Photo Provided Fred McGaffick, left, of United Martial Arts conducts a class for women’s self defense.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — The St. Clairsville Area Chamber of Commerce is inviting the community to a series of self-defense classes to give women tools to protect themselves.

Director Wendy Anderson said the classes are being led by Fred McGaffick with United Martial Arts on the upper floor of the chamber of commerce building, 98 N. Market St., St. Clairsville.

“We will have 12 women who will be participating,” Anderson said of the most recent class Thursday. She said there were six women in a Feb. 9 class.

Anderson said a wide range of women benefit.

“We had one woman who was in her 70s, and we had someone who was as young as in her 20s,” she said. “It was how to deal with, if someone’s coming at you and you feel threatened.”

Anderson said the training focuses on how to instinctively respond to an attack and take advantage of opportunities to strike back and evade.

“I was really sore afterwards. There’s a lot of hitting and jabbing, but it’s worth it because I feel like I will be able to protect myself,” she said. “He wants to help make people survivors, not victims.”

McGaffick said he welcomed the opportunity.

“We do teach self-defense to our students on a regular basis,” he said. “We’ve tailored this down to a beginning-type class and took what we felt was the basics to start off with,” McGaffick said.

“We formatted it to an hour-and-a-half basic class.”

He said the class techniques have universal applications.

“It does not matter your age, your ability or anything like that. Anyone can do this,” he said. “We start discussing awareness of difficult situations, and we discuss where an attacker’s vulnerable spots are to attack. … We teach how to kick with power. How to use your knees, punching, palm strikes, eye gouging. … How to defend against a choke. How to defend if someone was on top of you on the ground.

“It’s a fast hour-and-a-half. We go through a lot. … Trust your instincts. If you feel that hair raising on the back of your neck, something doesn’t feel right, be aware of it and trust it and get out of that situation.”

Anderson said the personal and family protection company Damsel in Defense was also represented at the class Thursday, selling products such as whistles, stun guns and mace.

She said the demand is high and the need evident.

“What motivated me was all the issues that are going on in the United States today,” Anderson said. “In today’s world, you just never know. With the shootings that’s going on, I find it very important that we offer this to our community. This is not just a chamber thing, this is a community thing, and if people want to do more, just let me know and we can set up some more classes.

“We need to take care of ourselves, period, end of story. I mean men and women and young girls. There’s a high rate of human trafficking, we’re right on the I-70 corridor. We need to be aware of our surroundings. We need to understand when we walk to our cars, to walk around our cars first. Make sure nobody’s standing there.”

She said other good habits include having defensive items at hand.

Anderson added there will be as many classes as the community wants.

“That’s the beauty of this. Fred’s very accommodating to us,” she said, noting she is also exploring options for a women’s concealed carry class.