Pursuing personal protection

When Penny Blackmon sits down at a coffee shop, she immediately catalogs what everyday items could be used to protect her.

“When I’m looking at this table, every single thing on this table, I know how to use it to actually protect myself,” she said. 

The table could be used as a protective barrier between her and an attacker. The chair could be a defensive tool. She could harm an attacker with her straw or with her hot coffee. Penny Blackmon almost instinctively runs down this list, and that ability is something she and her husband, Cranford Blackmon, teach through their Legs and Brains, Claws and Fangs (LaBCaF) self-protection course.

The course breaks everyday items and parts of the body into four groups, and their two-day course works to layer those tools with easy to remember and easy to apply defensive techniques, she said.

“All of a sudden, you look at the Starbucks and go, ‘There’s everything in here I could use [for protection].’ And then your eye will see it every time, because it’s such a simple system,” Penny Blackmon said.

The $225 course is offered throughout the greater Birmingham area, including a class one weekend a month at Advanced Weight Loss in Homewood. It includes two eight-hour days of training: Day one focuses on avoidance, and day two focuses on tools.

“First, we don’t call it a self-defense program,” Cranford Blackmon said. “We call it a self-protection program because the stuff we do really backs up way before anything bad would ever happen.”

Cranford Blackmon’s background in law enforcement and military taught him several ways to protect and defend himself, but he said throughout his career, he realized women were not taught the correct tactics for protection. 

He said he first thought about working on a women’s protection course about 30 years ago when he was in college. He worked as a police officer at the time, and there was a man assaulting women on campus.

“It just amazed me that all of the women walked around with their heads down and would not even look at somebody as they passed,” Cranford Blackmon said. “And I just wanted to yell, ‘You’ve got to look up. There’s a guy assaulting women, and you have to at least lift your head up and look where you’re going.’”

The final push to start a class was when a woman the Blackmons consider to be like a daughter was violently assaulted in her home.

“She only knew one thing to do when that guy came into her home, and it was to kick him, go for the groin kick,” Cranford Blackmon said. “And that didn’t work, and she had nothing else. She knew nothing else to do.”

That situation motivated him to create a course that would be easy to learn and easy to use for women of all ages, sizes and skills levels. While some women rely on a martial art or other self-defense class, Cranford Blackmon said those techniques can be difficult to remember in the face of danger. 

On day one, the focus is on escaping danger, how not to be a good target and how to be a good witness. Attendees learn what tools can be used to escape from an attacker and how to remain aware of their surroundings, which are all strategies that can go hand-in-hand, Penny Blackmon said.

“That whole process of teaching them to look for stuff puts them at an awareness level that makes them have to look around,” Penny Blackmon said. “So the whole time they’re learning what to tell a policeman if they need it, they’re learning to tell the bad guy, ‘You don’t want to mess with me because I see you.’”

Day two looks at fighting off an attacker and includes simple plans for self-protection. The techniques they teach step away from the specialized grips or twists sometimes taught in a self-defense course so that they are easier to remember, Cranford Blackmon said.

“What I’ve decided to do is to generalize all of the targets so that you don’t have to go, ‘Oh, what is just below the elbow?’” he said.

All tools and weapons, whether on the body or on a table, are broken down into four groups, and Cranford Blackmon wears a suit that shows which part of the body each group of tools is most effective on.

The generalized instruction means a woman can walk into any room and spot ways to protect herself, Penny Blackmon said.

The overall goal of the class is to help women feel confident in defending themselves in any situation and to help survivors of sexual violence or another kind of violence feel empowered, Cranford Blackmon said.

“You don’t have to be a terrifying, mean-looking person to be effective,” he said. “Another thing we want to make women understand is you don’t have to change who you are to be able to protect yourself or protect your children or protect the woman standing next to you.”

For more information about LaBCaF, visit labcaf.com or find LaBCaF, LLC on Facebook.

Editor's note: This article has been edited to reflect a change in pricing for LaBCaF courses.