My first introduction to Krav Maga Ottawa was with their Women's Self-defense Classes…read more Unfortunately, the world is becoming a more dangerous place. Violent crimes in Ottawa have increased 20% over the last year. I wanted to do something to make myself feel safer, so I enrolled in their Women's Self-defense Class. It was amazing and I would recommend it to all women.
At the time, they only had Sunday classes 1.5 hours a week for 12 weeks, but they are now offering another option of Monday and Wednesday classes an hour each day for 9 weeks. The cost is $250 plus tax.
The focus was on common attacks against women: stabbing, choking, kidnapping, and sexual assault.
The owner and main instructor, Laurent, is superb. He's really personable. I like how he shares stories in class and even makes book recommendations. He's very nice, and also very skilled (he's an Expert 3 in Krav Maga). The other instructors are also good, especially Sam.
After completing the Women's course, I decided to join the regular classes. These are co-ed classes and all levels together. You purchase a membership and you can go as often or as little as you like. Classes are Sundays to Thursdays 1.5 hours in duration (except the Sunday class is only 1 hour). Membership is about $100-$140 a month depending on how many months you purchase at a time. I went 3 times a week for the first 2 months, but then had to scale back to once or twice a week because the classes were making me too sore. There was this girl who actually went 5 times a week! She was intense.
While I felt that the skills taught in the regular classes were extremely valuable, I enjoyed the regular classes less than the women's course. The regular classes are much more intense and the students are much more hardcore. I consider myself fairly fit, but I'm also very short and very light (barely 5'0" tall and barely weighing 100 pounds soaking wet and wearing a wool coat, lol) I felt that I was roughed up much more than the average-sized person. I would fly across the room every time I held the shield for my partner to kick. I pretty much left every class with cuts and bruises and was in a perpetual state of soreness. I was not the only one getting hurt though. I witnessed someone get a fat lip and saw other students with cuts and bruises too. I heard about broken bones and huge hematomas. But these were rare occurrences for other students, for me it was every class, cuts and bruises. I once got a huge goose egg-like swelling on my forearm from blocking a simulated knife attack in class. My partner said "ouch, your bony little arm hurt me!" Well dude, your big muscular arm hurt me! And I don't see any marks on your arm, but I've got this huge goose egg on mine! Lol. Sure, I learned some awesome skills, and the moves do work (I tried some on my husband who's a foot taller than me and almost twice my weight, and also on my personal trainer who's wicked strong, and they were both really impressed) but I don't like always being sore, bruised and cut up, haha.
So I'm super glad that I trained for the time that I did (6 months in total, including the Women's Course), and if they ever develop a Women's Self-defense Level 2 Class curriculum, I would take it, but ongoing regular classes are not for me at this point in time. Believe me, I've been lifting those weights at the gym and trying hard to jack up, but gains are slow. Who knows, maybe when I beef up I might give Krav another try then :)
The training studio is in The Glebe where Glebe Fitness used to be. Street parking only (which is usually a pain in butt to find close by). Well, there's a paid parking lot near by, but I'm frugal so I would park 5 blocks away for free and consider the walk part of my exercise routine, lol.
