It all starts with how you walk down the street, said Alison Pack.
“Shoulders back, chin up, walking confidently, even if you’re iffy about directions, act like you know where you’re going,” she tells us.
She’s a personal trainer at PEAK Performance Training in Highlandtown. She started hosting free self-defense classes for women in the area about two years ago, during the pandemic. It was a skill she wanted to master too.
“As a woman walking around the city or going anywhere really, I just wanted to have the confidence and feel empowered walking around, and not necessarily need to rely on somebody else if I’m put into a sticky situation.”
The demand has continued to grow, as people see scary examples of assaults in their neighborhood. Like this one from November, when a Patterson Park woman was thrown to the ground and robbed.
“There’s a mix of stories. Some women have encountered an experience of abuse or situations themselves, or maybe they have a friend or family member that have experienced things, or they just saw something on the news, or in Canton neighbors or another Facebook group, that something happened nearby, and it’s eye-opening. It’s like, what would I do in that situation?”