IMPACT, based in Los Angeles, provides customized content in classes for women, men, teens, tweens, kids as young as 5, people with disabilities, the LGBTQ+ community, families, corporations, and organizations all over the country. The above video focuses on our women’s classes.
This video elaborates on IMPACT’s important work in teaching boundary setting, how to say yes to the things you want and no to the things you don’t want, and increasing confidence in your day to day life.

About

Knowing you can handle yourself in any physical situation means you carry yourself differently. If you believe your life is worth fighting for, you’re likely to believe your ideas, health and happiness are worth it too. When you are able to communicate clearly what you want or need from any situation, you assess people differently, you value yourself differently, people listen to you differently. Your personal safety skills turn into healthy communication skills that translate to all areas of your life. We offer dynamic, empowering, self-defense, assertiveness, boundary-setting classes encompassing verbal strategies, awareness skills, and yes, full-force physical assailant defense. Our training is focused on prevention of and recovery from assault as it puts students in touch with their innate power regardless of size, strength, fitness or (dis)ability level. We are women and men working together to say no to violence.

Our padded assailants wear specially designed, protective armor so that our students can strike full-force and find out what it really takes to confront a larger person or to deliver a knockout blow to an aggressor. They are protected from head to toe, providing students with the unique opportunity to fight back using all of their strength and without hesitation.

Classes can be offered in single workshops starting with a 3 hour event or be offered as a series of workshops over several weeks. Our courses are ideal for schools wanting to offer practical physical education that can make students safer and more empowered, and for corporations that want to increase the personal safety of their employees, as well as community groups who want to bring safety and empowerment to their organization. References from high schools, colleges, and corporations who have experienced first-hand the impact of IMPACT, are available on request. We can custom create an event based on your attendees and your needs.

Some of the programs we offer include:
  • Intro Workshop – standard workshop is 3 hours
  • Basic Series (can be offered for mixed gender groups or for men only or women only) – standard series is 20 hours

Intro and Basic Series courses are designed to include content such as:
  • Awareness and Intuition
  • Avoidance and that the best fight is the one never fought
  • Physical Techniques: Heel/Palm/Knee
  • Verbal Strategies: Stranger and Familiar
  • Verbal Drills
  • Combo of verbal and physical scenarios

Why Self-Defense? Check out a trailer from the documentary "Beauty Bites Beast."
Click here to see IMPACT's new virtual programs tailored to our times.

popular programs

Intro Workshop
This hands-on class gives students a comprehensive taste of all our training. Students will work on awareness as well as verbal and physical self-defense skills in a safe and supportive environment. The focus of the Intro Workshop is to teach students how to tap into their own intrinsic power and to leave the class with a solid understanding of how to safely deal with confrontations in a variety of situations. Each class ends with a confrontation fight with no verbal, a verbal drill with no fight, and then a confrontation with verbal and a fight. Like all of our classes, the intro is team-taught by a female lead instructor and one of our padded assailants. This course is 3 hours and suitable for up to 16 students, teens and older.
​Bystander Intervention
Bystander Intervention & Safety Strategies for Addressing Harassment is an interactive program that focuses on the non-physical aspects of self-defense by combining core material from both Girls Fight Back and IMPACT Personal Safety.  This session will empower individuals with personal safety options including strategies for bystander intervention and boundary setting.

We'll address the importance of intuition and awareness when managing our safety and will discuss how to use verbal skills when faced with confrontations, identity based harassment and/or street harassment.

The goal of the session is to offer participants tools that can help them feel comfortable in their ability to respond to various situations they may encounter and be a strong ally for others regardless of how they identify.

This session can be tailored to include physical self-defense strategies.
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CORPORATE EMPLOYEE PROTECTION PACKAGE
​Although IMPACT is best known for its dynamic fights, we strongly believe that fighting is a last resort. In fact, our emphasis on verbal skills has become a strong component in our Corporate Employee Protection Workshops, where we help management and employees develop boundary setting skills to resolve conflicts, improve communication, and avoid sexual harassment issues. Rarely does an IMPACT graduate have to use the physical techniques we’ve taught them. But in situations where fighting for one’s life or safety did become a necessity, nearly every graduate of our program (women, children, men) needed just one or two blows to either scare off their assailant or disable him enough to allow a safe escape.

