Eve Gracie demonstrates the "triangle choke" during a self-defense seminar at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014. Nearly 120 military members and spouses volunteered for the training, with the goal of becoming certified instructors of a self-defense program based on Brazilian jiu-jitsu principles. (Jennifer H. Svan/Stars and Stripes)
Eve Gracie demonstrates the "triangle choke" during a self-defense seminar at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014. Nearly 120 military members and spouses volunteered for the training, with the goal of becoming certified instructors of a self-defense program based on Brazilian jiu-jitsu principles. (Jennifer H. Svan/Stars and Stripes)
Air Force Master Sgt. Toby Stolz and his wife, Sian Stolz, practice a move during a self-defense seminar at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014. The couple volunteered to take the four-day class, taught by instructors from the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academy in the States. Students have the option of getting certified to teach the program with additional training and practice. (Jennifer H. Svan/Stars and Stripes)
Air Force Master Sgt. Toby Stolz and his wife, Sian Stolz, practice a move during a self-defense seminar at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014. The couple volunteered to take the four-day class, taught by instructors from the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academy in the States. Students have the option of getting certified to teach the program with additional training and practice. (Jennifer H. Svan/Stars and Stripes)
Rener Gracie emphasizes a point during a self-defense seminar, Thursday, Sept. 4 2014, at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. Gracie, along with his wife, Eve Gracie, and several other instructors from his academy led the four-day program. Nearly 120 people, military members and spouses, volunteered to take the class. Organizers are trying to promote self-defense in the community as one way of empowering airmen and others to protect themselves from becoming victims of crime, including sexual assault. (Jennifer H. Svan/Stars and Stripes)
Students sit and listen during a self-defense class held Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014, at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. Instructors from the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academy taught the four-day program, intended to help participants get certified to teach self-defense in their communities. (Jennifer H. Svan/Stars and Stripes)
RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany — Tech. Sgt. Candace Helder, 28, decided to sign up for self-defense training to feel less vulnerable while traveling for her job.
“I fly a lot,” said Helder, an Air Force flight attendant. “A lot of times, I could be the only female on a crew, going into different countries, so having these skills to be able to protect yourself … I believe, are imperative.”
Helder was one of 119 students who volunteered for a self-defense class taught here earlier this month by instructors from the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academy. Over four days of intensive training, the students worked toward certification as instructors of the Gracie Defense Systems, a special program incorporating 15 self-defense moves, based on principles from Brazilian jiu-jitsu and tailored to the military.
Participants at the Ramstein training were a mix of airmen, soldiers and spouses — male and female — from the Kaiserslautern area and several far-flung bases in Europe
Organizers hope that many of them will continue practicing and will become instructors in their local military communities.
“We’re trying to establish a grass-roots program to help our airmen out,” said Air Force Master Sgt. Mark Tilsher, the event’s primary organizer.
Tilsher is leading an effort to set up a program on Ramstein and other bases in the Kaiserslautern Military Community, open to all ID card holders.
“It’s a little bit of an overload, and we’re going to work on getting those skills mastered,” he said of those training to be instructors.
He was pleased with the Gracie seminar. “I think everyone was completely blown away,” he said.
The Air Force hasn’t officially endorsed or adopted the Gracie self-defense program for its airmen, though the program has been taught at a handful of bases in the United States.
Tilsher’s Air Force unit, the 435th Air Operations Ground Wing, funded the $25,000 seminar at Ramstein, the first at an overseas base, with support from a number of private organizations on base and a local business.
“The ultimate goal is to reduce sexual assaults” and teach airmen how to become “hard targets” by projecting confidence and self-awareness, he said in an interview.
Air Force senior leaders have made reducing sexual assault in the service a top priority, but the service so far is reluctant to endorse the training as a sexual assault prevention tool.
“All effective sexual assault prevention efforts focus on the individual who commits the crime, not the victim,” Lt. Col. Kirstin Reimann, spokeswoman for the Air Force Sexual Assault Prevention and Response office at the Pentagon, wrote in an email to Stars and Stripes. “Calling self-defense training a sexual assault prevention program puts the responsibility on the victim, rather than the perpetrator and is not a part of the Air Force Sexual Assault Prevention program.”
Ramstein base spokesman Senior Airman Whitney Buford said the training could be applied more broadly. “It’s a tool in the tool kit for any assault, whether it happens to be a sexual assault or a robbery in Kaiserslautern.”
The Ramstein students spent four days learning from Rener Gracie, who has a fourth-degree black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and his wife, Eve Gracie, a martial artist and a former professional wrestler with World Wrestling Entertainment.
Students learn to “defend against all types of assault,” but the course is particularly effective in thwarting a sexual assault, Rener Gracie said.
“We know there’s a problem of sexual assault in the Air Force,” he said. “Our goal is not just to prepare them to be more resilient but also to make sure they’re protected from the problems within. In doing so, you create a more collaborative, cooperative Air Force as a whole.”
Learning how to establish verbal, psychological and physical boundaries, and then being able to physically defend them, is the crux of the training.
“Our belief is that once you have the physical means to defend yourself, only then do you feel like you have the willingness and capability to defend any boundaries that you set for yourself,” said Eve Gracie.
Those lessons resonated with Crystal Lewis, 34, a mother and Air Force spouse who was formerly in the military. “They tell you that you’re reluctant to set a boundary when you don’t feel comfortable or strong enough that you can defend that boundary,” she said, “so you let those people make those inappropriate jokes or the drunk guy gets a little bit too close. Those kinds of things happened when I was younger.”
Lewis’ favorite move in the course was the “trap and roll.”
“It’s just a really cool move, to be able to flip someone that’s heavier than you up and off of you. You can get up and move away.”
Eve Gracie said unlike some other self-defense programs, the Gracie method doesn’t use tactics such as eye gouges, groin punches and palm strikes to the face. “We don’t teach that because we know that a huge number of assaults are committed by people that we know, people that are in our families, that are in our communities,” she said. “We need a way to neutralize it without escalating the situation.”
One move, the “triangle choke,” is a last-resort defensive measure that involves using one’s legs to lock around a person’s neck.
Even a small person, pinned down by a stronger assailant, can effectively use the move to escape, Eve Gracie said. “It’s literally you have to fight for your life. You can render someone else unconscious with your legs from the bottom of the fight.”
Many of the students said the class was empowering and they looked forward to continuing to practice and teach the techniques to their families, community members and colleagues.
“I signed up for the class to ensure I could pass along self-defense techniques to anyone who might want to know how to protect themselves,” said Air Force Staff Sgt. Casey Jones, 34, an emergency manager with the 786th Civil Engineer Squadron.
The sexual assault prevention and response classes held on base are “great for identifying a perpetrator,” Jones said. “But they don’t tell you how to defend against it, if you do find yourself isolated with a perpetrator.”
