The best way to learn self-defense is to enroll in and dedicate a part of your life to learning martial arts. The Carbondale Park District offers ongoing classes in multiple martial arts that suit a wide range of student skills, needs, and learning styles.
However, we realize that most people who want to learn to defend themselves do not want to make a commitment to regular training.
For those people, the Carbondale Park District’s martial arts programs can offer free, age-appropriate self-defense classes to interested community groups.
The Carbondale Park District’s curriculum includes aikido, jujitsu, and karate. Our martial arts instructors have more than 100 years of martial arts training between them. They bring to our self-defense seminars a broad range of teaching styles, physical skills, and strategies for dealing with physical danger.
Our diverse curricula and instructional styles allow you to learn simple, realistic techniques and explanations that work best for you.
Our self-defense seminars can teach you how to:
- Pay attention to your surroundings and sense danger
- Avoid conflicts
- De-escalate confrontations
- Use physical self-defense techniques to fight off and escape your attacker and call for help
In addition, we discuss participants’ self-defense issues and answer their questions.
We have held programs for children, teens, and adults, for young women and mixed-gender groups. We tailor our programs for the participants’ ages and needs.
Due to the scope and limits of self-defense seminars, we are happy to offer annual or semi-annual follow-up programs to refresh participants’ skills and address their evolving self-defense needs. Teenagers, for example, may face different threats than they encountered as children.
If you have a group that would like to learn self-defense skills,
please call the Lakeland Center at (618) 549-4222 for more information today!