Carrie: Jimmy, your trick. The first meeting we had, I was struggling with really getting outside to run, and he gave me one tip that just turned everything around and all it was was I’d take my wedding ring and I turn it inside so it’s facing my palm, and now I can use that to scratch somebody that comes to me. Like, scratch their face or scratch their eye. And even that one little tip, the next day I was like, oh my gosh, I have so much more confidence and I feel like I at least have something that I can attack with. And like he says, then I have DNA also.

Jill: That’s such a great point. Yeah. But here’s what I find so interesting is that like, nothing has changed except your thoughts about the whole situation because you’re like, as soon as you believe you have the tool to protect yourself, that confidence comes back and you’re able to go out running.

Carrie: Right.

Jill: And it’s such a simple thing to like, turn your ring around so that your diamond’s on the inside, or where this key with the two blades on it so that you just feel – I think a confident runner is going to be much more likely to defend themselves too if something happens, right? So it’s all about being prepared and believing that you can handle whatever happens.

Carrie: I was out for a run probably – I don’t know – six weeks ago, and I was just running my normal route and it was dark out and I hear this like, I don’t run with headphones anymore. I run with my phone on my arm and the music playing, but I hear this group of women coming. Like, they’re laughing and they’re talking and they’re running towards me, and I just kind of waved at them and then they were like, “Wait, are you Carrie?” And I was like, “Yes.” And they were like, “Oh my gosh, we’ve changed everything because of you. We run in a group now,” and they showed me their rings and they had them all turned inside out and they had some serious bling too, these girls did. They were like, “We run with our rings like this and we don’t run with headphones,” and it was just – it was such an emotional moment for me because it was like, all of this, all of this fear of him finding out my name and all of this work doing this movement in town and all of these things have been worth it because people are actually changing and people are actually doing things and people are listening, and they are making themselves safer.

And it was just such a moment to see their confidence and how they are out there doing what they do and they’re not letting this stop them. They’re not letting fear stop them. They’re still running, they just made a few different little changes, and they’re actually having a really good time. So it was just such an emotional moment for me, and even made it feel like what we’re doing is working and what we’re doing is a good thing, and you know, just those little things that you can do, and they were doing it.

Jill: I love that so much. I love all of this. Well, and here’s the thing; I am pretty sure that guy is never going to come after you. If he’s done his due diligence to find out who you are, he’s also seen all of this other stuff and he’s like, I’m not going to F with her.

Jimmy: He’s actually – I’ve challenged her and I’m really tough on my students and female students because I’m like, you know what, if I’m tough on you and I push you to the limit, then when you get out there in the real world or on the streets, and the first time she came to the seminar, I grabbed her and she wasn’t able to get away as easy, and I said I want you to do this, and the next one she got a little better, and she got a little better. Just from practicing. And now I feel so confident. I have one of my instructors, he’s 6’4, 225, and he grabs her and really, really squeezes her neck and tries to throw her against the wall and she’s able to get out of it just from doing 12 to 14 of these seminars and her technique’s getting better and she’s understanding where to hit, where to strike, how to use her body. So I do think it’s important that people watch the videos and do the self-defense seminars because – and practice it to make themselves better.

Jill: So, that’s really such a great point too is that you don’t just go to a self-defense seminar and you’re like, okay, I’m good. You need to go back and practice over and over again.

Jimmy: Correct.

Jill: That’s what I’m hearing from you. So I think that’s a point that probably not a lot of people consider is that like any skill, you have to practice it to get good at it and when we’re talking about your life, perhaps you want to practice it quite a few times.

Jimmy: Absolutely. And put yourself in those positions where like, you have your boyfriend or your husband, your son, your big brother, whoever, uncle, just grab me, see if I can get out of it. Grab me. Just keep practicing. You know, we practice a lot of grab and just fight because until you actually – I can tell you and you can be like, okay cool. It’s just like watching a Jackie Chan movie. I know how to fight like Jackie Chan now. No, you don’t. You’ve got to practice. And so yes, you’re 100% right on that.

Jill: Now, what if somebody grabs you by the ponytail?