Many of us have gone over in our minds what we would ever do if we were in a violent situation at the office. It is scary to consider. Many people do not believe deep down that they can do anything. With the recent events in the news and with the stories we hear about employees "going on a rampage," it often seems that the safe thing, as well as the most preventative thing, is to do nothing. We at IMPACT Personal Safety know better. We are a nationally recognized personal safety program that teaches individuals and employees how to instinctively recognize and realistically react to potential violence.

Participants and employers are often amazed by the positive effects that a course like ours can have on the office environment. Although the physical safety skills are often the highlight of our program, our classes cover more than just how to stay safe or how to intervene in a confrontation.  Participants tell us they feel more confident, relaxed, and prepared to handle challenges and stress more effectively. Included in the Basic Safety and Violence Prevention training programs are the skills that are so closely related, such as negotiation, sales, setting boundaries, and asking for what you want.

The IMPACT training method is cutting edge, innovative, and highly interactive. Since the human response to fear or stress is a rush of adrenaline, we teach using real life scenarios that allow employees to feel what it is like to experience the adrenal state. This is what makes our training more realistic and more practical. Learning how to listen carefully, think clearly, problem-solve, and give direction under high levels of stress is much more difficult while in this adrenal state. We help participants recognize how to apply these skills in work situations and in their daily lives. Our graduates report that the feeling of safety, empowerment, and communication skills that they learn from their IMPACT training translates into their daily personal and professional lives.

Some of the positive effects of IMPACT training for employees include:
  • Increased patience and tolerance of colleagues
  • Improved confidence and self-esteem
  • Motivation to handle new and challenging work
  • Ability to provide clear and complete direction
  • Creative and flexible problem solving
  • Leadership development
  • Greater general awareness

Course options:

Basic Intro Workshop
Our Basic Workshop including verbal and physical strategies
Hands-on training with padded assailant
3 hours - 16 students max

Specialized Corporate Workshop
Our team meets with you to design a program to meet your company’s needs
Hands-on training with padded assailant
4 hours - 16 students max

Courses are taught by teams of two or more and can be held in an empty conference room or your company’s exercise facility. IMPACT staff members are vetted, live scanned, and hold confidentiality as paramount to our services.
WOMEN'S BASICS
​In our flagship course, students will learn verbal and physical defense tactics that apply to a wide range of real-life scenarios including dealing with strangers and familiars (people you know). This class also focuses on awareness skills, avoidance, and target denial skills, and intuition as the key to personal safety. IMPACT's adrenaline-state, full-force training and layered teaching style ensures that the physical techniques are turned into "muscle memory" that will stay with the students for life. This class is applicable for anyone regardless of age, fitness level, or physical limitations and we work around existing injuries and disabilities to find techniques that work best for individual students.

This class answers these questions:
  • What do I do if I'm grabbed from behind and taken to the ground?
  • What do I do if confronted by a person who is angry? Or drunk? Or nervous? Or suave?
  • How can I escape a pinned position?

Once students know that they can absolutely deal with all the above situations, life seems to flow a little easier. And, despite all the amazing physical skills IMPACT teaches, the best thing students gain is the understanding of how NOT to fight; and, instead, how to see trouble coming and avoid it, how to talk their way out of sticky situations, and how to maintain grace under pressure. The class is team taught by a female lead instructor and one of our padded assailants. This course is 20 hours and suitable for up to 16 students, teens and older.
​MEN'S BASICS
This course starts from the same teaching philosophy as the Women's Basics, but we expanded and adapted this course to deal with the different issues men face in assault situations and confrontations. The Men's Basics includes full-force training scenarios. Physical skills, verbal strategies, and psychological readiness are geared specifically for the male consciousness and physical anatomy. Additional skills taught include subduing a larger attacker, ending an attack, and getting to safety. This course is 16 hours and suitable for up to 12 students, teens and older.
KID'S BASICS
​This is not a scary course, but an opportunity for kids to be stronger and empowered in having a say in their own safety and well-being. Over two sessions, students will practice strike and flee responses designed to get them out of harm's way and to safety as quickly as possible. We teach students how to get the attention of a safe adult, how to report an incident, and how to set verbal boundaries with a variety of aggressors-including bullies their own age, "trusted" adults, and strangers. This safe and supportive environment is ideal for kids to practice how to lead themselves out of problematic situations. This course is 6 hours and suitable for up to 12 students, ages 6 to 13.
​PREMIERE FAMILY PROTECTION PACKAGE​
In our 30+ years of providing personal safety and self-defense training, we have often come across clients who, for reasons of celebrity, status, or the need for flexibility in scheduling, require a specialized program that incorporates privacy and confidentiality into their training of personal safety and interpersonal violence prevention.

IMPACT wants to acknowledge how frustrating it must be to want to keep your family safe but not know what to do about it. While you can hire the best security company available, it is not realistic to have your family followed by security 24/7; and as much as you’d like to, you cannot be with your loved ones to protect them all the time. What you CAN do is provide them with the best personal safety and interpersonal violence prevention skills available today, and we can come to you and work around your schedule. We will organize a private training for you and your family – ages 6 and older – at a private facility or in your own home. You would need a space the size of a regular garage or large family room, 20’ x 20’.

Classes are taught in teams of two or more, usually a female Lead Instructor and a male Padded Assailant Instructor and occasionally a Class Assistant. IMPACT staff members are vetted, live scanned, and hold confidentiality as paramount to our services.

After consulting with you on your specific situation, we design a training that suits your needs for:
  • Home
  • Workplace
  • Trips
  • Vacations
 
We assess and provide status, age, and ability-appropriate training that can also train staff including:
  • Drivers
  • Personal assistants
  • Nannies
 
Each of these modules is four (4) hours and for up to 16 students:
  • Basic Premiere Family Protection Package - Level 1
  • Basic Premiere Family Protection Package - Level 2
  • Advanced Premiere Family Protection Package - Level 1
  • Advanced Premiere Family Protection Package - Level 2
ADVANCED PROGRAMS
IMPACT can also offer advanced programs such as:
  • Partners classes
  • Defense Against Armed Assailants
  • Defense Against Multiple Assailants
  • Self-defense for Educators
Bringing IMPACT to your high school
The Department of Justice reports that females ages 12 to 24 are at the greatest risk for experiencing rape or sexual assault. IMPACT protects teens and young people with our independent school program. At a time when even confident girls falter in their esteem as they seek to define their identities as women, we give them a new source of confidence: their own personal power and value. We can offer young men boosted self-esteem in handling potential conflicts with avoidance and non-violent techniques, as well as insight into the realities of gender-based violence, and an opportunity to step up and be a part of the solution. We are proud to say that our school programs continue to grow in scope and number of participating schools. The IMPACT independent school program has been offered in Los Angeles independent schools for over a decade. There are many types of schedules available from intensive one-day workshops of three to six hours of instruction to a full semester of curriculum-based programming offered through physical education or health education departments.
Bringing IMPACT to your company
Our corporate workshops are not just sitting and talking, but active and hands-on adrenaline management not only to improve job skills, but also for safer lives. For companies with employees traveling in the field, IMPACT workshops are critical. Our corporate workshops address the following:
  • Team Leadership: giving clear direction, creating communication protocols, coaching and mentoring skills, evaluations/giving and getting feedback, recognizing complementary skill sets a situation and making quick and appropriate responses
  • Personal Leadership: presentation skills, creative problem-solving, improving performance during stress and crisis
  • Health and Safety: safety while traveling, boundaries and limits, recognizing progressive stages of violence, trusting instincts
  • Sexual Harassment: definitions, preventions, interventions, reporting
  • Professional Development: dealing with stress and crisis, building peer support systems, enhancing group cohesion, recognizing and building on personal strengths, leadership skills
  • Communication Skills: handling difficult customers and vendors, handling tension with supervisors and colleagues, setting boundaries and limits

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They were excellent! They demonstrated responses to many different scenarios, and had the students participate in ways that got them thinking and talking later. I liked that they gave students feedback right in the moment, and that they answered questions really thoughtfully and thoroughly. They also were very ‘real’ with the kids, not preachy or dorky, just straightforward and direct with an appropriate sense of humor. All-around awesome! Thank you so much.

Karen Eshoo, Head of School, Vistamar School

MORE REVIEWS

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Bestselling Author of Permanent Midnight and I, Fatty

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