Jimmy: Yeah, that’s a good one. If somebody grabs you by the hair, I explain it this way; you know when you were young and your dad or your mom was brushing your hair, how they grab the roots up by the top of your head real tight as they were brushing your hair, they did that because there was knots in there and they didn’t want your head to be jerking, right? If somebody grabs you by the ponytail, you reach up and grab your own hair by like, where you’re touching your head still, and then you reach again, and grab the other side – right next to where you’re grabbing their hand, and that’s where you rip your hair out.

Now, they’re going to be holding on to the end. Now, they grab up by your head, it’s going to be a lot harder for you to get away. But another thing you can do, another technique is you can take both your hands, with your palms, and you can hit their hand as hard as you possibly can. Like this, right here if you can see that. It will actually loosen up their grip and then you can rip your hair out.

Jill: So this is almost an incentive for everyone to just cut their hair.

Jimmy: Shave your head. That’s why MMA fighters, even the females, they braid their hair because they don’t want people grabbing it and using it as a handlebar.

Jill: Yeah. I never understand, and I know it’s not allowed in the rules, but when I watch professional football, they’ve all got these like, long braids coming out of the back of their helmet. I’m like, that’s just something for somebody to hold on to and pull you down, but I know it’s against the rules, but still, it just doesn’t seem wise. Anyway…

Jimmy: There’s rules in that, and there’s no rules when they’re trying to attack you, so you’re right.

Jill: Exactly.

Jimmy: They’ll grab your hair, I mean, I think when Carrie tells the story, she probably PG-13s it a little and you know, this guy was probably saying some bad things to her. He was probably biting her, scratching her, punching her, you know, we’re not going to get into details, but he had bad intentions. He was already trying to pull her clothes off, do all that kind of stuff. So yes, there is no rules when you’re out there. It’s just fight for your life, try to get back to your kids, try to get back to your family and your friends, and yeah, I got some tricks and tips too, if you want me to tell you those.

Jill: Yes, of course.

Jimmy: So I’m just going to read these. These are – there’s a bunch, but these are – a lot of people don’t think about these and you would think they’re common sense but you sit back and watch women, a lot of times they don’t do this. Men don’t do it either because they think that they don’t need to. I’ll never get attacked. They can get attacked too. College kids, sometimes they’re the worst because they’re not thinking, you know? This is high school kids, college kids, anybody.

Turn your ring around so you can use it as a weapon, to mark the attacker, and you can collect DNA. The police officer says what do they look like, well, here’s my ring, it has their skin in it, and they look like Scarface now, you know? They’re cut across their face. Park in well-lit areas. Make sure that you’re not parking in dark areas. If I was an attacker and you parked in a lit area and someone else parked in a dark area, I’m probably going to go after them. So be smart. Don’t put yourself in that situation.

Walk with your keys in your hand, or a self-defense key chain. You can also put your key in your hand to where you can stab them, poke them in the eye, poke them just to kind of buy yourself a second to get away. Walk in groups. The chances of them attacking you, if there’s three or four of you is – it goes way down. If you don’t feel safe walking to your car, let’s say you’re leaving Target and it’s – you ever left Target, and you’re like, it’s a little dark out there, seems a little shady, I feel like someone’s watching me, do you ever feel that way?

Jill: I’ve definitely felt that way.

Carrie: Absolutely.

Jimmy: And if you do feel that way, you have a conscience for a reason. You probably – there’s a reason why you feel that way. Go back in the store and ask an employee just to go to the door and watch you go to your car, get in your car, walk you to your car, just say, “Hey, I feel like someone’s watching me, I don’t feel safe, can you see me to my car?” And a lot of times they’ll do that, or they’ll at least stand at the door and make sure that you get into your car safe.

Glance in the backseat. Make sure that you’re not leaving your car unlocked. If you glance in the backseat, you never know when someone’s going to jump into your car and wait for you and now they can attack you when it’s quiet and you’re not making a scene. They could stay in your car and you could drive to your house. So make sure that your car is locked and when you’re like, at the mall, don’t unlock your car until you can see it because they can easily jump in real quick.

When you’re walking with your child, your kid, make sure that you don’t put them in the car and then go take the shopping cart to the little cart area, because they can grab the child real quick. Make sure that your eyes are on them at all times. If you are going to put them in the car and then take the cart back, make sure you lock the car. Obviously have the keys in your hand before you do that, but make sure that someone always knows where you’re at, so you know – it’s so quick for the police to be able to know where you’re at if you’re like, hey, she was at Target and that was the last place – they can go straight there. It cuts off 45 minutes off of their investigation. “Where was the last time you saw her?” “I have no idea.” Well, if you knew where she was, that would be a different thing.

I always say walk with your phone like, talk on it so if you’re like, not feeling safe and you’re walking out to your car, or you’re walking from your dorm or from class, you’re on campus, be talking to somebody. That way if someone does come up and grab you and there’s struggle, they can call the police right away and say, she’s walking from her dorm, she’s on this street, and there might be an officer within a couple minutes away from them, away from her, and it’s easier for them to get there, than, “I have no idea where she’s at.”

It’s kind of like the movie Taken, you know. I know it’s a movie but she’s on the phone with her dad and he could hear what was going on. It was clues for him to help her. If a thief or somebody wants your wallet, or they want – just give it to them. Don’t ever try to fight or say no. If they say, give me your wallet, give me your purse, just hand it to them. Don’t ever – don’t actually give it, like hand it to them because that’s a way they can grab you. Toss it on the ground. So when they go to reach down to pick it up, you can run.

Little tricks and tips on, you know, give me your wallet, and then you go to hand it to me, I can grab your wrist and pull you. So I lure you in. So if you just toss it over to the side, their attention will go to the wallet and now you can run the other way. Yeah, just make sure you’re not texting, looking down at your phone, when people can run up and grab you. Make sure you don’t have headphones in, make sure you don’t have something that your attention’s on something else and someone can sneak up on you.

Always be aware of your surroundings. Those are just some tips and tricks, you know. Sometimes people go, yeah, I’m doing all of those, but besides that one, and that one might be the one that he’s watching for. So as scary as it sounds, want to make sure everybody’s safe out there.

Jill: Yeah. No, this is so good, and it didn’t even occur to me. Like, if you’re pretending to talk on the phone, do you think it’s less likely that you’ll get attacked because they know that…

Jimmy: Absolutely.

Yeah, so like, if nothing else, just hold your phone up to your ear and pretend to talk on it, right?

Jimmy: Absolutely. If you – I mean, think about yourself. Not to say you’re an attacker, but if you saw a girl walking and texting and looking at her phone, she kind of looks like she’s all alone. And you look at a girl, she’s on the phone, you’re like, somebody’s on the other end. Somebody’s on the other side. It’s almost like she has somebody with her even though it’s through the phone. So you’d be more willing to attack the girl that has nobody there. She’s just texting, right? So yes, you’re right. Even if you just have the phone up to your ear, I always tell them, when you’re walking out to your car, act like somebody’s at the car waiting for you. Be like, “Yes, yes, I’m almost at the car, I’ll see you in a minute, I’ll see you in a second.” Or something, so they’re like, oh, somebody’s out here with her.

Jill: That’s brilliant. I love that. I mean, it’s just like, it’s just little things, but if you’re somebody who’s attacking and you’re looking for the clues of somebody who’s going to be…

Carrie: Well, and I’ve been reading an awesome book that kind of talks about your instinct, it talks about how criminals think and it’s called The Gift of Fear, and it’s by Gavin de Becker, and it is so good. I recommend it to all the ladies that I talk with and I say, you know, this really opened my eyes to how people are attacked, why they’re attacked, and your instinct and how that can save your life, what your instinct does for you and it’s just amazing. So all of these things that he’s talking about are truly so pivotal in what you can do to protect yourself.

Jill: Wow. Yeah, okay, so that’s called The Gift of Fear.

Carrie: Yeah, The Gift of Fear, and it’s by Gavin de Becker.

Jill: Awesome. Alright, we’ll have a link to that in the show notes as well. And so our time is almost up and I want to make sure that we tell everybody how they can find you guys, how they can connect with you, what they can learn from you, and also most importantly, how can we get those really cool little bulldog things, because god, I want one of those so bad for myself.

Jimmy: Well, we’re going to send one to you, for sure.

Jill: Oh, yay.

Jimmy: Yeah, if you go to our Facebook, we’re in Lawrence, Kansas. Prime Martial Arts is our name. So if you go to our Facebook, like us, and we’ll be putting up tips and tricks a lot in our upcoming seminars and what we’re doing, but you know, I have lots of friends all over the country that own schools. We’re all kind of doing this. I know it seems like we’re just doing this, but all my buddies are taking control of this too, and if they say, hey, this is where I’m located, or if they want to directly like, send us an email, you know, go on our webpage. Primeata.com and send us a direct email. We can set them up with somebody in their area. We know lots of people all over the country. Yeah, just, I mean, anything like that. Does that kind of answer your question?

Jill: Yeah, it did. So primeata.com is the website.

Jimmy: Like prime rib.

Jill: I love that. So they can get information there on – first of all, they can sign up to get emails from you, is that a possibility?

Jimmy: Yeah, we are going to do that too. They can get emails. We’re – right now we have our emails for our whole school, but we’re starting up a separate one just for any women that want tips and tricks and stuff about being safe, if we come out with a new self-defense key chain that we love, there’s going to be links on there to get them. And I just want to let everybody know too that we’re not it in to make any money at all. We’re just in it to make sure everybody’s safe and that’s the best thing we can get. Anything that we sell or give away is going to be all at our cost and we just want to make sure everyone’s safe, and I want to say thank you to you, I mean, you’re amazing because I always tell people, Carrie’s a hero because of what she’s doing, but I mean, just you doing – having us on and talking about this, I mean, if every woman that listens to this shares a tip or trick with one other person and they do the same, you’re saving millions of lives. So thank you for doing this.

Jill: My pleasure. I want my runners to be safe. I want every woman to be safe and feel like she can run and enjoy herself, and not have to worry.

Carrie: I always talk about the stats, and the stats are 91% of attacks are on women. One out of six women in the United States will have a sexual violence attack in her lifetime. On a college campus, the number goes to one in three, one in four, depending on what stat you look at. So the odds are not in our favor and we are working so hard to change that stat and make it something that we might be attacked, but we fended off. And so having your help and getting the word out is just making our job easier too, so thank you.

Jill: Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you for sharing everything you know. Thank you so much, Carrie, for sharing your story because I know that it’s probably not easy to continually tell the story over and over again, so I appreciate your vulnerability and your willingness to show up here and kind of tell it one more time because there’s somebody out there right now listening that’s like, it’s going to change their behavior and they’re going to avoid being in that situation because you were so brave and shared that with us.

Well, I couldn’t do it without my team, so they’re the ones that do all the work. I just bring the masses.

I just bring the masses, I love it. Alright, well, we’re going to get some more masses over to you after this episode comes out. So again, if you’re listening to this, all of the links that you need to find out more and if you’re in the Kansas area, if you’re in Lawrence, Kansas or you’re within 100 miles of Lawrence, Kansas, the information for you to go and take a class at ATA Prime – Prime ATA, I totally messed that up, are going to be in the show notes and seriously, but if not, email Jimmy, find out where there’s a gym near you or a martial arts studio near you that teaches this and get out there and take a class or 12, or 14. We’re talking about your life, right? So these are skills that you need to learn, you need to practice and keep them sharp because you never know. Thank you so much to both of you for coming today. It’s been my pleasure. I’ve learned a lot, and I hope everybody listening has learned a ton too.

Thank you.

Thank you.

—

Hey rebels, I hope you enjoyed my chat with Jimmy and Carrie and learned a lot about how to defend yourself while you’re out running, or just out in general, living your life. If you want to connect with them and learn more about self-defense, all the links to do that will be in the show notes at notyouraveragerunner.com/64. Until next week.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you liked what you heard and want more, head over to www.notyouraveragerunner.com to download your free one-week jumpstart plan and get started running today.